[THE BATTLE IN THE DARK.]
HOW GENERAL JACKSON RECEIVED THE BRITISH.
BY GEORGE CARY EGGLESTON.
When the British succeeded in taking Lieutenant Jones's little gun-boats on Lake Borgne, and making a landing, after the manner described to you two weeks ago, they supposed that the hardest part of their work was done. It was not far from their landing-place to New Orleans, and there was nothing in their way. Their army numbered nearly twenty thousand men, and the men were the best soldiers that England had. Many of them were Wellington's old veterans.
GENERAL JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS.
It seemed certain that such an army could march into New Orleans with very little trouble indeed, and everybody on both sides thought so—everybody, that is to say, but General Jackson. He meant to fight that question out, and as the Legislature and many of the people in the city would do nothing to help him, he put the town under martial law, and worked night and day to get together something like an army.
On the 23d of December, 1814, the British arrived at a point a few miles below the city, and went into camp about noon. As soon as Jackson heard of their arrival he said to the people around him, "Gentlemen, the British are below; we must fight them to-night."
He immediately ordered his troops forward. He had made a soldier of everybody who could carry a gun, and his little army was a curiously mixed collection of men. There were a few regulars, in uniform; there were some Mississippi troopers, and Coffee's Kentucky and Tennessee hunters, in hunting-shirts and jean trousers; there were volunteers of all sorts from the streets of New Orleans—merchants, lawyers, laborers, clerks, and clergy-men—armed with shot-guns, rifles, and old muskets; there were some criminals whom Jackson had released from prison on condition that they would fight; there was a battalion of free negroes, who were good soldiers; and finally there were about twenty Choctaw Indians.