Patriotic Fire

by Winston Groom

  Not long afterward a British shot hit one of Dominique’s guns and knocked it off its carriage. While it was being repaired, someone asked him about his wound. “Only some scratch, by gar,” he growled, as he ordered his other cannon loaded with chain shot that “crippled the largest British gun and killed or wounded six men.” Surtees, the British quartermaster, remembered that the Baratarians had delivered the most deadly fire of all. Referring to the big thirty-two-pound gun of Beluche, he said, “It always struck the battery at first bound. Any of the other guns seemed like child’s play to the unceasing and destructive fire from this heavy piece of ordnance. I could distinctly see that they were sailors that worked it—one of whom, a large mulatto with a red shirt, always sponged her out after firing.”

  Particularly disturbing for Surtees was the actual appearance of the object of his destruction. “I could distinctly perceive the ball from this gun every time it was fired,” he wrote, “it appearing like a small black spot in the midst of the column of white smoke, which gradually grew larger in appearance as it approached us. Seeing which way the ball was coming, I told the men when to lie down; and on one occasion was the shave so close, that it actually carried away one of the men’s pack as he lay on the ground.”

  Captain Benson Hill, near the British center, came upon a number of West Indians cringing in a transverse drainage ditch within gunshot range. He told them to go back to their lines.

  “No sir, Boss,” one of them replied. “No more Jamaica. No more white man’s orders. We die here.”

  The terror of war, of course, was not limited to the British soldiers. Vincent Nolte watched as one of the American militiamen bent over to light a cigar at the same time a ball passed over his head and decapitated the man standing next to him.

  The British artillery had struck several of Jackson’s guns, but they were repaired while the others laid down a devastating fire that, within less than an hour, dismounted five British guns and so damaged eight others that they could not be aimed properly. The sugar hogsheads proved a disaster as embrasures. They blew totally apart when hit by a cannon shot and sent sugar flying everywhere, clogging guns and extinguishing firing matches.

  Once more a party of British, again led by the intrepid Colonel Robert Rennie, tried to flank Jackson’s left by going through the cypress swamp, but they were met and repulsed by Jugat’s Choctaws and Coffee’s Tennesseans. Latour later wrote that “Wellington’s heroes discovered that they were ill-qualified to contend with us in woods where they must fight knee-deep in water.”

  By noon the British fire had noticeably slackened; two-thirds of their guns had been put out of action, and Pakenham ordered a withdrawal. This could not be accomplished, however, because Jackson’s guns were still firing, and so the redcoats had to lie miserably in their damp ditches until nightfall, while what was left of their artillery tried to dispute the Americans’ decided superiority. “We retired not only baffled and disappointed, but in some degree disheartened and discontented,” remembered Lieutenant Gleig. “We knew that with small arms the Americans were foemen worthy of our steel, but we did not expect them—mostly militia as they were—to get the best of an artillery combat, pure and simple.”

  Just as the sugar barrels had proved unsuitable to the British for combat protection, so the cotton bales turned out to be worthless to the Americans. British gunfire knocked them all over the place and even set them afire, obscuring the battlefield. Jackson ordered them removed. It was found that much of the British fire had gone high and landed behind the line, while shot and shell that actually hit the rampart simply sank into its mud. The Americans had lost 11 men killed and 23 wounded. Jackson issued everybody two ounces of whisky and posted an order of congratulations.

  British casualties were more than 100, with nearly half that number killed. Pakenham was in a quandary. He had now failed twice to dislodge the Americans from their line, and there was seemingly no way around it. The only other option was to withdraw back to Lake Borgne or to the fleet and try to find some other place to resume the attack, but this was unacceptable as too much had gone into the enterprise to abandon it now. Besides, the British army was a proud army, an arrogant army perhaps, especially in the wake of their conquests of Napoleon’s forces in Europe. They were considered by many—and considered themselves—the most polished killing machine on the face of the earth, and perhaps that was true. In any event, they intended to stay and find out.

  It was reported that Admiral Cochrane attempted to shame Pakenham into assaulting the Americans by telling him that, if he and his army had no taste for it, his own sailors would attack and rout Jackson and that Pakenham’s soldiers could bring the sailors’ baggage up afterward. This story has been repeated by many historians, but, as General Brown points out, it probably has no basis in fact, not only because there is no mention of it in any British document or by a diarist but also because it would have been very out of character for Cochrane to say such an impertinent thing to a lieutenant general of the army who was also the brother-in-law of the legendary Duke of Wellington.

  In any case, Pakenham made a fateful decision. He had just learned that a strong 2,000-man brigade of reinforcements under Major General John Lambert had arrived in the Mississippi Sound and had joined the fleet. It would take a few days to transfer them to his army, but after that had been done, Pakenham determined to go at the Americans all out. It would require about a week to prepare.

  First, the British would need scaling ladders to climb up Jackson’s rampart, which by now was eight feet high and growing. They would also need fascines—tightly wrapped bundles of sticks (in this case, sugarcane stalks)—which they would throw into the ditch in front of the fortification so that the soldiers could use them to cross over.

  Pakenham next conceived as part of the plan a landing on the west, or right, bank in order to silence the American artillery batteries there and to either bring over artillery of his own or use captured American guns to enfilade Jackson’s line—as Jackson had done to him—and drive him from his position. This force would be commanded by Colonel William Thornton and would consist of about 1,400 men. To accomplish this, Cochrane proposed what soon developed into a herculean enterprise: since approximately fifty large pulling boats (each boat holding twenty-eight soldiers, plus rowing crew) would have to be brought from the fleet to Lake Borgne and then up Bayou Bienvenue, why not lengthen and deepen the Villeré Canal and simply float them all the way across the fields to the river?

  This was easier said than done. Like the Rodriguez Canal along Jackson’s line, the Villeré Canal was just above the water table, and as soon as the redcoats and sailors began digging it out they were consumed by muck. They worked in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, and it was said that the two Jamaican regiments “were almost worked to death on the project.” Pakenham was skeptical of the plan and wanted to use rollers to ferry the boats across the cane fields, but the navy was afraid that rollers would stove in their bottoms, and so work on the canal continued apace.

  For the British, things were becoming desperate, especially in the matter of rations. To feed an army in the field of from 8,000 to 10,000 men requires a tremendous supply effort. This large British army had been on the Mississippi for nine days and had by now eaten up all the stored provisions on the several plantation lands they occupied, as well as having killed and eaten all the cattle, swine, goats, and poultry. Food from the fleet had to be rowed in daily across nearly eighty miles of often rough water, and, to make matters worse, the fleet ration stores themselves were running out. It had been planned that by now the British army would have taken New Orleans and be dining off the largesse of the considerable food cellars of that city. Americans who killed or captured British soldiers reported that in their knapsacks they were carrying cooked horseflesh—it had gotten that bad.

  British accounts recall that the soldiers picked all the ripe oranges from the groves (December is picking time for citrus in the South) and boiled them in large cau
ldrons found on the plantations, into which much sugar—also found in profusion on these plantations—was poured, resulting in tart sugar-coated orange peels, a delectable kind of sweet-and-sour candy that at least helped ease the men through their various travails.

  Likewise, there was an ammunition problem, since every cannonball and shell as well as powder and cartridges had to be transported with the by now worn-out sailors who rowed day and night to keep the supply going. Part of the reason the artillery attack had failed was lack of ammunition, and now every reinforcement soldier or sailor who left the fleet for the battleground was required to carry on his person at least one heavy cannonball or shell. In today’s military this would be called an “offensive load,” with the meaning leaning toward the vulgar.

  With New Orleans just a few miles in the rear, Jackson had no such rations problem, and Laffite’s supply of munitions from his secret stashes seemed to be endless. Still Jackson was fearful, and with good reason. He was outnumbered by about two to one by seasoned British professionals, as opposed to his mostly untrained militia; his position on the Rodriguez Canal was the only thing standing between the British and New Orleans. It was plain to Jackson and the others that so long as the British remained, they could expect a major attack; they simply did not know when or how it would fall. It was said that Jackson, ill and frail as he was, did not sleep at all during this trying period, except to nap on a couch in the now-wrecked Macarty house, which was barely habitable.

  Finally, on January 3, word came that the long-anticipated, sorely needed 2,368-man brigade of Kentucky militia was in the area, still on the river but expected first thing the next morning. The bad news was that fewer than about 10 percent of them were well armed, and less than a third had any arms at all! This came as a shock to Jackson, who roared, “I don’t believe it! I have never known a Kentuckian who did not always have on his person a rifle, a pack of cards, and a bottle of whisky!” But it was true. The Kentuckians had been told that arms and other military equipment awaited them at New Orleans.

  Jackson renewed his scouting upriver for the missing munitions boat (and, by the way, to arrest its captain and bring him to New Orleans in chains), but it was to no avail—the boat would not arrive for another two weeks. In frustration, he sent his aides to scour New Orleans for any piece of firearm whatsoever, but the best they could find was a cache of antiquated Spanish muskets that had been squirreled away by the city government in case of a slave revolt. Most of these weapons were rusty and probably better used as clubs than as firing pieces.

  Almost as bad for the Kentuckians was the condition of their clothing. Most of them were in rags after their two-month-long journey downriver, and the weather had turned freezing cold again. The sight of them marching through the streets of New Orleans so tattered and torn, and often clutching at the rents in their clothes to cover themselves from immodesty, actually brought tears to the eyes of many of the women of the city, who immediately began a campaign to fashion blankets, draperies, and bed linens into clothing for these unfortunate creatures. The Louisiana legislature appropriated $6,000, and Louisiana citizens—including many of the men in Jackson’s camp—contributed another $10,000; in less than a week the ladies of New Orleans, according to Major Latour, had produced “twelve hundred blanket cloaks, two hundred seventy-five waistcoats, eleven hundred twenty-seven pairs of pantaloons, eight hundred shirts, four hundred and ten pairs of shoes, and a great number of mattresses.”

  Jackson was concerned, as he had been ever since he arrived in New Orleans, that the British might come at him from different directions, and it was a logical fear, given the wide variety of approaches into the city. He knew he had defeated Pakenham’s army twice now, and the question on his mind was: Would the British general try it again, or would he try to find some other way, farther up the bayou perhaps, to attack Jackson from the rear?

  Accordingly, he summoned his old friend Colonel Reuben Kemper* 66 and told him to take a detachment to reconnoiter the British positions on the bayou and see if there were any signs that the enemy was about to leave. Kemper was the ideal officer for the job, as well as a man after Jackson’s own heart. According to historian Walker, he was an inveterate English- and Spaniard-hater, who had once been kidnapped by the Spanish authorities in New Orleans for complaining about their imperialist outrages.

  Kemper and his two brothers somehow escaped their supposed fate of a lifetime in chains in the gold mines of Spanish Cuba, and for their revenge, when they later ran into one of their kidnappers, they “inflicted upon his naked back one hundred lashes, then one hundred more for their brother Nathan who was absent, cut off his ears with a dull knife, and then let him loose. These gory trophies were long preserved in a bottle of spirits and hung up in one of the Kempers’ parlors.”

  It took Kemper a full twenty-four hours, stealing through canal to bayou to swamp, until he reached a position overlooking the British beachhead at Bayou Bienvenue. If the enemy intended to leave, Kemper reported, he certainly did not show any signs of it. The British had fortified their positions and put out pickets, and even burned away the eight-foot-high reed grass of the prairies, apparently to prevent the Americans from sneaking through it and attacking from the rear. The boats Kemper saw arriving were being off-loaded with men and military equipment.

  What Jackson quickly deduced from this information was that the British were planning to attack him again on his front. On Friday, January 6, he received another important piece of intelligence.

  One of the sailing masters who had escaped the carnage during the Battle of Lake Borgne had observed a small British supply boat headed across the lake toward Bayou Bienvenue, and he dashed out with three armed boats and captured her. From her crew, now prisoners, it was learned that the British were widening and deepening the Villeré Canal from the bayou to the Mississippi. When Jackson imparted this news to Commodore Patterson, the naval officer went down to a point on the right bank of the river just opposite the British encampment and for several hours studied it through his spyglass. When he reported back to Jackson, it was to say that in his opinion the enemy was planning to use the Villeré Canal to launch an invasion of the west bank of the river. Jackson immediately understood the peril, because if the British were successful and captured Patterson’s guns, these arms could be turned to bombard the rear of his lines with disastrous effect.

  The Kentucky brigade commander, General John Thomas, had fallen too ill on the trip downriver to assume his duties; Brigadier General John Adair, his subordinate, would have to take his place. Actually, this might have been a good thing. Adair was an extremely knowledgeable and competent fighter, with the added benefit that he was good friends with Jackson, who trusted him implicitly. One of the first things Jackson asked Adair was for his opinion of the American fortifications.

  It was Saturday, January 7, 1815, and Jackson had spent most of the afternoon at his telescope high in his little aerie in the Macarty house. He could observe that the British in their encampment were as busy as a swarm of bees. Some appeared to be making scaling ladders, and he saw a great number of redcoats clustered about an immense object, apparently in the act of moving it, but whether it was a boat or piece of artillery he could not tell. One thing Jackson did sense, however, was that the following morning the British were going to come at him on both sides of the river. “Oh, there’s no doubt of it,” he said. “They mean business; they will attack at daybreak.”

  Jackson ordered General Adair to send across the river as reinforcements 400 of his Kentuckians, who must first march up to New Orleans to collect whatever weapons had been made available to them, then cross the river by boat, and then march back down the six or eight miles to the lines established by General Morgan and the Louisiana militia.

  They did not get off until nearly seven p.m., and when they reached the city it was found that there were only weapons enough for half of them—and those the mostly rusted and antiquated Spanish muskets. So about half of the Kentuckians
crossed the river to join Morgan’s defense and the others returned to Jackson’s lines. Jackson tried to consider everything he had done to prepare, and late in the afternoon he asked Adair to tour the line with him.

  They started at the river, where construction was still incomplete on the little redoubt out in front of Jackson’s line. Jackson had been skeptical of the idea to start with, not happy about leaving an outpost where it could be overrun just in front of his position and its three cannon possibly turned and used against him. But his engineers had persuaded Old Hickory that the redoubt was needed to enfilade the enemy flank, shooting straight down the length of the ditch if the British should get that far. It was manned by a company of regulars of the 44th and supported directly behind Jackson’s line by Captain Beale’s company of New Orleans lawyers, bankers, and merchants.

  This time, though, when Jackson came upon the small gunpost he studied it for a moment, then shook his head and complained to Adair, “That will give us trouble!”

  Moving down the line they reached Battery No. 1, on the levee road. This consisted of two brass twelve-pounders and a howitzer and was commanded by the cigar-chomping Captain Humphrey of the 44th. Any British column attempting to attack up the levee road would have to face a hail of iron from these considerable guns.

  Less than one hundred yards down the rampart, walking past the 430 regulars of the 7th Infantry, they came to Battery No. 2, a twenty-four-pounder served by the crew of the Carolina. And fifty yards beyond this was Battery No. 3, “the famous battery of the privateers,” containing two twenty-four-pounders.

  Just twenty yards farther, walking past part of Major Plauché’s battalion—289 men strong—was Battery No. 4, with the big thirty-two-pounder, manned by more of the Carolina’s crew.