probable that they would have taken it that evening. But at nightfall
upwards of two thousand Americans were between them and the city.
Jackson was on the American right, near the river, with the regulars and
the Louisiana contingent. Coffee, with his Tennesseans and the
Mississippi horsemen, was on the left, next the cypress swamp. Carroll's
brigade and the city militia were left to guard New Orleans on the
north. The Carolina had crept down the river opposite the enemy's
position, and at half past seven one of her guns gave the signal for
attack.
What followed, in the fog and darkness, is not clearly known. The
British were surprised; but British soldiers are proverbially hard to
drive from their own position. The Americans had the advantage of making
the attack; but they were nearly all raw troops. Each side was confused
and uncertain of its own and the enemy's position. Coffee, on the left,
drove the British back towards the river, where they were protected by
an old levee, while the new levee on the bank shielded them from the
Louisiana's fire. On the right, the Americans were repulsed.
Reinforcements reached the British army during the action. At half past
nine the attack ceased. The enemy lost two hundred and sixty-seven
killed, wounded, and missing; the Americans, two hundred and thirteen.
The night attack, however, strengthened the Americans. The enemy,
overrating Jackson's force, became too cautious to advance at once, but
waited until the entire army should be landed. The Americans gained time
to build defenses.
Jackson chose a line two miles above the battlefield, marked by a
shallow canal or ditch which crossed the plain at its narrowest point,
from the swamp to the river. Behind the ditch he threw up a parapet. In
some places cotton bales were used, for the soil was but three feet
deep; at that depth one found water, as indeed one found water almost
everywhere,--in the foggy air, in the bayous, the river, the swamps, of
that low land about New Orleans. In a few days Jackson's arrangements
for defence were completed. Fifteen guns were disposed at intervals
along the line, some of them manned by Lafitte and his buccaneers. The
whole force numbered about three thousand, and the Kentuckians, though
not all armed, were used as a reserve. On the river the Louisiana and
the Carolina gave the enemy much trouble.
The British army, when completely disembarked, seemed to justify the
Duke of Wellington's confidence that it could rout any American army he
ever heard of. Seven thousand trained British soldiers, seamen, and
marines, and a thousand West Indian blacks, were assembled at Villere's
plantation, with from twenty-five to thirty guns. There were regiments
which had helped Wellington to win Talavera, Salamanca, and Vitoria, and
within a few short months some of these same regiments were to stand at
Waterloo in that thin red line which Ney and Napoleon's guard could
never break. Their general, Pakenham, Wellington's brother-in-law, was a
distinguished pupil of his illustrious kinsman. Could frontiersmen who
had never fought together before, who had never seen the face of a
civilized foe, withstand the conquerors of Napoleon? But two branches of
the same stubborn race were represented on that little watery plain. The
soldiers trained to serve the strongest will in the Old World were face
to face with the rough and ready yeomanry embattled for defence by the
one man of the New World whose soul had most of iron in it. It was
Salamanca against Tohopeka, discipline against individual alertness, the
Briton of the little Isle against the Briton of the wastes and wilds.
But there was one great difference. Wellington, "the Iron Duke," was not
there; "Old Hickory" was everywhere along the American lines. A grave
and moderate historian, comparing the defense of New Orleans with the
defence of Washington, finds the two situations not unlike. "The
principal difference," he remarks, "was that Jackson commanded."
Pakenham's first concern was to get rid of the Carolina and the
Louisiana. Heavy guns were with great labor hauled from the fleet, and
on December 27 the Carolina's crew were forced to abandon her, and the
Louisiana was with difficulty got out of range; but meanwhile Commodore
Patterson had mounted a battery across the river which in a measure made
up for the ships. On the 28th, Pakenham advanced with his whole army,
but retired, without making any assault, to await the result of an
artillery duel. This was fought on New Year's day, 1815. The British
used at least twenty-four guns, throwing some three hundred and fifty
pounds of metal; the Americans, fifteen guns, throwing two hundred and
twenty-four pounds. On both sides novel defences were employed,--cotton
bales by the Americans, barrels of sugar by the British. The bales
quickly caught fire, and from that time were discarded; the barrels
proved as useless as if they had been empty. The result of the action
would have been utterly surprising but for the discovery already made in
Canada that Americans were better marksmen than British regulars. Three
American guns were damaged; every one of the British batteries was
silenced and abandoned. The American loss was thirty-four killed and
wounded; the British, somewhat heavier.
Pakenham waited a week for General Lambert to come up with two of his
regiments, and then made his supreme effort. His plan was to advance on
both sides of the river. During the night of January 7, Colonel
Thornton, with 1200 men, was thrown across to the left bank, where
General David Morgan had 450 Louisiana militia, reinforced at the last
moment by four hundred Kentuckians. Both British divisions were to
attack before dawn. But the dawn came before Thornton was ready. He was,
however, successful in his part of the programme. Morgan was driven
back, his guns taken, and the British on the west bank passed up the
river a mile beyond Jackson's line. Jackson never forgave the
Kentuckians, although military critics incline to think they did all
that should have been expected.
But on the east bank it was a different story. At six o'clock the main
body of the British rushed upon the American lines. General Gibbs, with
2200, sought to pierce the defenses near the swamp. General Keane led
1200 along the river bank. General Lambert, with the reserve, brought up
the rear. The whole force engaged was over 5000. Gibbs first came under
the American fire. The head of his division melted before it. Gibbs
himself fell, mortally wounded. Pakenham, dashing forward to rally the
column, was killed three hundred yards from the lines. Keane, on the
British left, was wounded and carried from the field. Nowhere did the
enemy pierce or break the line of defense. A brave major did indeed
cross the ditch and lift his head above the breastworks; but he lived
only long enough to send back word that he died on the parapet like an
English soldier. In truth, Pakenham's assault was a desperate venture,
such as British commanders, relying on the valor of their men, have been
too often led to make. At eight o'clock Jackson walked from end to end
of his works, and not a British soldier was anywhere to be seen in an
attitude of offence. The smoke of the artillery, clearing, discovered
the enemy far distant, in full retreat to his camp, and the battlefield
littered with piles of dead and wounded. "I saw," said Jackson, "more
than five hundred Britons emerging from the heaps of their dead
comrades, all over the plain, rising up, and still more distinctly
visible as the field became clearer, coming forward and surrendering to
our soldiers."
Here was revenge, indeed, for the sufferings of little Andy in the
Waxhaws, for the sabre cut on his head, for his brothers, for his
mother. But it is not known that any low word of vengeance passed his
lips at the awful sight before him. The British dead were seven hundred,
their wounded twice as many, and five hundred were taken. In the
American lines on that side of the river eight were killed and thirteen
wounded. Such a victory, so cheaply bought, is not paralleled in the
warfare of civilized men. Lambert, succeeding Pakenham, recalled
Thornton and gave up the important advantage the British won on the
western bank. For ten days the armies lay as they were, and then the
enemy withdrew as he had come. A few days later, Fort Bowyer, on Mobile
Point, was taken, and then the fighting ceased.
During the closing weeks of January, by the slow methods of travel
prevalent in those days, three messengers were hastening to Washington
with tidings which the wearied President awaited with eagerness or fear
according to the quarter from which they came. From Hartford, Conn.,
where the convention of New England malcontents had sat, he was to learn
what demands were made by Americans who chose a time of war to change
and weaken, if not indeed to destroy, the constitution of their country.
From the American commissioners at Ghent he hoped against hope for news
of a peace. To the Southwest he looked with dread, for few had dared to
believe that New Orleans could be defended. The three messages arrived
almost together, and all three were to stick in men's minds for years to
come, and to mould men's thoughts about their country. From Ghent came
tidings of a peace, not, indeed, glorious, or such as we had gone to war
to win, but better than we had a right to expect. From New Orleans,
tidings of a victory so splendid that it stirred the blood and
brightened the eyes of every true American, and made it hard to
remember that the war had not been altogether glorious. The threatening
message from Hartford lost its terrors. In the great balance of the
sections, the Northeast sank, the Southwest rose. When men recalled the
war with shame, it was because of Hartford; when they spoke of it with
pride, as in time they came to do, it was because they saw, on the
parapet of New Orleans, looking out over heaps of British dead, the
thin, tall figure of the horseman in Lafayette Square. True, the victory
might seem worthless, for the peace was made before the battle was
fought; but the victor had won for his countrymen something dearer than
anything set forth in treaties. He had won them back their good opinion
of themselves. In the prosperous years that were to follow, Andrew
Jackson, the man of the Southwest, was to stand as no other man could
for the American's faith in his country against the world.
But the victorious general was still the same Andrew Jackson; he did not
leave New Orleans without exhibiting some of the characteristics that
were so well known in Tennessee. Relaxing none of his vigilance, he kept
the city under martial law after the British had sailed, and even after
the British admiral had sent him word of the peace. Many New Orleans
people protested, and certain of them claimed exemption from the work of
defense on the ground that they were citizens of France. All such he
ordered out of the city. Mr. Louaillier, a leading citizen, published a
protest, and Jackson promptly arrested him. Judge Hall, of the United
States District Court, issued a writ of habeas corpus for the prisoner,
and Jackson as promptly arrested the judge himself, and did not release
him until, early in March, official notice of the peace was received.
The judge fined the general a thousand dollars for contempt of court,
and nearly thirty years afterwards the American Congress voted money
enough to repay the sum with interest. Between the battle and the news
of peace, Jackson also signed the order for the execution of six
militiamen whom a court-martial had found guilty of mutiny and
desertion. There were circumstances which seemed to recommend these men
to mercy, and in after years the order was cited along with other things
to prove that Jackson was a cruel and arbitrary commander.
However, the War Department gave him only the mildest of reproofs for
his treatment of the civil authorities at New Orleans, and when he
returned to Tennessee it was to a welcome even more heartfelt and
stirring than the one he got on his return from the Creek war. In the
autumn he was called to Washington to consult with his superiors about
putting the army on a peace footing, and on the journey and at the
capital he was universally received as the hero of the war. The army was
reduced to ten thousand men, and distributed into a northern and a
southern department. The command of the northern department was given to
General Jacob Brown; Jackson got the southern department.
It was about this time that Governor Alston, of South Carolina, got a
letter from his father-in-law, Aaron Burr, of New York, concerning the
approaching presidential election. Burr thought Monroe, the leading
candidate and the man preferred by President Madison, too weak a man for
the great office. He wanted a man of firmness and decision, and he
added, "that man is Andrew Jackson." But as yet Jackson himself had no
such ambition. As late as 1821, in fact, he said, in reply to a
suggestion that he might be President: "No, sir; I know what I am fit
for. I can command a body of men in a rough way; but I am not fit to be
President." He cordially supported Monroe in 1816, and after his
election wrote to him and made a few suggestions about his
administration. One of these suggestions was to appoint a Federalist,
Colonel William Drayton, Secretary of War. Jackson declared that, had he
been in command in New England, he would have hanged the leaders of the
Hartford Convention; but he was in favor of recognizing the loyalty of
such Federalists as had served the country faithfully during the war.
That letter to Monroe was "copied" for the general by his neighbor and
friend, William B. Lewis, as were hundreds of others. The general
himself was a poor writer, and Major Lewis was a skilful man with a pen.
He was also an exceedingly clever politician, and he showed his
cleverness by keeping a second copy of the letter to Monroe for future
use. In the course of the correspondence, Monroe let Jackson know that
he himself might be Secretary of War if he chose; but Jackson was
content with his command.
V
THE SEMINOLES AND THE POLITICIANS
For three years General Jackson was mainly occupied with the duties of a
military officer in time of peace; but he was also employed to make
treaties with several Indian tribes, and won another royal welcome home
from the Tennesseans by throwing open to settlement large areas of
Indian lands. Even in peace, however, he found an opportunity to display
his readiness to do the right thing in a way to make trouble. Being
several times annoyed by orders issued direct from the War Department to
his inferiors, and seeing clearly that this was not the proper
procedure, he issued a general order forbidding his subordinates to obey
any commands which did not reach them through him. Calhoun, who became
Secretary of War soon afterwards, conceded the justice of the general's
position, but Jackson's course in the matter was certainly rather
high-handed. General Winfield Scott criticised it in private
conversation, and a mischief-maker brought his words to Jackson's
attention. The result was some fiery and abusive letters to Scott, and a
challenge to a duel, which Scott, on religious grounds, very properly
declined. Jackson also carried on an angry correspondence with General
Adair, of Kentucky, who defended the Kentucky troops from the charge of
cowardice at New Orleans.
It was late in the year 1817 before General Jackson was again called to
active service in the field. Once more the call was from the southward,
and his old enemies, the Red Sticks, the English, and the Spaniards,
were all in some measure responsible for it. A number of Red Sticks had
taken refuge with their kinsmen, the Seminoles, in Florida. Colonel
Nichols and a small force of British had also remained in Florida some
time after the war ended, and had done things of a nature to stir up the
Indians there against the Americans across the border. Negro slaves,
escaping from American masters, had fled to the Spanish province in
considerable numbers, and a body of them got possession of a fort on the
Apalachicola River which had been abandoned by the British. To add to
the disorder of the province, it was frequented by adventurers, some of
them claiming to be there in order to lead a revolution against Spain,
some of them probably mere freebooters. The Spanish authorities at
Pensacola were too weak to control such a population, and Americans near
the border were anxious to have their government interfere. The negro
fort was a centre of lawlessness, and some American troops marched down
the river, bombarded it, and by a lucky shot blew up its magazine and
killed nearly three hundred negroes. Troubles arose with the Indians
also, and Fowltown, an Indian village, was taken and burned. A
considerable body of Indians took to the war-path, and Jackson was
ordered to the scene.
Impatient as ever with the Spaniards, he wrote to President Monroe:
"Let it be signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that
the possession of Florida would be desirable to the United States, and
in sixty days it will be accomplished." Monroe was ill at the time, and
for some reason did not attend to the general's letter for a year. The
President was trying to get Florida peaceably, by purchase, and not by
conquest. Jackson, however, got the idea that his suggestion was
approved, and acted accordingly.
Raising troops in Tennessee on his own authority, he marched rapidly to
the scene of trouble, crossed the border into Florida, and in a few
weeks crushed the Seminoles. Of fighting, in fact, there was very
little; what there was fell almost entirely to the friendly Indians, and
not a single American soldier was killed. But Jackson's actions in the
campaign brought on the bitterest controversies of his career. By his
order four men were put to death, and he captured Pensacola again,
claiming that some Indians had taken refuge there. Two of the four men
were Creek Red Sticks. The other two were white men and British
subjects. One was Alexander Arbuthnot, an old man of seventy, a trader
among the Indians, and, so far as is known, a man of good character. He
was taken prisoner, however, and it is supposed a letter he wrote to his
son, telling him to take their merchandise to a place of safety, warned
some Indians of Jackson's approach. The other British subject was an
Englishman named Robert Ambrister, who had been a lieutenant in the
British army. He was nephew to the governor of New Providence, one of
the British West Indies, and seems to have been in Florida rather in
search of adventure than for any clearly ascertainable purpose. A
court-martial found Arbuthnot guilty of inciting the Creek Indians to
rise against the United States, and of aiding the enemy. Ambrister was
found guilty of levying war against the United States. He was first
sentenced to be shot; then, on reconsideration, the court changed the
sentence to fifty stripes and hard labor for a year. Jackson firmly
believed that both were British emissaries, sent to Florida to stir up
the Indians. He disapproved the change of Ambrister's sentence, and
ordered him to be shot and Arbuthnot to be hanged.
Such fierce and energetic measures, whether justifiable or not, put an
end to the disorder on the border, and Jackson was again free to return
home a victor. The country was disposed to approve what he had done, but
the President and Cabinet saw that grave international questions would
be raised; for Jackson had invaded the soil of a country at peace with
the United States, taken possession of its forts, and put to death
citizens of another country also at peace with the United States. John
C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, the Secretary of War, was in favor of
censuring the general for his conduct; but John Quincy Adams, of
Massachusetts, the Secretary of State, thought his acts necessary under
the circumstances, and declared himself ready to defend them. In the end
he did defend them so well that neither Spain nor Great Britain made
serious trouble over them. The President and his Cabinet followed
Adams's advice instead of Calhoun's, and Calhoun himself, as Jackson's
superior, wrote to him about the campaign in a friendly way. Jackson
naturally thought that Calhoun had been his friend in the Cabinet, and
had no reason to suspect that it was Adams who defended, and Calhoun who
wished to censure him. He did not learn the truth for many years. Had he
known it sooner, there is no telling how different the political history
of the next twenty years might have been.
For henceforth Jackson was to be a great figure not in warfare but in
politics. His military career was practically ended. He kept his
commission until July, 1821, but from this time he fought no more
battles. He had not, as a soldier, given such evidence of military
genius as to set his name alongside those of the great captains of
history, but he had shown himself a strong and successful leader of men;
in his masterful, often irregular and violent way, he had done his
country good service. Were his place in history merely a soldier's, it
would be a safe one, though not the highest. But his actions in the
field soon gave him the leading part on a different stage. One day in
January, 1819, he rode up to the house of his neighbor, Major Lewis, who
had just bought a new overcoat, and asked him to get himself another;
the general wanted the one already made to wear on a long journey.
"Major," he said, "there is a combination in Washington to ruin me. I
start to Washington tomorrow."
The chief of those who, as Jackson firmly believed, were combined to
ruin him, was the man who could with best reason be compared to the hero
of New Orleans for the place he had in the affections of the Western
people and as the representative of the new American spirit, born of the
second war with Great Britain. If Jackson was the hero of the war, Henry
Clay was its orator; if it was Jackson who sent from one quarter the
news of a glorious victory, it was Clay who, with Adams and Gallatin,
had secured the peace. Leaving Ghent, Clay was lingering in Paris when
he heard the news of New Orleans. "Now," he exclaimed, "I can go to
England without mortification." But the great orator was not in sympathy
with Monroe's administration. His enemies declared he was in opposition
because he was not asked to be Secretary of State, and because he feared
that Adams, who had the place, would become President four years later.
However that may have been, it was Clay who led the attack on the
administration about the campaign in Florida. Protesting his deep
respect for "the illustrious military chieftain" who commanded there, he
yet condemned the hanging of the two Red Sticks, the execution of
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, the taking of Pensacola.
From the moment Jackson read that speech he was Clay's enemy, and a
warfare began that lasted twenty-five years. Every man, in fact, who in
the course of the long debate that followed condemned the acts of
General Jackson in Florida was written down an enemy on the tablets of
his memory. He remained in Washington until the House had voted down
every resolution unfavorable to his course, and he had thus won his
first victory over Clay. Then he set forth on a northern journey which
showed him the immense popularity he had in places like New York,
Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and gave him an opportunity to increase it
by the fine appearance he made in public. He returned to find that a
Senate committee had reported unfavorably on his conduct, but the Senate
never acted on the report, and on his journey homeward the people gave
him every reason to believe that the great majority of his countrymen
approved the votes of the lower house. As if to complete his triumph, he
was soon called once more to Florida; and this time he entered
Pensacola, not as a soldier invading a foreign province, but as the
chief magistrate of an American territory. In February, 1821, after so
many years of negotiation, Florida was bought by the United States.
President Monroe appointed Jackson governor and commissioner to receive
the province, and he, bidding farewell to the army, entered again upon
the duties of a civil office.