by H. W. Brands
Yet he acceded to the lawmakers’ concerns on another count. As the British drew near, the New Orleans committee of safety reconsidered the earlier decision to shun Jean Laffite and the pirates of Barataria. No one in the city had more experience at arms than these soldiers of fortune. At the moment of crisis, prudence required overlooking past indiscretions.
Jackson had to be convinced. He doubted the Baratarians’ loyalty, which had never been to anything beyond their own self-interest. And he doubted even more their willingness to take orders. For Jackson, discipline remained the sine qua non of successful military operations. What pirate ever submitted to discipline?
The committee of safety pressed the issue. They visited Jackson’s headquarters and personally made the case for employing the pirates. Jackson had two ships in the river—the Louisiana and the Caroline—but these were undermanned and especially lacked trained gunners. Laffite’s men were the best gunners in the Caribbean. Surely Jackson could put them to use against the British.
Jackson took the committee’s point but still resisted. The Baratarians, he said, were under federal indictment. Some were already in custody. In what must have seemed a patent rationalization—coming from the one who had imposed martial law on the city—Jackson said he didn’t like to interfere in criminal prosecutions.
The committee thereupon sought out the local federal judge, Dominick Hall. They explained their case and Jackson’s last objection. Judge Hall devised a scheme for suspending prosecution for four months and releasing the pirates already in custody.
Jackson acceded, by now perhaps thankful for the excuse. The Baratarians manned the ships and applied their expertise to the terrestrial batteries as well.
Jean Laffite, too, was thankful, in a different way. “This was the turning point of my career and the best moment of my life,” he remembered, “when I decided once and for all to drive the English beasts from American soil.”
(Laffite had a rather fanciful recollection of the events leading to Jackson’s decision to accept the services of him and his men. “I could not waste any more time waiting for a chance that would put me face to face with General Jackson,” he wrote many years later. “With a few officers of my staff, I came across the General at the northeast corner of Saint Philippe and Royal Streets. I explained to him that my conduct had been marked with a loyalty and a patriotism unequaled during the thirty-eight years that had passed since the declaration of American independence. I challenged the General to a duel, in reply to the unfounded and punishable insults directed upon us. In spite of the respect I had for his uniform, I must say that the general’s intelligence seemed much inferior to mine. He refused to accept my challenge. I threatened to slap his face, but my eldest brother, Dominique Youx, intervened as a conciliator. Later the General received us in his office at 106 Royal Street.” At this point in Laffite’s story, Jackson saw the light and brought him aboard.)
By the last week of December the nature of the battle for New Orleans was coming clearly into view, even if the armies that would wage the battle were not. The clash at Villeré’s plantation ended with the British and American forces still in the field, still facing each other. Both sides pulled back a bit yet remained on the level, open plain that ran from Villeré’s to the city. Although the plain provided few places to hide, its very levelness inhibited observation. “Of the American army nothing whatever could be perceived, except a corps of observation, composed of five or six hundred mounted riflemen, which hovered along our front and watched our motions,” George Gleig wrote. “The town itself was completely hid; nor was it possible to see beyond the distance of a very few miles either in front or rear, so flat and unbroken was the face of the country.” Yet the British had other methods of gaining intelligence, namely spies and deserters, who apprised them of nearly everything that happened behind the American lines. “Nothing was kept a secret from us, except your numbers,” a British officer captured in the battle told his captors.
Under the gaze of Jackson’s riflemen, the British brought up the rest of the invasion force and built batteries for their field guns. “By the 25th, the whole of the troops were got on shore,” recalled Charles Forrest, a major of British infantry. “From the 28th to the 31st December all exertions were made to get up from the ships ten eighteen-pounders and four twenty-four pound carronades, with the necessary ammunition and stores.” British boats carried the guns as far along the canals from Lake Borgne as they could. From there they were “dragged by seamen with incredible labour,” Forrest explained.
Arriving with the troops and guns was the man who would lead the British attack. Sir Edward Pakenham was a brother-in-law of Wellington and had served with the famous duke in Spain. Pakenham’s division broke the center of the French line at Salamanca, causing Wellington to comment, “Pakenham might not be the brightest genius, but my partiality for him does not lead me astray when I tell you he is one of the best we have.” Even with this endorsement Pakenham wouldn’t have received the command at New Orleans if not for the death of General Ross at Baltimore. But the metaphorical winds of wars blew him to the van of the southern operation, and his arrival on Christmas Day—after his journey had been slowed by the actual winds of the Caribbean—raised the already buoyant hopes of his troops, who greeted him with a rousing artillery salute. Pakenham himself had every reason for confidence. His men had beaten Napoleon’s finest, and they could certainly beat the gaggle of Indian fighters, frontiersmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, blacks, pirates, and other outlaws that faced them. He carried in his kit bag a commission as governor of Louisiana, to be made public upon the victory. An earldom in England was hardly out of the question for one who would bring a third of North America under British rule.
Jackson’s preparations mirrored those of the British during this period. He constructed earthworks for his cannon and dug ditches and threw up parapets across the mile-wide plain that stretched from the Mississippi on his right to the woods and swamp on his left. The cannons would fire grape and canister shot at the British troops once the battle began in earnest, but till then the gunners contented themselves lobbing occasional rounds behind the British lines. The potshots were distracting but no more than that. “The distance rendered her fire uncertain and harmless,” British Major Forrest said of the American effort.
By the first day of the new year the guns on both sides were in position. Pakenham decided to raise the stakes. Arsène Latour, a French-born engineer in Jackson’s army, described the commencement of the artillery duel: “The enemy opened a very brisk fire from his three batteries, of which the left, established on the road, mounted two twelve-pounders; the center, eight eighteen-pounders and twenty-four-pound carronades; and that on the right towards the wood opposite our lines mounted eight pieces of cannon and carronades. A cloud of Congreve rockets accompanied the balls, and for fifteen minutes the fire was kept up with unexampled celerity.” The initial target of the British bombardment was the house where Jackson had his headquarters. The British gunners knew their business, as Latour recounted. “In less than ten minutes, upwards of one hundred balls, rockets, and shells struck the house and rendered it impossible to remain there. The general-in-chief and all his staff were in the apartments when the firing began, but though bricks, splinters of wood and furniture, rockets and balls were flying in all directions, not a single person was wounded.”
Pakenham might or might not have appreciated how close he came to decapitating the American command, but he soon knew he had got Jackson’s attention. Jackson ordered his own gunners to return fire, and a thunderous artillery battle commenced. The British objective was to blow holes in the American breastworks so that British foot soldiers might exploit their advantage in numbers and overwhelm Jackson’s defenses. The American objective was to silence the British guns and keep the breastworks intact. The British had reason to think they’d prevail. “Every advantage was on the side of the enemy,” Latour explained. “His batteries presented but a narrow front, and very
little elevation, on a spacious plain, the soil of which was from four to six feet below the level of our platforms. His gunners had for a target a line about one thousand yards long, the top of whose parapet was eight or nine feet higher than his platforms; whilst our batteries might be said to have only points to aim at, and our balls could not rebound on so soft a soil.”
Pakenham’s gunners, moreover, were battlefield-tested artillerists, while Jackson’s were an unlikely combination of Baratarian pirates and U.S. naval officers. The British were the better marksmen. “The cheeks of the embrasures of our batteries were formed of bales of cotton,” Latour wrote, “which the enemy’s balls struck and made fly in all directions. The rockets blew up two artillery caissons, in one of which were a hundred rounds.” The spectacular explosion delighted even the hardened veterans among the British, who stopped shooting long enough to give three cheers for His Majesty’s firepower. But the Americans refused to be dismayed. The British celebration was answered, Latour said, “by a general discharge of all the artillery of our lines.”
Despite their advantages, the British failed to dislodge the Americans, and after absorbing hundreds of rounds of incoming fire, Jackson’s men noted a lessening in the intensity of the British barrage. Pakenham was changing tactics. “At about ten o’clock the enemy ordered some platoons of sharp-shooters to penetrate into the woods on the left of our line, with a view to ascertain whether it could be turned,” Latour recalled. Several volleys from American muskets suggested it couldn’t and drove the British riflemen deeper into the woods. On this ground the Americans had the advantage. “Wellington’s heroes discovered that they were ill qualified to contend with us in woods, where they must fight knee deep in water and mud, and that the various kinds of laurel which abound in Louisiana, in the cypress swamps and prairies, were not intended to grace their brows.”
By noon the British attack was measurably weakening, and by three o’clock their guns had fallen silent. The British infantry retreated to their camps to await another opportunity. Jackson proudly summarized the engagement to Monroe: “Yesterday the enemy opened upon us a tremendous cannonade from several batteries which they had erected in the nights preceding. It was sustained by every corps under my command with a firmness which would have done honor to veterans. Too much praise cannot be bestowed on those who managed my artillery. . . . Our loss was inconsiderable, and certainly much inferior to that which the enemy must have sustained.” Jackson added, “The enemy still occupy their former position; and whether they will renew their attempt today or ever, I am not able to judge.”
But he could guess. Pakenham knew more about Jackson’s plans than Jackson knew about Pakenham’s, for the simple reason that refugees were sneaking out of New Orleans rather than in. But common sense indicated that once Pakenham had all his troops and guns in place, he would have little reason to delay and much reason not to, starting with the fact that Jackson could hope for reinforcements from upstream if the battle were postponed.
Jackson tried to keep the British off balance. “For two whole nights and days not a man had closed an eye, except such as were cool enough to sleep amidst showers of cannon-ball,” George Gleig wrote after the New Year’s artillery duel, adding that conditions behind the British lines didn’t improve during the next few days. The Americans continued to lob cannonballs and mortar shells onto the British positions, not only from the American front but from batteries across the river. Beyond this harassing bombardment, a practice peculiar to the Americans imposed a constant and unexpected burden on the British. Gleig had learned the military profession in Europe, where civilized nations practiced war as an art. Except when actually engaged in battle, he explained, opposing sides treated each other with respect. “Thus, whilst two European armies remain inactively facing each other, the outposts of neither are molested. . . . Nay, so far is this tacit good understanding carried, that I have myself seen French and English sentinels not more than twenty yards apart.” Military life was different west of the Atlantic. “The Americans entertained no such chivalric notions. An enemy was to them an enemy, whether alone or in the midst of five thousand companions, and they therefore counted the death of every individual as so much taken from the strength of the whole. In point of fact they no doubt reasoned correctly, but to us at least it appeared an ungenerous return to barbarity.” It also represented a ceaseless strain on British bodies and minds. “Whenever they could approach unperceived within proper distance of our watchfires, six or eight riflemen would fire amongst the party that sat round them, while one or two, stealing as close to each sentinel as a regard to their own safety would permit, acted the part of assassins rather than that of soldiers, and attempted to murder him in cold blood. For the officers likewise, when going their rounds, they constantly lay in wait, and thus, by a continued dropping fire, they not only wounded some of those against whom their aim was directed, but occasioned considerable anxiety and uneasiness throughout the line.”
Pakenham noticed the strain on his men and recognized that he must move forward soon. To stay in place risked the unraveling of his army. He conceived a plan to send a body of troops to the far side of the river, where the American defenses were far thinner. These troops would capture the American guns there and turn them on the American batteries on the near side, giving the signal for another frontal assault by artillery and infantry, which this time must succeed.
But crossing the river required transporting boats from Lake Borgne to the Mississippi. Luckily for Pakenham, he wasn’t the first to have had such an idea. The planters who owned the farms along the river had dug—that is, had their slaves dig—canals in various places across their properties. To extend one such waterway so that it connected the lake to the river was not a complicated task. Backbreaking, yes; but a soldier’s back in time of war—like a slave’s at all times—was made to be broken. Pakenham set his engineers and their troops to work. “Being divided into four companies, they laboured by turns, day and night, one party relieving another after a stated number of hours, in such order as that the work should never be entirely deserted,” Gleig explained. “The fatigue undergone during the prosecution of this attempt no words can sufficiently describe. Yet it was pursued without repining, and at length, by unremitting exertions, they succeeded in effecting their purpose by the 6th of January.”
At once the boats were readied, and the troops—a mix of infantry and marines, totaling some fourteen hundred—were chosen for the crossing. But ill luck plagued the endeavor. The same softness of soil that permitted the rapid excavation now inhibited the movement of the boats, as the just-moved dirt slumped back into the ditches whence it had come. The larger boats bottomed on the mud, blocking passage of the other vessels. Only enough boats to carry a quarter of the crossing force reached the riverbank, and these were hours behind schedule. They were supposed to cross during the night of January 7, that they might storm the American batteries on the far bank before dawn the next day. But midnight came and went, and the boats were nowhere near their goal.
Jackson discovered the British strategy about the time the canal diggers broke through to the Mississippi. A half mile separated the American and British lines, and though Jackson and his scouts had observed general activity on the British side, they couldn’t tell what that activity signified until some British prisoners revealed just enough to allow Jackson to piece the puzzle together. He acknowledged being impressed at the undertaking and the “infinite labor” it entailed. He considered trying to interdict the digging but concluded that an offensive operation against it was too risky.
This left him to decide how to reinforce the right bank against the British sortie. The prisoners didn’t know, or wouldn’t say, how strong the thrust across the river would be. Jackson had to parry the thrust, but to send more troops over than were absolutely necessary would weaken his main defenses on the left bank. He assigned the right bank to a combination of militia from Louisiana and Kentucky and hoped for the best.
&nb
sp; The prisoners similarly did not reveal when the British attack would occur. Jackson certainly would have liked to know, to make the final preparations for defense. For two weeks his men and the supporting slaves had worked feverishly, and they continued to labor around the clock. Jackson examined the results of their efforts several times daily. The ditches they had dug would slow an infantry advance. The wall—or berm, really—that they had built with the dirt from the ditches and with anything else that looked solid, including more cotton bales, afforded protection for his riflemen and musketeers. Jackson could think of little he’d left undone. When the British attacked, most of the redcoats would have to march straight up the plain toward the American entrenchments. At that point the question would come down to the nerve of the men. With enemy cannon fire raining down upon them, would they hold their ground against the famously relentless approach of the British infantry?
In the afternoon of the 7th it became evident that the enemy’s design was to attack,” Arsène Latour wrote. “Though at so great a distance we could not distinctly see what was passing in the enemy’s camp, we perceived that a great number of soldiers and sailors were at work, endeavouring to move something very unwieldy, which we concluded to be artillery. With the assistance of a telescope in the upper apartment of headquarters, we perceived the soldiers on Laronde’s plantations busy in making fascines, while others were working on pieces of wood, which we concluded must be scaling ladders. The picket guards near the wood had moreover been increased and stationed nearer each other.” The British activity intensified as the daylight diminished. “Shortly after night-fall we distinctly heard men at work in the enemy’s different batteries. The strokes of hammers gave ‘note of preparation’ and resounded even within our lines; and our outposts informed us that the enemy was re-establishing his batteries.”
