Three days afterward, December 10, Monroe wrote again in stronger terms:[478]—
“It is hoped that you will have long since taken a suitable position on the river to afford complete protection to that city. Mobile is a comparatively trifling object with the British government. Your presence at such a point on the river with the main body of your troops will be of vital importance.”
Jackson left Mobile November 22, four days before the British expedition under Sir Edward Pakenham sailed from Jamaica. Both Jackson and Pakenham were moving to New Orleans at the same time. Pakenham brought with him an immense fleet and a large army. Jackson, instead of taking, as Monroe hoped, “the main body” of his troops, left at Mobile the main body, consisting of the Second, Third, and Thirty-ninth regiments, about a thousand or twelve hundred men.
According to his friend’s biography, probably founded on his own information, Jackson’s “principal fears at present were that Mobile might fall, the left bank of the Mississippi be gained, all communication with the Western States cut off, and New Orleans be thus unavoidably reduced.”[479] That the British should advance against the Mississippi by way of Mobile was improbable, as Monroe pointed out; but they could have taken no course which better suited the resources of Jackson. A march of near two hundred miles, through a barren and wooded country, with Jackson’s whole force concentrated in their front, was an undertaking that promised little success.
Leaving at Mobile three regular regiments, Jackson ordered the Forty-fourth regiment to New Orleans, and directed Coffee with two thousand of his mounted brigade to march to Baton Rouge. He was himself ill and suffering, and made no excessive haste. “I leave this for New Orleans on the 22d instant,” he wrote to Monroe, November 20,[480] “and if my health permits, shall reach there in twelve days. I travel by land, to have a view of the points at which the enemy might effect a landing.” Starting from Mobile November 22, he arrived at New Orleans, about one hundred and twenty-five miles, on December 2.[481] His troops were then much scattered. The main body was at Mobile. The Forty-fourth regiment was in march from Mobile to New Orleans, where the Seventh regiment was already stationed. A thousand volunteer horsemen, part of Coffee’s brigade, under Major Blue of the Thirty-ninth Infantry, were scouring the Escambia, Yellow Water, and other remote Florida recesses. The remainder of Coffee’s brigade was at Baton Rouge December 4, greatly reduced by various causes, and numbering only twelve hundred men.[482] A few Mississippi dragoons were near them. A division of Tennessee militia, twenty-five hundred strong, under General Carroll, had started from Nashville November 20, and might be expected at New Orleans about December 20. A division of Kentucky militia, also twenty-five hundred strong, was on its way, and might arrive about the new year. Meanwhile the British expedition was sailing, with much deliberation, past the shores of Cuba, toward Florida.[483]
At New Orleans nothing had yet been done for defence; but inaction was not the worst. Jackson found the people despondent and distrustful.[484] The legislature showed incompetence and, as Jackson believed, indifference. The whole population of Louisiana was but small, containing certainly not more than fifty thousand white inhabitants; while the city of New Orleans probably numbered hardly more than twenty thousand persons including slaves. The State government supplied one thousand militia under the general requisition of the President.[485] The city raised a battalion of volunteers nearly three hundred strong, a rifle company numbering sixty-two men when in the field, and a battalion of free mulattoes, chiefly refugees from St. Domingo, which produced two hundred and ten men,—in all, between five and six hundred troops. Jackson immediately reviewed the companies, December 2, and could expect no further aid from these sources. No arms were in store, even if men could be found, and none of the necessary supplies of an army had been provided.
Jackson’s first act after arriving at New Orleans showed no consciousness of danger. Armstrong, criticising his measures, afterward said:[486] “Had the general been better acquainted with military history, he would not have suffered a single day of the twenty he had for preparation to have passed without forming one or more intrenched camps for the protection of the city.” Instead of doing this, Jackson did what had been done by Armstrong and Winder at Washington in August. Having arrived in the city December 2, he started two days afterward to inspect Fort St. Philip on the river sixty miles below. He returned to New Orleans December 11,[487] believing that the British would approach by the river, and prepared works to arrest their advance.[488] He then rode out to Chef Menteur and Lake Pontchartrain on the north, which he thought the next probable point of attack. He was still absent, December 15, examining the situation of different works northward of the city, when the British expedition struck its first blow.[489]
Six American gunboats, the whole force on the lakes, watched the entrance of Lake Borgne through which the British must pass if they attacked New Orleans by way of the lakes. They were stationed for observation rather than for resistance,—although for observation a few fishermen’s boats would have been more useful. The British expedition, upward of fifty sail, made land December 10,[490] and was seen by the gunboats, which retired within the lake. The British land-forces were transferred from the heavy ships into the lighter vessels, and under convoy of sloops-of-war entered Lake Borgne December 13. The boats of the squadron, carrying about a thousand seamen and marines,[491] left the ships during the night of December 12 in search of the American gunboats, which tried to escape, but were becalmed and obliged by the tide to anchor. After a tedious row of thirty-six hours the British boats overtook the gunboat flotilla December 14, and after a sharp struggle succeeded in capturing the whole, with a loss of seventeen men killed and seventy-seven wounded.[492] The American crews numbered one hundred and eighty-two men, and lost six killed and thirty-five wounded.
News of the capture of the gunboats, which occurred at noon December 14 about forty miles to the eastward of New Orleans, arrived on the evening of December 15, and produced the utmost consternation.[493] Jackson hurried back to the city, where his presence was no longer a matter of choice but necessity. Instantly on hearing the news he sent expresses to Coffee at Baton Rouge, and to Carroll and Thomas, wherever they might be found on the river, urging them to hasten with all possible speed to New Orleans. He issued a proclamation to the people of the city, in which he threatened them with punishment if they were not unanimous,[494] and at the same time he recommended the legislature to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. Finding the legislature hesitate, Jackson declared martial law by proclamation[495] the same day, December 16, and assumed dictatorial powers.
