The South-West, by a Yankee. In Two Volumes. Volume 1

by J. H. Ingraham

Note E.—Page 204.

The following extract from a narrative of the British attack on New-Orleans by Capt. Cooke, late of the British army, will, perhaps, not be without interest to many of my readers.

Camp before New-Orleans.

"I do not remember ever looking for the first signs of day-break with more intense anxiety than on this eventful morning; every now and then I thought I heard the distant hum of voices, then again something like the doleful rustling of the wind before the coming storm, among the leaves of the foliage. But no; it was only the effect of the momentary buzzing in my ears; all was silent—the dew lay on the damp sod, and the soldiers were carefully putting aside their entrenching tools, and laying hold of their arms to be up and answer the first war-call at a moment's warning. How can I convey a thought of the intense anxiety of the mind, when a sombre silence is broken by the intonations of the cannon, and when the work of death begins? Now the veil of night was less obscured, and its murky mantle dissolved on all sides, and the mist sweeping off the face of the earth; yet it was not day, and no object was very visible beyond the extent of a few yards. The morn was chilly—I augured not of victory, an evil foreboding crossed my mind, and I meditated in solitary reflection. All was tranquil as the grave, and no camp-fires glimmered from either friends or foes.

Soon after this, two light companies of the seventh and ninety-third regiments came up without knapsacks, the highlanders with their blankets rolled and slung around their backs, and merely wearing the shell of their bonnets, the sable plumes of real ostrich feathers brought by them from the Cape of Good Hope, having been left in England. One company of the forty-third light infantry also followed, marching up rapidly. These three companies formed a compact little column of two hundred and forty soldiers, near the battery on the high road to New-Orleans. They were to attack the crescent battery near the river, and if possible to silence its fire under the muzzles of twenty pieces of cannon; at a point, too, where the bulk of the British force had hesitated when first they landed, and had recoiled from its fire on the twenty-eighth of last December, and on the first of January. I asked Lieut. Duncan Campbell where they were going, when he replied, "I'll be hanged if I know:" "then," said I, "you have got into what I call a good thing; a far-famed American battery is in front of you at a short range, and on the left of this spot is flanked, at 800 yards, by their batteries on the opposite bank of the river." At this piece of information he laughed heartily, and I told him to take off his blue pelisse-coat to be like the rest of the men. "No," he said gayly, "I will never peel for an American—come, Jack, embrace me." He was a fine young officer of twenty years of age, and had fought in many bloody encounters in Spain and France, but this was to be his last, as well as that of many more brave men. The mist was slowly clearing off, but objects could only be discerned at two or three hundred yards distance, as the morning was rather hazy; we had only quitted the battery two minutes, when a Congreve rocket was thrown up, whether from the enemy or not we could not tell; for some seconds it whizzed backward and forward in such a zigzag way, that we all looked up to see whether it was coming down upon our heads. The troops simultaneously halted, but all smiled at some sailors dragging a two-wheeled car a hundred yards to our left, which had brought up ammunition to the battery, who, by common consent, as it were, let go the shaft, and left it the instant the rocket was let off.—(This rocket, although we did not know it, proved to be the signal of attack.) All eyes were cast upward, like those of so many astronomers, to descry, if possible, what could be the upshot of this noisy harbinger, breaking in upon the solemn silence that reigned around. During all my military services I do not remember seeing a small body of troops thrown into such a strange configuration, having formed themselves into a circle, and halted, both officers and men, without any previous word of command, each man looking earnestly, as if by instinct of his imagination, to see in what particular quarter the anticipated firing would begin.

The Mississippi was not visible, its waters likewise being covered over with the fog; nor was there a single soldier, save our little phalanx, to be seen, or the tramp of a horse or a single footstep to be heard, by way of announcing that the battle-scene was about to begin, before the vapoury curtain was lifted or cleared away for the opposing forces to get a glimpse one of the other. So that we were completely lost, not knowing which way to bend our footsteps, and the only words which now escaped the officers were "steady, men," these precautionary warnings being quite unnecessary, as every soldier was, as it were, motionless like fox-hunters, waiting with breathless expectation, and casting significant looks one at the other before Reynard breaks cover.

All eyes seemed anxious to dive through the mist; and all ears attentive to the coming moment, as it was impossible to tell whether the blazing would begin from the troops who were supposed to have already crossed the river, or from the great battery of the Americans on the right bank of the Mississippi, or from the main lines. From all these points we were equidistant, and within point-blank range; and were left, besides, totally without orders, and without knowing how to act or where to find our own corps, just as if we had formed no part or parcel of the army.

The rocket had fallen probably in the Mississippi, all was silent, nor did a single officer or soldier attempt to shift his foot-hold, so anxiously were we all employed in listening for the first roar of the cannon to guide our footsteps, or as it were to pronounce with loud peals where was the point of our destination, well knowing that to go farther to the rear was not the way to find our regiment. This silence and suspense had not lasted more than two minutes, when the most vehement firing from the British artillery began opposite the left of the American lines, and before they could even see what objects they were firing at, or before the intended attacking column of the British were probably formed to go on to the assault. The American artillery soon responded, and thus it was that the gunners of the English and the Americans were firing through the mist at random; or in the supposed direction whence came their respective balls through the fog. And the first objects we saw, enclosed as it were in this little world of mist, were the cannon-balls tearing up the ground and crossing one another, and bounding along like so many cricket-balls through the air, coming on our left flank from the American batteries on the right bank of the river, and also from their lines in front.

At this momentous crisis a droll occurrence took place; a company of blacks emerged out of the mist, carrying ladders, which were intended for the three light companies for the left attack, but these Ethiopians were so confounded at the multiplicity of noises, that without farther ado, they dropped the ladders and fell flat on their faces, and without doubt, had their claws been of sufficient length, they would have scratched holes and buried themselves from such an unpleasant admixture of sounds and concatenation of iron projectiles, which seemed at war with one another, coming from two opposite directions at one and the same time.

If these blacks were only intended to carry the ladders to the three light companies on the left, they were too late. The great bulk of them were cut to pieces before the ladders were within reach of them; even if the best troops in the world had been carrying them, they would not have been up in time. This was very odd, and more than odd; it looked as if folly stalked abroad in the English camp. One or two officers went to the front in search of some responsible person to obtain orders ad interim; finding myself the senior officer, I at once, making a double as it were, or, as Napoleon recommended, marched to the spot where the heaviest firing was going on; at a run we neared the American line. The mist was now rapidly clearing away, but, owing to the dense smoke, we could not at first distinguish the attacking columns of the British troops to our right.