The Barracks. —The New Orleans Levee.
The Rebels, with their early penchant for capturing empty forts and full treasuries, had seized the United States Branch Mint, containing three hundred thousand dollars, and the National barracks, garrisoned at the time by a single sergeant. Visiting, with a party of gentlemangentlemen, the historic Jackson battle-ground, four miles below the city, I obtained a glimpse of the tall, gloomy Mint, and spent an hour in the long, low, white, deep-balconied barracks beside the river.
The Lone Star flag of Louisiana was flying from the staff. A hundred and twenty freshly enlisted men of the State troops composed the garrison. Three of the officers, recent seceders from the Federal army, invited us into their quarters, to discuss political affairs over their Bourbon and cigars. As all present assumed to be sanguine and uncompromising Rebels, the conversation was one-sided and uninteresting.
We drove down the river-bank along the almost endless rows of ships and steamboats. The commerce of New Orleans, was more imposing than that of any other American city except New York. It seemed to warrant the picture painted by the unrivaled orator, Prentiss, of the future years, "when this Crescent City shall have filled her golden horn." The long landing was now covered with western produce, cotton, and sugar, and fenced with the masts of hundreds of vessels. Some displayed the three-striped and seven-starred flag of the "Southern Confederacy," many the ensigns of foreign nations, and a few the Stars and Stripes.
We were soon among the old houses of the Creoles.[3] These anomalous people—a very large element of the population—properly belong to a past age or another land, and find themselves sadly at variance with America in the nineteenth century. They seldom improve or sell their property; permit the old fences and palings to remain around their antique houses; are content to live upon small incomes, and rarely enter the modern districts. It is even asserted that old men among them have spent their whole lives in New Orleans without ever going above Canal street! Many have visited Paris, but are profoundly ignorant of Washington, New York, Philadelphia, and other northern cities. They are devout Catholics, sudden and quick in quarrel, and duelling continues one of their favorite recreations.
Visit to the Jackson Battle-Ground.
We stopped at the old Spanish house—deeply embowered in trees—occupied as head-quarters by General Jackson, and saw the upper window from which, glass in hand, he witnessed the approach of the enemy. The dwelling is inhabited, and bears marks of the cannon-balls fired to dislodge him. Like his city quarters—a plain brick edifice, at one hundred and six, Royal-street, New Orleans—it is unchanged in appearance since that historic Eighth of January.
A few hundred yards from the river, we reached the battle-ground where, in 1815, four thousand motley, undisciplined, half-armed recruits defeated twelve thousand veterans—the Americans losing but five men, the British seven hundred. This enormous disparity is explained by the sheltered position of one party behind a breastwork, and the terrible exposure of the other in its march, by solid columns, of half a mile over an open field, without protection of hillock or tree. A horrible field, whence the Great Reaper gathered a bloody harvest!
Incidents of the Battle.