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

Jackson Arrives in New Orleans.

General Jackson left Mobile on the twenty-first of November and arrived with his little army at New Orleans on the second of December, and established headquarters at 984 (now 406) Royal Street. He found the city well-nigh defenseless, while petty factions divided the councils of leaders and people, especially rife among the members of the Legislature. There was, incident to recent changes of sovereignties and conditions of nationalities, serious disaffection on the part of a most respectable element of the population of Louisiana and Florida toward the American Government. The French and Spaniards, who mainly composed the population, intensely loved their native countries with a patriotic pride. They knew allegiance to no other, until a few years before, by the arbitrary edicts of Napoleon, all of Louisiana was sold and transferred to the United States. Other causes of irritation added to the bitterness of resentment felt by the old Spanish element. Spain tenaciously insisted on enforcing her claims of sovereignty to all territory from the east bank of the Mississippi to the Perdido River, on the east line of Alabama. But the American settlers within the same became turbulent, and in October, 1810, these bold bordermen organized a filibustering force of some strength, captured and took possession of Baton Rouge, killing Commandant Grandpre, who yet asserted there the authority of Spain. When Congress met, in December, 1810, an act was passed in secret session authorizing the President to take military possession of the disputed coast country in certain contingencies. Under orders from Washington, General Wilkinson, with a force of six hundred regulars, marched against Mobile, took possession of the Spanish fort, Charlotte, and caused the garrison to withdraw to Pensacola.

This precipitate action—the British envoy protesting against such informal occupation—was justified at home on the plea of strong grounds of suspicion that England herself might suddenly assert sovereignty over the same territory under secret treaty with Spain. Amid these rude and revolutionary proceedings, all within a decade of years, necessarily there followed a tumult of differing sentiment and contentions among the Spanish, French, and American people of the section. Fortunately the French element were of a nativity whose country had been for generations the inveterate enemy of the English, our common foe. If there were any who felt resentment before over the enforced change of allegiance from beloved France to the stranger sovereignty, when the crisis of campaign and battle came none were more gallant and brave in meeting the invading enemy.

On the ninth of December the great English flotilla appeared off Chandeleur Islands, and came to anchor near to Ship Island, the shallowness of the water not permitting the nearer approach to the main shore of vessels so large. The British authorities yet believed that the destination of this fleet was unknown to the Americans ashore; but in this they were mistaken, as they afterward admitted. The inadequacy of men and means and measures to properly meet and repel such an invading force, as mentioned before, was mainly due to the tardy negligence of the department at Washington. The sleepless vigilance and untiring energy of General Jackson was in marked contrast to this, not only within his own military jurisdiction, but in the whole region around. His trusty spies, pale and dusky, were everywhere, and little escaped his attention. The situation was now critical in the extreme. Fortunately, the unbounded confidence all had in their military chief inspired hope and infused energy among the people. He had never been defeated in battle. If any one could wrest victory now out of the inauspicious and chaotic conditions that threatened disaster, they believed it to be General Jackson.

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Marvelous was the change wrought by his timely appearance on the theater of active operations. The partial attempts to adopt measures of defense were of little avail. The joint committee of the Legislature to act in concert with Governor Claiborne, Commodore Patterson, and the military commandant, had done but little as yet. There was wanting the concentration of power always needed in military operations. Latour, in his "Memoirs of the War of 1814-15," graphically describes the condition of affairs as he saw and knew them to exist:

Confidence was wanting in the civil and military authorities, and a feeling of distrust and gloomy apprehension pervaded the minds of the citizens. Petty disputes on account of two committees of defense, unfortunately countenanced by the presence and influence of several public officials, had driven the people to despondency. They complained, not without cause, that the Legislature wasted time, and consumed the money of the State, in idle discussions, when both time and money should have been devoted to measures of defense. The banks had suspended payment of their notes, and credit was gone. The moneyed men had drawn in their funds, and loaned their money at the ruinous rates of three or four per cent per month. The situation seemed desperate; in case of attack, none could hope to be saved only by miracle, or by the wisdom and genius of a great commander.

After his habit of giving his personal attention to every detail, General Jackson, on his arrival, visited Fort St. Philip, ordered the wooden barracks removed, and had mounted additional heavy artillery. He caused two more batteries to be constructed, one on the opposite bank of the Mississippi, and the other half a mile above, with twenty-four pounders in position, thus fully guarding the approach by the mouth of the river. He then proceeded to Chef Menteur, as far as Bayou Sauvage, and ordered a battery erected at that point. He continued to fortify or obstruct the larger bayous whose waters gave convenient access to the city between the Mississippi and the Gulf.

As early as July before, the Secretary of War, in view of the formidable armaments of England, had made requisition of the several States for ninety-three thousand five hundred men for general defensive purposes, under a law of Congress enacted the previous April. The quota of Kentucky was fifty-five hundred infantry; of Tennessee, twenty-five hundred infantry; of Mississippi territory, five hundred infantry, and of Louisiana, one thousand infantry. That portion of the quota of Kentucky destined for New Orleans, twenty-two hundred men, and a portion of the quota of Tennessee, embarked upon flatboats to float fifteen hundred miles down the Ohio and Mississippi waters, had not arrived on the tenth of December. Through the energetic efforts of the Governor, aided by Major Edward Livingston and the Committee of Safety, the quota of Louisiana was made up. With these, General Coffee's Tennesseans, Major Hinds' Mississippians, and one thousand regular troops, there were less than three thousand men for defensive operations yet available.