The Battle of New Orleans / including the Previous Engagements between the Americans / and the British, the Indians and the Spanish which led to / the Final Conflict on the 8th of January, 1815

by Z. F. Smith

A Second Attempt To Breach the American Works, on the First of January—Great Artillery Duel.

On the evening of the twenty-fifth, Sir Edward Pakenham arrived at the British headquarters, and at once assumed chief command of the army in person. He was a favorite of Lord Wellington in the Peninsular campaigns, and held in high esteem by the English Government and people. His presence imparted great enthusiasm to the officers and men of the army, a majority of whom had served under him in other wars. The invading British forces were now swelled to over ten thousand men for present service. On the thirtieth and thirty-first, the enemy was ominously busy in throwing up redoubts and in pushing his offensive works in threatening nearness to our lines. In front of Bienvenue's house he constructed a battery, of hogsheads of sugar taken from the near plantations, the season for grinding the cane and converting the product into sugar having just closed. A redoubt was also begun at a point nearer the wood, fronting the American left, and some guns mounted by the thirty-first. A heavy cannonading was opened on this day, from this and other batteries along the British front, to which our own guns responded, including those of the marine battery across the river, until two in the afternoon.

BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS, JANUARY 8, 1815.

These demonstrative movements of the enemy, with his busy reconnoitering, foreboded an attack in force.

In the night of the thirty-first he erected, under cover of darkness, two other batteries of heavy guns at a distance of six hundred yards from the front of Jackson's entrenchments, on a ditch running along the side of Chalmette's plantation, at distances of three and six hundred yards from the river. During the night the men working on the platforms and mounting the ordnance could be distinctly heard.

On the morning of the 1st of January, 1815, the earth was veiled by a dense fog until eight o'clock. As the misty cloud lifted above the horizon, the enemy opened up a terrific fire from his three batteries in front, mounting respectively two, eight, and eight pieces of heavy cannon. A meteor-like shower of Congreve rockets accompanied the balls, filling the air for fifteen minutes with these missiles of terror. The two batteries nearest the river directed their fire against McCarty's house, some hundreds of yards behind our front line, where Jackson and his staff had their headquarters. In less than ten minutes more than one hundred balls, rockets, and shells struck the house. Bricks, splinters of wood, and broken furniture were sent flying in all directions, making the premises dangerously untenable. General Jackson and his staff occupied the house at the time; yet, strange to say, not a person was even wounded. There is no account that the old hero "ingloriously fled," but it is in evidence that he retired with commendable dispatch to a safer place.

Though the batteries of the enemy were in a better position, on a lower plane, and with a narrower front than those of the Americans, the gunners of the latter fired with more precision and effect on this day, and on other occasions, as their own officers afterward admitted. In an hour's time the fire from the enemy's side began to slacken, and continued to abate until noon, when his two batteries to the right were abandoned. Our balls dismounted several of his guns early in the day, and in the afternoon the greater part of his artillery was dismounted or unfit for service. The carriages of three of the guns on the American side were broken, and two caissons, with over one hundred rounds of ammunition, were blown up by rockets, at which the enemy loudly cheered. The cheeks of the embrasures of our batteries were formed of cotton bales, which the enemy's balls struck, sending the cotton flying through the air. The impression that Jackson's breastwork line was constructed of bales of cotton is a mistake. Bales of cotton were used only at the bottom and sides of the embrasures, for a firmer support for the artillery, beneath a casing of heavy plank. The British, in the absence of cotton bales, used hogsheads of sugar, which were conveniently near, for the same purposes. These our shot easily knocked to pieces, saturating the damp earth around with the saccharine sweets. Our breastworks were more substantially and easily made of the alluvial earth.

The guns of the British batteries nearest the levee were directed in part against the marine battery across the river during the day, but with little effect. Before the close the enemy's guns were silenced, and several of them abandoned. The British columns were in readiness, drawn up in several parallel lines, prudently awaiting in the back ditches and the trenches between the batteries a favorable moment to advance to an assault of our lines. In this they were disappointed; the superiority of the American artillery left them no hope of an advantage by breaching our lines with this arm. That this was their object their own authorities state. The losses this day of the Americans were thirty-five killed and wounded; the enemy admitted a loss of seventy-five. During the night of the first of January, the latter succeeded in removing his heavy guns from the dismantled batteries, dragging them off with much difficulty through the mired earth.