Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans

by Brian Kilmeade

  —Andrew Jackson

  Andrew Jackson faced new challenges as the winter of 1813–14 approached. In the back of his mind was the worry about a British advance on New Orleans (in fact, a British admiral had quietly proposed such a move a full year earlier1), but much more immediate concerns occupied Jackson’s attention.

  His Volunteers had little food and no feed for their horses. With expected supply shipments delayed, Jackson saw that his starving troops were growing more restless by the day. He realized that, despite the victory at Talladega less than a month before, his army was about to come apart at the seams—and if his Volunteers deserted, he would be able to fight neither Indians nor the British. After weeks of cajoling, Jackson finally had to threaten his men to restore order.

  When one brigade of frustrated Volunteers prepared to head for home in early December, Jackson showed his resolve. Facing the desertion of troops, he planted his mount in their path. Because his left arm was still in a sling, he rested his musket on the horse’s neck.

  Looking down the barrel at the mutinous men, he warned, “You say you will march. I say by the Eternal God you shall not march while a cartridge can sound fire!”2

  General Coffee and Major John Reid took up positions on either side of Jackson. No one moved for long minutes—until several loyal companies broke ranks and assembled behind the trio. Out of fear and respect for General Jackson, a few of the rebels moved in the direction of the camp. Others followed, and no one headed back to Tennessee that day.

  Jackson also faced a deadline. The first Volunteers had enlisted for one year and expected to be discharged from service on December 10. Many lacked the clothing necessary for a winter campaign, and their farms and families awaited their return. “If they do not get home soon,” one officer told Jackson, “there are many of them who will be literally ruined.”3

  Their commander sympathized with their plight, but he saw the enlistment period differently. Because they had been dismissed for the summer, these soldiers, Jackson reasoned, had yet to serve twelve months. And their task remained unfinished, with the dangerous Red Stick Creeks still at large.

  Jackson was again forced to face down his own men. He told them they could depart only “by passing over [my] body.”4 He tried to shame them into remaining, saying they were about to become “the tarnishers of their own fame” as they went into “inglorious retirement.”5 He said he expected reinforcements would soon arrive—and some did. But several of those regiments were also nearing the end of their enlistments, on January 1 and January 14, 1814. Finally, realizing there was little he could do to salvage the campaign, Jackson released the majority of his men without extending their obligations.

  Meanwhile, Jackson’s health deteriorated. Year’s end found him still unable to maneuver his left arm into the sleeve of his coat unassisted. His army was dwindling by the day. About all he could do was write home to Tennessee.

  At “1/2 past 11 o’clock at night,” on December 29, 1813, he opened his heart to his wife, Rachel. He bemoaned “the shameful desertion from their posts of the Volunteer infantry . . . and the apathy displayed in the interior of the state by the fireside patriots.” But his letter offered his wife assurances. “Be not uneasy . . . if I have trials, and perils, [God] has fortified me with fortitude to do my duty under every circumstance.”6 In the next hour, he wrote harder words to his old friend Governor Willie Blount, reminding him that the fight had to be carried on to protect the people from the Creeks. The Indians needed to be “exterminated or conquered,” said Jackson, and he challenged the governor to act. “Are you, my dear friend, sitting with your arms folded?”

  Jackson’s letter was an insistent demand for help. “Arouse from your lethargy,” he wrote. “Give me a force for 6 months in whose term of service there is no doubt . . . and all may be safe. Withhold it, and all is lost.”7

  Before Blount could react, still more enlistments ended and the army encamped with Jackson amounted to just 130 able-bodied soldiers. And the dangers had grown: Jackson’s spies brought word that British troops had landed at Pensacola. This could mean only one thing: as long expected, the enemy had to be preparing to assault the Gulf Coast—and, in particular, its most important city, New Orleans. Jackson knew he must, somehow, keep his army together. He must prevail against this first foe—and be ready for the next.

  Meanwhile, Red Eagle’s fame continued to grow. On December 23, with Jackson struggling to keep his army together, Weatherford confronted a force of Mississippi militiamen. Again outnumbered, the Red Sticks fled and Red Eagle, riding his prized gray, Arrow, took the only avenue of escape he saw. Racing along a high bluff overlooking the Alabama River, he pointed the horse toward the precipice and drove his spurs into Arrow’s flanks.

  From a height of roughly fifteen feet, both rider and horse took flight. They seemed to float in midair before plunging into the water. The astonished Mississippi militiamen watched: neither man nor animal was visible, entirely submerged. Then Weatherford surfaced, still astride his mount. With one hand, he grasped the horse’s mane; with the other, he held his gun aloft.

  The troops unleashed musket volleys as Arrow swam for the opposite bank but, despite the hail of lead, man and beast reached the shore. Safely out of range, Red Eagle dismounted and inspected his steed for wounds. Finding none, he rode off.8

  The Creek chief survived to fight another day. As for Andrew Jackson, he could only hope that when that day came, the two of them would finally look each other in the eye across the line of battle.

  Battle Preparations

  Early in the new year, fresh recruits finally arrived from Nashville. Although the 850 men had little or no military experience, Jackson wasted no time. He ordered a march deep into enemy territory.

  The new force met the enemy, fighting skirmishes with Red Eagle’s braves at two Red Stick villages late in January 1814. Though he and his men managed to prevail, the battles were hard fought, and Jackson himself was nearly killed when he rode directly into the fighting. “In the midst of showers of balls, of which he seemed unmindful,” one officer recalled, “he . . . [rallied] the alarmed, halting them in their flight, forming his columns, and inspiriting them by his example.”9

  After that near-debacle, Jackson pulled back to drill his inexperienced men. His army continued to grow, and not just with fresh recruits from Tennessee. Jackson’s reputation was beginning to travel farther afield, and, for the first time, U.S. Army regulars were put under his command in addition to the Volunteers, raising the total troops in Jackson’s army to more than 3,500 men.

  The Battle of Horseshoe Bend

  Before long, spies reported that William Weatherford and a thousand warriors waited almost a hundred miles away in a village overlooking the Tallapoosa River. Jackson was determined to make this the Creeks’ last stand. This enemy posed a dual danger: they were a threat to frontier life, and they had chosen to ally themselves with the nation’s larger enemy, Great Britain. The British were known to be providing the Creeks with supplies—a few months before, American militiamen had intercepted the Creeks with wagonloads of supplies offloaded from the British at Pensacola.

  Jackson’s scouts—among them, Davy Crockett—informed him that the Indians were camped at a place called Horseshoe Bend. The enemy used a great U-shaped curve in the river as a moat to protect them on three sides. The Creek warriors, together with several hundred women and children, inhabited a cluster of huts at the southern end of the hundred-acre peninsula. A narrow neck to the north provided the only land entry, across which the Red Sticks had constructed a breastwork. Built of large timbers and earth, this fortress wall was 8 feet tall and 350 yards wide. It was lined with portholes through which the Indians could shoot at attackers.

  General Jackson was impressed. “Nature furnishes few situations as eligible for defense,” he reported to Governor Blount, “and barbarians have never rendered one more secure by art.”10 Even
though his men outnumbered the Creeks, conquering this fort would be no easy task.

  Despite Jackson’s inexperience with military strategy, he was undaunted. After all, he had attributes that couldn’t be taught: unrivaled courage, natural leadership, and—he would soon discover—uncanny battlefield instincts. Working with his advisers, he devised a plan.

  At first light on March 27, 1814, General John Coffee’s cavalry headed out with a band of Cherokees and friendly Creeks. Per Jackson’s orders, they were to take positions south of the enemy village along the bend of the Tallapoosa on the opposite bank. From there they could shoot any Red Sticks attempting to escape Jackson and his men.

  Meanwhile Jackson marched the rest of his army directly toward the breastwork. They halted, remaining at the ready while artillerymen set their two cannons. At 10:30 a.m., with word that Coffee and his men were in place, the cannoneers fired.

  The cannonballs did little damage, bouncing away or thudding harmlessly into the sturdy breastwork. Any Red Stick who showed himself was quickly the target of heavy musket fire from Jackson’s line, but, remaining behind their earthworks, the Creeks mocked their attackers with war whoops.

  At the other end of the peninsula, a different attack had begun. When Jackson’s gunners started firing on the fort, some of the Indians in Coffee’s command charged the river. Under fire, they plunged into the water, swam across the river, and seized their enemies’ canoes on the opposite bank.11 After paddling back in stolen vessels, they ferried two hundred Indians and thirty Tennessee militiamen to the Creek side and began to fight their way toward the Red Stick village, about half a mile away from where Jackson’s men were fighting. They soon set the huts aflame and marched on to join Jackson in attacking the Indian fort.

  When Jackson saw the billowing smoke rising from the village, he ordered his men to charge. He’d prepared his troops for this moment: “In the hour of battle,” Jackson’s general orders from three days earlier read, “you must be cool and collected. When your officer orders you to fire, you must execute the command with deliberateness and aim. Let every shot tell.”12

  His men did as ordered and, despite a storm of enemy bullets and arrows, the first attackers soon reached the ramparts. There they fought muzzle to muzzle, the Tennesseans and Indians shooting point-blank at one another through the portholes.

  The first man to scale the wall and go over the top, Major Lemuel Montgomery, collapsed onto the breastwork, lifeless, shot through the head. A platoon leader named Sam Houston next led the charge, brandishing his sword. A Red Stick arrow penetrated his upper thigh, but Houston didn’t fall. He leapt to the ground inside the fort, his uniformed men close behind.

  Overwhelmed by this breach of their trusted wall, Red Stick defenders retreated into nearby brush and woods. They fired on the invaders, but the attackers had every advantage—more men, more guns, the momentum of the battle. Even so, the Indians continued to fight.

  So did Sam Houston. At his order, another officer withdrew the barbed arrow from Houston’s left thigh, opening a gaping wound. When Jackson called to men to attack the Creeks holding a nearby redoubt, Houston picked up a musket and led the charge. This time he took two musket balls, one entering his right arm, the other his right shoulder.

  The battle raged on, with Jackson’s men clearly winning the day. Even so, the outnumbered Indians refused his offer of surrender in the early afternoon, firing upon Jackson’s messenger and his interpreter, wounding one of them. The Creeks preferred a fight to surrender, and the battle went on. “The carnage was dreadful,” Jackson would write to his wife.13

  A few Red Sticks would escape in the night, but the morning body count totaled 557 Indian corpses. Many more Creeks had died trying to escape; the Tallapoosa River, dyed red with human blood, had carried away an estimated 300 braves. On Jackson’s side, just 43 soldiers lost their lives, while his Indian allies lost 23.

  Red Eagle no longer commanded a viable fighting force and, by mid-April, most of the other Creek chiefs had presented themselves at Jackson’s camp under flags of truce. They accepted that they were not in a position to dictate peace terms. But General Jackson was, and, before negotiations could begin, he made one simple demand: He wanted the man behind the Fort Mims massacre. Only when William Weatherford was in his hands could the Creek War be ended.

  A few days later, a lone Indian arrived in Jackson’s camp. The stranger had a freshly shot deer tied across the rump of his horse; he was directed to the general’s tent and rode up just as Jackson was emerging.

  “General Jackson?”

  Jackson looked up in surprise at the man riding the handsome gray horse. Bare to the waist, the light-skinned Indian wore buckskin breeches and moccasins.

  His next statement was still more surprising. “I am Bill Weatherford.”

  More than anything else, his desire to avenge Fort Mims had driven Jackson over the preceding months. Now the man responsible for the massacre stood unarmed before him.

  His first response was anger at Weatherford’s nerve. “How dare you show yourself at my tent after having murdered the women and children at Fort Mims!” he exclaimed.

  His second response was puzzlement. Had Jackson’s men captured the Indian leader, the general would no doubt have ordered his speedy execution. It had never occurred to him that Weatherford might surrender. Now Jackson had to decide what to do with him.

  “I had directed that you should be brought to me confined; had you appeared in this way, I should have known how to treat you,” he told Weatherford.

  “I am in your power,” the man replied. “Do with me as you please. I am a soldier. I have done to the white people all the harm I could; I have fought them, and fought them bravely: if I had an army, I would yet fight, and contend to the last: but I have none; my people are all gone. I can now do no more than weep over the misfortune of my nation.”14

  To the surprise of his men, Old Hickory did not order Weatherford’s imprisonment or execution. Instead, Jackson offered Red Eagle a deal: He would grant him his life and liberty if he would serve as a peacemaker to the Creeks who were still fighting. If he chose to fight again, “his life should pay the forfeit of his crimes.” If he chose peace? “[You will] be protected.”15

  Weatherford took the deal, telling Jackson that “those who would still hold out can be influenced only by a mean spirit of revenge; and to this they must not, and shall not sacrifice the last remnant of their country. You have told us where we might go, and be safe. This is a good talk, and my nation ought to listen to it.”16

  The man’s manner and words left a deep impression on Major Reid. Weatherford, he wrote, “possessed all the manliness of sentiment—all the heroism of soul, all the comprehension of intellect calculated to make an able commander. . . . His looks and gestures—the modesty and yet the firmness that were in them.”17

  Unlikely as it might seem, Andrew Jackson recognized a kindred spirit “as high-toned and fearless as any man he had met with.”18 Here was a man who understood the rules of war, a man who knew the time had passed for bloodshed between the Creeks and the settlers. And he could help assure the peace.

  With the U.S. victory at Horseshoe Bend, the Creek War was effectively over. The Creeks recognized that their only choice was to bargain, and, with the help of Red Eagle, Jackson negotiated the Treaty of Fort Jackson. On August 9, 1814, the Creek chiefs signed it, agreeing to give the United States—and the man they called Sharp Knife—more than twenty-two million acres of land. American settlers were now safe and had room to expand.

  Red Eagle had helped make the case for peace, having retired from making war. As for Jackson, even with an Indian treaty in hand, he had no such luxury. He was already hearing the sound of British footsteps moving toward New Orleans.

  Major General Jackson

  Word of Jackson’s battlefield success reached the War Department.

  This man Jacks
on, whom they had mistrusted as a stubborn and crude westerner, was outperforming Washington’s military strategists and its aging generals.

  His troops both loved and feared him. To everyone’s surprise, he had made an effective fighting force out of volunteer militiamen. He knew when to be tough, and he knew when to temper that toughness with kindness. He was fearless in battle, but not reckless. In fact, he balanced his courage with great caution and surprising patience for gathering intelligence and listening to the advice of others. He knew when to stand firm on his convictions but wasn’t blind to the possibility of compromise. Finally, and most important, he possessed a natural instinct for military strategy that made up for his lack of formal training.

  Even Secretary of War John Armstrong, whose orders Jackson had quarreled with in Natchez, recognized Jackson’s potential. “Something ought to be done for General Jackson,” he wrote to President Madison after news of the triumph at Horseshoe Bend elated the nation’s capital, where politicians were weary of a war that was draining the treasury, brought too few victories to cheer, and had gone on far longer than expected.19 Something would be done for Jackson and, on June 18, 1814, militia general Jackson was promoted to the rank of major general of the regular U.S. Army, a larger and more powerful command.

  Jackson’s rise to national prominence could not have come at a better time. After two decades spent fighting France, the British had forced Napoleon to abdicate in April. That meant the Royal Navy and the immense army of the victorious Duke of Wellington could be sent to engage in the fight in North America. An invading force was already cruising the Mid-Atlantic coast, worrying President Madison and his cabinet. What would unfold elsewhere wasn’t clear—but, with Jackson in command of the Seventh Military District, which encompassed Louisiana, Tennessee, and all of the Mississippi Territory, it became Jackson’s job to ponder what might happen in his region.