{332}
_British Occupation of Pensacola--Negotiations with Lafitte--Expedition
against Mobile--Capture of Pensacola--Defence of New Orleans--The
Battles before the City--Defeat of the British--Losses._
|Though Pensacola was a Spanish town, in Spanish territory, the British
forces used it as a station for fitting out expeditions against Mobile
and New Orleans. Here they gathered arms and munitions of war; here
their vessels found safe anchorage in a spacious harbor, where they were
afforded every facility for refitting; and here the savage allies were
equipped for war and murder. The British commander sent an embassy to
Jean Lafitte, at Barataria Bay, offering him a captain's commission,
together with a free pardon for all his gang, and grants of land to
be carved out of such territory as might be conquered from the United
States, on condition that he and his men would assist with their fleet
the expeditions then fitting out. The English commander also hinted
darkly at something which he called "the blessings of the British
constitution"--probably meaning the abundant bone and muscle of a
beef-eater--as an additional inducement {333}to the famous little
Frenchman. Lafitte was commonly called a pirate, but that was not
precisely his character. He was a receiver of stolen goods captured by
half-piratical privateers, which he smuggled into New Orleans.
But, pirate or no pirate, he seems to have been too shrewd for the
Englishman. He appeared to acquiesce till he obtained the terms in black
and white, and then despatched the letters to Governor Claiborne
of Louisiana, together with one in which he offered his services
in defending the coast against the British, on condition that the
proscription of himself and his adherents be terminated by an act of
oblivion. The Governor laid the letters before a council of military
and naval officers, who decided that they were forgeries and Lafitte a
scoundrel. Consequently an expedition under Commodore Patterson was
sent against him, by which his establishment was broken up, nine of his
vessels were seized, and many of his men made prisoners.
One morning in July, General Jackson was presented with a new English
musket, brought to his headquarters by a friendly Indian who had
received it from the Creeks at Appalachicola. This told an alarming
story, which the General at once communicated to Governor Claiborne
and the Secretary of War. Of the latter he asked permission to make a
{334}descent upon Pensacola. Before an answer was received, Jackson
was joined by new levies of troops from Tennessee, which he hurried to
Mobile.
On Mobile Point, commanding the entrance to the bay, stood a ruinous
earthwork known as Fort Bowyer. Major William Lawrence, with a garrison
of one hundred and sixty men, took possession of this, and proceeded
to put it in shape for defence. On the 12th of September, the British
landed a detachment of marines and six hundred Indians on the peninsula
of which Mobile Point is the extremity, and a few hours later four
war-vessels, under Captain Percy, appeared at the entrance of the bay.
Two or three days were passed in feeble demonstrations on the land side,
and attempts to sound the channel; but on the afternoon of the 15th the
fleet sailed up in line, dropped anchor in the channel, and opened the
battle. For an hour the firing was incessant; it ceased for a moment
when the colors of the flag-ship _Hermes_ were shot away; but was soon
renewed, when a chance shot cut the cable of the _Hermes_, the current
swung her bow-on to the fort, and for twenty minutes she was raked
mercilessly. She drifted down the channel and ran aground, when Captain
Percy abandoned her and set her on fire. Another vessel was crippled and
driven off, and the other two then withdrew.
{335}The simultaneous assaults of the marines and Indians had been met
and repelled with a few discharges of grape. In this action the garrison
lost four men killed and four wounded; the British official report
acknowledged a loss of thirty-two killed and forty wounded.
Early in November, Jackson, with three thousand men, marched on
Pensacola, where he proposed to garrison the forts till the Spanish
authorities were able to maintain for themselves the neutrality of the
port. This proposition being rejected by the Spanish Governor, Jackson's
men charged into the town and captured a battery, and took possession.
That night Fort Barrancas, commanding the entrance to the harbor, was
blown up, and the British vessels sailed away.
Hurrying back to Mobile, where he feared a second attack, Jackson
learned of the revelations of Lafitte and was urged to go to the defence
of New Orleans. He arrived in that city on the 2d of December, was
enthusiastically welcomed, and at once set to work to prepare it for
defence. He called out the Louisiana militia, appealed to the free
negroes, released and enrolled convicts whose terms were within two
months of expiration, accepted the services of Lafitte and his men,
assigning them to duty as artillerists, and ordered Coffee with his two
{336}thousand men to join him from Mobile. While looking anxiously for
new levies from Kentucky and Tennessee, who were to come by way of the
river, he fortified the city, and proclaimed martial law.
On the 10th of December the British fleet entered Lake Borgne, where on
the 14th it defeated and captured the American gunboats. On the 23d a
body of two thousand four hundred British troops reached the bank of
the Mississippi nine miles below New Orleans, and with two thousand one
hundred Jackson went down to meet them.
New Orleans was the largest prize which had been contended for in this
war. It was a city of twenty thousand inhabitants; and a hundred and
fifty thousand bales of cotton, worth two shillings a pound, were stored
there. But it was not so much its immediate pecuniary value that tempted
the enemy, as the commercial and strategical importance of its position,
for they expected not only to capture but to hold it permanently.
Lieutenant Gleig, author of "The Subaltern," who was connected with the
expedition, after describing the Mississippi and its tributaries, wrote:
"Whatever nation, therefore, chances to possess this place, possesses
in reality the command of a greater extent of country than is included
within the boundary line of the whole United States," and the London
_Times_, an{337}nouncing that all the disposable shipping had been
sent from Bermuda, to the Mississippi, added that, "most active measures
are pursuing for detaching from the dominion of the enemy an important
part of his territory."
Wellington's veterans, fresh from their victories in the Spanish
peninsula, were now before the city, and the inhabitants, knowing how
hasty had been the preparations for defence, trembled for its safety.
The expectation was, that, if captured, it would at once be sacked.
It was late in the day when Jackson moved to the attack. He sent Coffee
and his Tennesseeans to gain the right flank and rear of the enemy,
while the rest of his forces were to deploy across the narrow strip of
land between the river and a morass, and attack in front. The schooner
_Carolina_ was ordered to move down to a point opposite the British
left, and enfilade the position; her first discharge to be the signal
for the land attack. It was half-past seven o'clock when she opened the
battle with a broadside that tore through the British camp and swept
down a large number of men. The moon was young and obscured by clouds,
so that there was almost absolute darkness, except when the flashes
of the guns momentarily lighted up one or another part of the field.
{338}The two armies soon became intermingled, and, as one of the
participants wrote, "no man could tell what was going forward in any
quarter, except where he himself chanced immediately to stand; no one
part of the line could bring assistance to another, because in truth
no line existed." The fighting was mostly hand-to-hand; few of the
Americans had bayonets, but many carried long knives, and the most
ghastly wounds were given and received. Officers on either side would
gather little companies of men and go out into the darkness to find
the enemy; but when they had come in contact with an armed party like
themselves, it was often impossible to say whether they were friends or
foes.
After three hours of this bloody work, the Americans withdrew to works
four miles from the city. They had lost twenty-four killed, one hundred
and fifteen wounded, and seventy-four missing. General Keane's
official report made the British loss forty-six killed, one hundred and
sixty-seven wounded, and sixty-four missing. Lieutenant Gleig, in his
"Narrative," says, "Not less than five hundred men had fallen, many of
whom were our finest soldiers and best officers; and yet we could not
but consider ourselves fortunate in escaping from the toils, even at the
expense of so great a sacrifice." A journal found upon a British officer
{339}who was killed in the battle of January 8th, puts the loss in this
action at "two hundred and twenty-four killed, and an immense number
wounded."
Heavy reënforcements of British troops soon arrived, and with
them Generals Sir Edward Pakenham and Samuel Gibbs. Pakenham, a
brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, had won considerable
distinction in the Peninsular War. He found the army before New Orleans
in a pitiful plight. It was encamped on a strip of low and level land,
on one side a broad river where it had no vessels, and on the other
an almost impassable morass. In front were fortifications that were
continually being strengthened, and of the enemy behind them almost
nothing was known; while two armed vessels kept up day and night an
enfilading fire. With all this, alternate rain and frost left them
scarcely a comfortable hour.
Pakenham's first movement was to bring heavy guns and a furnace across
the peninsula by night, and plant them on the levee; from which on the
morning of the 27th he opened a fire with hot shot, and in half an hour
had driven the _Louisiana_ up stream and set the _Carolina_ on fire, so
that she was abandoned and blew up.
On the 28th he made a reconnoissance in force. As the left wing
approached the American lines, a {340}group of buildings which Jackson's
men had filled with combustibles was fired by a hot shot from one of
his guns, and amid the heat and smoke the British saw before them an
impassable ditch, from behind which a few pieces of artillery, handled
with the utmost skill, poured destruction through their ranks. The right
wing found the left of Jackson's position weak, effected a lodgment
within the lines, and might perhaps have changed the fortunes of the
campaign, had not its leader been instructed that this was to be a
reconnoissance, not a battle.
Pakenham now resolved upon regular siege operations, and brought thirty
guns from the fleet, which in the night of the 31st he mounted within
three hundred yards of the American lines. His troops were encamped in
the midst of sugar plantations, and a considerable portion of his new
ramparts was formed of hogsheads of sugar, set on end.
When day dawned, and the Americans saw thirty guns frowning down upon
them from high bastions that had risen as if by magic in the darkness,
the sight was rather appalling; but as soon as fire was opened upon
these apparently formidable works, it was seen that the balls passed
right through the hogsheads of sugar, and the whole fabric began to
crumble away. There was also a vulnerable element in Jackson's works;
for he had used cotton {341}bales as his enemy used sugar, and though
the cotton resisted the passage of a ball, it was easily set on fire,
and the bales knocked out of position.
Commodore Patterson had erected a battery on the opposite bank of the
Mississippi, to rake the ground held by the British, who at the same
time had erected one on the levee to oppose it. For an hour these guns
were all blazing at once; and when the firing ceased and the smoke
rolled away, it was found that the British works had been completely
ruined, and seventy of their men killed or wounded; the American works
were not seriously damaged, but they had lost thirty-four men.
Jackson made haste to throw away his cotton bales, supply their place
with earth, and construct a second line of works a mile and a half in
the rear, and for a week nervously awaited the next move of the enemy.
In that week he was joined by nearly three thousand Kentucky and
Louisiana militia; but as they were in rags and had scarcely a firelock
among them, they could hardly be considered a reënforcement. The British
were reenforced by two regiments under General John Lambert.
Pakenham's final plan was to send a heavy force across the river to
capture Patterson's batteries and turn them upon Jackson's lines, and
at the same time push forward the remainder of his force to as{342}sault
those lines in front, the advance guard to fill the ditch with fascines
and plant scaling-ladders against the ramparts. Preparatory to this, it
was necessary to dig a canal across the isthmus, to drag boats through
from Lake Borgne to the Mississippi, and this occupied his troops nearly
six days.
On Saturday, January 7th, Jackson stood upon the tallest building within
his lines, and through a large spy-glass which a planter had mounted
for him, saw the red-coats making fascines by binding up sheaves of
sugar-cane, and constructing ladders. At the same time, Pakenham was
surveying the American works from the top of a pine-tree.
The British general intended to make an attack on both sides of the
river simultaneously, before daylight on the 8th. But there was great
difficulty in navigating the canal, the sides of which had caved in;
only enough boats were brought through to carry over five hundred
troops, instead of fourteen hundred, and these were delayed several
hours. A detachment under Colonel Thornton embarked in them, but were
swept down by the current and reached the western shore far below the
intended landing-place.
Meanwhile the sun had risen, the fog was rolling away, Pakenham was
impatient, and before Thornton could get near his enemy he saw the
signal {343}rocket which announced the attack. The Americans understood
the signal quite as well as he did, and were ready to meet the shock.
One thirty-two pounder was loaded to the muzzle with musket-balls. A
deserter had told the British commander that the weak spot in Jackson's
line was the extreme left; true enough when he said it, but now that
spot was strengthened by two thousand Tennessee and Kentucky riflemen.
The heaviest attack was accordingly made at this point, a column of
three thousand men, under General Gibbs, moving against it. They were
to be preceded by an Irish regiment bearing the fascines and ladders.
At the same time, a column of one thousand moved along the river road,
under the cross-fire from Patterson's battery, to attack Jackson's
right. These were to be preceded by a West India black regiment with the
necessary fascines and ladders. Midway between stood nearly a thousand
Highlanders, under General Keane, ready to support either column, as
circumstances might require. The British had also a battery of six
eighteen-pounders; and, drawn up behind all, a considerable reserve.
The battle was what Bunker Hill would have been if the Americans had had
stronger works and plenty of ammunition. The beautiful British columns
moved forward only to be mowed down. When {344}the thirty-two pounder
discharged its musket-balls, the head of one column melted away before
it, two hundred men being disabled. Both the Irish and the Negro
regiment failed in their duty, so that when the main columns arrived at
the ditch they had no means of crossing, and the terrible blunder had to
be remedied under a continuous and withering fire. The ranks were badly
broken. Pakenham, trying to re-form them, was killed, falling into the
arms of Captain McDougall, the same officer who had caught General Ross
when he fell at North Point. General Gibbs was wounded mortally; General
Keane seriously. Colonel Dale fell at the head of the Highland regiment,
which was almost entirely destroyed. It went into the fight with over
nine hundred men, and came out with one hundred and forty. A major and a
lieutenant, with twenty men, crossed the ditch before the American left,
and the two officers mounted the breastwork. The major was instantly
riddled with bullets; the lieutenant demanded the swords of two officers
who confronted him, and was told to look behind him. He turned, and
saw, as he expressed it, that the men he supposed to be following "had
vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up."
On the American right, the British carried a small outwork; but the
guns of the main line were turned {345}upon it and cleared it. Of this
column, only three men--a colonel, a major, and a captain--reached the
breastwork, and as they mounted they were all shot and tumbled into the
ditch together.
The action lasted but twenty-five minutes. Seven hundred of the British
were killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred prisoners. The
Americans lost four killed and thirteen wounded; in the entire campaign,
three hundred and thirty-three.
The force under Thornton, on the western bank of the river, carried the
American works, where but brief resistance was made, and were pursuing
the retreating militia, when news of the disaster on the other bank was
brought to Thornton, together with an order to return. He had lost a
hundred men, killed or wounded, and inflicted a loss of but six.
The 9th was spent, under an armistice, in burying the dead and caring
for the wounded. General Lambert then determined to withdraw to the
shipping and abandon the enterprise, but was ten days about it, during
which time his troops were annoyed by incessant cannonading by day
and "hunting parties" by night. The British fleet had entered the
Mississippi at its mouth, and from the 10th to the 17th bombarded Fort
St. Philip, seventy-five miles below New Orleans, but effected nothing,
and on the 18th withdrew. {346}