283. How General Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans.—Later in the year the British made a vigorous effort to capture New Orleans. More than ten thousand trained veterans, believed to be the finest troops in the world, were met by less than half that number of men under Andrew Jackson, afterwards President. The battle was short but decisive.
The British general repeated the fatal error of Bunker Hill in marching his soldiers to attack men who were behind breastworks, and who knew how to hit every time they fired. Jackson's wall of cotton bales was assaulted time and again, but the red-coat lines broke and ran before the withering fire of the backwoods rifles. The sharpshooters of the South-west had worsted British veterans who had defeated the best soldiers of Napoleon.
In less than an hour the enemy's leader, General Packenham, was killed, seven hundred of his men lay dead on the field, and the contest was over. The British lost over two thousand in all, the Americans only thirteen! Never had a British army met a more decisive defeat.
This battle, fought on the eighth of January, 1815, was really needless; for peace had been made in Europe about two weeks before.
284. Results of the War.—The war of 1812 was not fought in vain. It put an end at once to searching American vessels and kidnapping American sailors on the high seas. Foreign nations saw that we were determined to maintain our rights on the ocean, and have never thought it best since then to insult our country. This war also served to strengthen the American feeling of nationality.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF THE PACIFIC COAST.
285. The Great Rush Westward.—Shortly after the close of the Revolution, long processions of emigrant wagons, with their white canvas covers and their companies of hardy men and women, began to move westward on all the main roads through New England, over the highways of New York toward the lakes, over the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and through the valley of the Ohio.
Thousands of thrifty settlers followed just behind the pioneers and cleared the forests, bridged the streams, built villages, and tilled the rich valleys. Thousands left their homes in the Carolinas and went over the mountains to settle on the rich lands of Kentucky and Tennessee.