How many well-informed people are aware, I wonder, that the fact that
the American flag, and not the British, flies to-day over the
Mississippi valley is largely due to the eleventh-hour patriotism of a
pirate? Of the many kinds of men of many nationalities who have played
parts of greater or less importance in the making of our national
history, none is more completely cloaked in mystery, romance, and
adventure than Jean Lafitte. The last of that long line of buccaneers
who for more than two centuries terrorized the waters and ravaged the
coasts of the Gulf of Mexico, his exploits make the wildest fiction
appear commonplace and tame. Although he was as thorough-going a pirate
as ever plundered an honest merchant-man, I do not mean to imply that he
was a leering, low-browed scoundrel, with a red bandanna twisted about
his head and an armory of assorted weapons at his waist, for he was
nothing of the sort. On the contrary, from all I can learn about him, he
appears to have been a very gentlemanly sort of person indeed, tall and
graceful and soft-voiced, and having the most charming manners. Though
he regarded the law with unconcealed contempt, there came a crisis in
our national history when he placed patriotism above all other
considerations, and rendered an inestimable service to the country whose
laws he had flouted and to the State which had set a price on his head.
Indeed, we are indebted to Jean Lafitte in scarcely less measure than we
are to Andrew Jackson for frustrating the British invasion and conquest
of Louisiana.
Though the palmy days of piracy in the Gulf of Mexico really ended with
the seventeenth century, by which time the rich cities of Middle America
had been impoverished by repeated sackings and the gold-freighted
caravels had taken to travelling under convoy, even at the beginning of
the nineteenth century these storied waters still offered many
opportunities to lawless and enterprising sea-folk. But the pirates of
the nineteenth century, unlike their forerunners of the seventeenth,
preyed on slave-ships rather than on treasure-galleons. Consider the
facts. On January 1, 1808, Congress passed an act prohibiting the
further importation of slaves into the United States. By this act the
recently acquired territory of Louisiana, over which prosperity was
advancing in three-league boots, was deprived of its supply of labor.
With crops rotting in the fields for lack of laborers, the price of
slaves rose until a negro fresh from the coast of Africa would readily
bring a thousand dollars at auction in New Orleans. At the same time,
remember, shiploads of slaves were being brought to Cuba, where no such
restrictions existed, and sold for three hundred dollars a head. Under
such conditions smuggling was inevitable. At first the smugglers bought
their slaves in the Cuban market, and running them across the Gulf of
Mexico, landed them at obscure harbors on the Louisiana coast, whence
they were marched overland to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The smugglers
soon saw, however, that the slavers carried small crews, poorly armed,
and quickly made up their minds that it was a shameful waste of money to
buy slaves when they could get them for nothing by the menace of their
guns. In short, the smugglers became buccaneers, and as such drove a
thriving business in captured cargoes of "black ivory," as the slaves
were euphemistically called.
As the demand was greatest on the rich new lands along the Mississippi,
it was at New Orleans that the buccaneers found the most profitable
market for their human wares, for they could easily sail up the river to
the city, dispose of their cargoes, and be off again with the quick
despatch of regular liners to resume their depredations. But the
buccaneers did not confine their attention to slave-ships, so that in a
short time, despite the efforts of British, French, and American
war-ships, the waters of the Gulf became as unsafe for all kinds of
merchant-vessels as they were in the days of Morgan and Kidd.
As a base for their piratical and smuggling operations, as well as for
supplies and repairs, the buccaneers chose Barataria Bay, a place which
met their requirements as though made to order. The name is applied to
all of the Gulf coast of Louisiana between the mouth of the Mississippi
and the mouth of another considerable stream known as the Bayou La
Fourche, the latter a waterway to a rich and populous region. The Bay of
Barataria is screened from the Gulf, with which it is connected by a
deep-water pass, by the island of Grande Terre, the trees on which were
high enough to effectually hide the masts of the buccaneers' vessels
from the view of inquisitive war-ships cruising outside. Between the
Mississippi and the La Fourche there is a perfect network of small but
navigable waterways which extend almost to New Orleans, so that the
buccaneers thus had a back-stairs route, as it were, to the city, which
brought their rendezvous at Grande Terre within safe and easy reach of
the great mart of the Mississippi valley.
Such supplies as the buccaneers did not get from the ships they
captured, they obtained by purchase in New Orleans. For the chains which
were used in making up the caufles of slaves for transportation into the
interior, they were accustomed to patronize the blacksmith-shop of the
Brothers Lafitte, which stood--and still stands--on the northeast corner
of Bourbon and St. Philippe Streets. Of the history of these brothers
prior to their arrival in New Orleans nothing is definitely known. From
their names, and because they spoke with the accent peculiar to the
Garonne, they are credited with having been natives of the south of
France, though whence they came and where they went are questions which
have never been satisfactorily answered. They were quite evidently men
of means, and might have been described as gentlemen blacksmiths, for
they owned the slaves who pounded the iron. Being men of exceptional
business shrewdness, it is not to be wondered at that from doing the
buccaneers' blacksmithing they gradually became their agents and
bankers, the smithy in St. Philippe Street coming in time to be a sort
of clearing-house for many questionable transactions. Now Jean Lafitte
was an extremely able man, combining a remarkable executive ability with
a genius for organization, and had he lived a century later these
traits, together with his predatory instincts and his utter contempt for
the law, would undoubtedly have made him the president of a trust.
Through success in managing their affairs, he gradually increased his
usefulness to the buccaneers until he obtained complete control over
them, and ruled them as despotically as a tribal chieftain. This was
when his genius for organization had succeeded in uniting their
different, and often rival, efforts and interests into a sort of
pirates' corporation, composed of all the buccaneers, privateers, and
freebooters doing business in the Gulf, this combination of outlaws,
incredible as it may seem, as effectually controlling the price of
slaves and many other things in the Mississippi valley as the Standard
Oil Company controls the price of petroleum to-day.
The influence of this new element in the buccaneer business soon made
itself felt. At that time New Orleans was a sort of cross between an
American frontier town and a West Indian port, its streets and barrooms
being filled with swaggering adventurers, gamblers, and soldiers of
fortune from every corner of the three Americas, the presence of most of
whom was due to the activity of the sheriffs in their former homes. It
was from these men, cool, reckless, resourceful, that Lafitte recruited
his forces. Leaving his brother Pierre in charge of the New Orleans
branch of the enterprise, Jean Lafitte took up his residence on Grande
Terre, where, under his directions, a fort was built, around which there
soon sprang up a veritable city of thatched huts for the shelter of the
buccaneers, and for the accommodation of the merchants who came to
supply their wants or to purchase their captured cargoes. Within a year
upward of a dozen armed vessels rendezvoused in Barataria Bay, and their
crews addressed Jean Lafitte as "_bosse_." One of the Baratarians, a
buccaneer of the walk-the-plank-and-scuttle-the-ship school named
Grambo, who boldly called himself a pirate, and jeered at Lafitte's
polite euphemism of privateer, was one day unwise enough to dispute the
new authority. Without an instant's hesitation Lafitte drew a pistol and
shot him through the heart in the presence of the whole band. After that
episode there was no more insubordination.
By 1813 the Baratarians, who had long since extended their operations to
include all kinds of merchandise, were driving such a roaring trade that
the commerce and shipping of New Orleans was seriously diminished (for
why go to New Orleans for their supplies, the sea-captains and the
plantation-owners argued, when they could get what they wanted at
Barataria for a fraction of the price), the business of the banks
decreased alarmingly under the continual lessening of their deposits,
while even the National Government began to feel its loss of revenue.
The waters of Barataria, on the contrary, were alive with the sails of
incoming and outgoing vessels; the wharfs which had been constructed at
Grande Terre resounded to the creak of winches and the shouts of
stevedores unloading contraband cargoes, and the long, low warehouses
were filled with merchandise and the log stockades with slaves waiting
to be sold and transported to the up-country plantations. So defiant of
the law did Lafitte become that the streets of New Orleans were
placarded with handbills announcing the auction sales at Barataria of
captured cargoes, and to them flocked bargain-hunters from all that part
of the South. An idea of the business done by the buccaneers at this
time may be gained from an official statement that four hundred slaves
were sold by auction in the Grande Terre market in a single day.
Of course the authorities took action in the matter, but their efforts
to enforce the law proved both dangerous and ineffective. In October,
1811, a customs-inspector succeeded in surprising a band of Baratarians
and seizing some merchandise they had with them, but before he could
convey the prisoners and the captured contraband to New Orleans Lafitte
and a party of his men overtook him, rescued the prisoners, recovered
the property, and in the fight which ensued wounded several of the
posse. Some months later Lafitte killed an inspector named Stout, who
attempted to interfere with him, and wounded two of his deputies. Then
Governor Claiborne issued a proclamation offering a reward for the
capture of Lafitte dead or alive, at the same time appealing to the
legislature for permission to raise an armed force to break up the
buccaneering business for good and all. The cautious legislators
declined to take any action, however, because they were unwilling to
interfere with an enterprise that, however illegal it might be, was
unquestionably developing the resources of lower Louisiana, and
incidentally adding immensely to the fortunes of their constituents. As
for the Baratarians, they paid as scant attention to the governor's
proclamation as though it had never been written. Surrounded by groups
of admiring friends, Lafitte and his lieutenants continued to swagger
through the streets of New Orleans; his men openly boasted of their
exploits in every barroom of the city, and in places of public resort
announcements of auctions at Barataria continued to be displayed.
Then Governor Claiborne played his last card, and secured indictments of
the Lafittes on the charge of piracy. Pierre Lafitte was arrested in his
blacksmith-shop and confined without bail in the calaboose. Jean Lafitte
promptly trumped the governor's card by retaining the services of Edward
Livingston and John R. Grymes, the two most distinguished members of the
Louisiana bar, at the enormous fee of twenty thousand dollars apiece.
Grymes was then the district attorney, but he resigned his office for
the fee. When his successor accused him in open court of having bartered
his honor for pirate gold Grymes challenged him to a duel, and crippled
him for life with a pistol bullet through the hip. When the two eminent
lawyers had cleared their poor, innocent, persecuted clients of the
unfounded and outrageous charges brought against them, and had taught
them certain legal tricks whereby they could continue doing business at
the old stand and still keep on the right side of the bars, Pierre
Lafitte sent them an invitation to visit Barataria and collect their
fees in person. Livingston, a cautious gentleman who had no desire to
risk himself among the pirates whose virtues he had just extolled so
highly to a jury, declined the invitation with thanks, offering his
colleague a commission of ten per cent to collect his fee for him.
Grymes, who was a hard-drinking, high-living Virginian, and afraid of
nothing on two feet or four, accepted the invitation with alacrity, and
until the end of his life was wont to convulse his friends with lurid
descriptions of the magnificent entertainment which Lafitte provided for
him. After a carouse which lasted for a week, and which, from Grymes's
accounts, was a combination of the feasts of Lucullus with the orgies of
Nero, Lafitte sent his legal adviser back to New Orleans in a sailing
vessel, together with several huge chests containing his fee in Spanish
gold pieces. It is an interesting commentary on the customs which
prevailed in those days that by the time Grymes reached New Orleans,
after having visited the various plantations along the lower Mississippi
and tried his luck at their card-tables, not a dollar of his fee
remained.
Now, it should be understood that the feebleness which characterized all
the attempts of the Federal Government to break the power of the
buccaneers was not due to any reluctance to prosecute them, but to the
fact that it already had its attention taken up with far more pressing
matters, for we were then in the midst of our second war with Great
Britain. The long series of injuries which England had inflicted on the
United States, such as the plundering and confiscation of our ships, the
impressment into the British Navy of our seamen, and the interruption of
our commerce with other nations, had culminated on June 18, 1812, by
Congress declaring war. So unexpected was this action that it found the
country totally unprepared. Our military establishment was barely large
enough to provide garrisons for the most exposed points on our far-flung
borders; the numerous ports on our seaboard were left unprotected and
unfortified; and our navy consisted of but a handful of war-ships. The
history of the first two years of the struggle, which was marked by
brilliant American victories at sea, but by a disastrous attempt to
invade Canada, has no place in this narrative. Early in the summer of
1814, however, the British Government, exasperated by its failure to
inflict any vital damage in the northern States, determined to bring
the war to a quick conclusion by the invasion and conquest of Louisiana.
The preparations made for this expedition were in themselves startling.
Indeed, few Americans have even a faint conception of the strength of
the blow which England prepared to deal us, for with Napoleon's
abdication and exile to Elba, and the ending of the war with France, she
was enabled to bring her whole military and naval power against us. The
British armada consisted of fifty war-ships, mounting more than a
thousand guns. It was commanded by Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane,
under whom was Sir Thomas Hardy, the friend of Nelson, Rear-Admiral
Malcolm, and Rear-Admiral Codrington, and was manned by the same sailors
who had fought so valorously at the Nile and at Trafalgar. This great
fleet acted as convoy for an almost equal number of transports, having
on board eight thousand soldiers, which were the very flower of the
British Army, nearly all of them being veterans of the Napoleonic
campaigns. Such importance did the British Government attach to the
success of this expedition that it seriously considered giving the
command of it to no less a personage than the Duke of Wellington. So
certain were the British that the venture would be successful that they
brought with them a complete set of civil officials to conduct the
government of this new country which was about to be annexed to his
Majesty's dominions, judges, customs-inspectors, revenue-collectors,
court-criers, printers, and clerks, together with printing-presses and
office paraphernalia, being embarked on board the transports. A large
number of ladies, wives and relatives of the officers, also accompanied
the expedition, to take part in the festivities which were planned to
celebrate the capture of New Orleans. And, as though to cap this
exhibition of audacity, a number of ships were chartered by British
speculators to bring home the booty, the value of which was estimated
beforehand at fourteen millions of dollars. Whether the British
Government expected to be able to permanently hold Louisiana is
extremely doubtful, for it must have been fully aware that the Western
States were capable of pouring down a hundred thousand men, if
necessary, to repel an invasion. It is probable, therefore, that they
counted only on a temporary occupation, which they expected to prolong
sufficiently, however, to give them time to pillage and lay waste the
country, a course which they felt confident would quickly bring the
government at Washington to terms.
This formidable armada set sail from England early in the summer of 1814
and, reaching the Gulf of Mexico, established its base of operations,
regardless of all the laws of neutrality, at the Spanish port of
Pensacola. One morning in the following September a British brig hove to
off Grande Terre, and called attention to her presence by firing a
cannon. Lafitte, darting through the pass in his four-oared barge to
reconnoitre, met the ship's gig with three scarlet-coated officers in
the stern, who introduced themselves as bearers of important despatches
for Mr. Lafitte. The pirate chief, introducing himself in turn, invited
his unexpected guests ashore, and led the way to his quarters with that
extraordinary charm of manner for which he was noted even among the
punctilious Creoles of New Orleans. After a dinner of Southern
delicacies, which elicited exclamations even from the blase British
officers, Lafitte opened the despatches. They were addressed to Jean
Lafitte, Esquire, commandant at Barataria, from the commander-in-chief
of the British forces at Pensacola, and bluntly offered him thirty
thousand dollars, payable in Pensacola or New Orleans, a commission as
captain in the British Navy, and the enlistment of his men in the naval
or military forces of Great Britain if he would assist the British in
their impending invasion of Louisiana. Though it was a generous offer,
no one knew better than the British commander that Lafitte's
co-operation was well worth the price, for, familiar with the network of
streams and navigable swamps lying between Barataria Bay and New
Orleans, he was capable of guiding a British expedition through these
secret waterways to the very gates of the city before the Americans
would have a hint of its approach. It is not too much to assert that at
this juncture the future of New Orleans, and indeed of the whole
Mississippi Valley, hung upon the decision of Jean Lafitte, a pirate and
a fugitive from justice with a price upon his head.
Whether Lafitte seriously considered accepting the offer there is, of
course, no way of knowing. That it must have sorely tempted him it seems
but reasonable to suppose, for he was not an American, either by birth
or naturalization, and the prospect of exchanging his hazardous outlaw's
life, with a vision of the gallows ever looming before him for a
captain's commission in the royal navy, with all that that implied,
could hardly have failed to appeal to him strongly. That he promptly
decided to reject the offer speaks volumes for the man's strength of
character and for his faith in American institutions. Appreciating that
at such a crisis every hour gained was of value to the Americans, he
asked time to consider the proposal, requesting the British officers to
await him while he consulted an old friend and associate whose vessel,
he said, was then lying in the bay. Scarcely was he out of sight,
however, before a band of buccaneers, acting, of course, under his
orders, seized the officers and hustled them into the interior of the
island, where they were politely but forcibly detained. Here they were
found some days later by Lafitte, who pretended to be highly indignant
at such unwarrantable treatment of his guests. Releasing them with
profuse apologies, he saw them safely aboard their brig, and assured
them that he would shortly communicate his decision to the British
commander. But that officer's letter was already in the hands of a
friend of Lafitte's in New Orleans, who was a member of the legislature,
and accompanying it was a communication from the pirate chief himself,
couched in those altruistic and patriotic phrases for which the rascal
was famous. In it he asserted that, though he admitted being guilty of
having evaded the payment of certain customs duties, he had never lost
his loyalty and affection for the United States, and that,
notwithstanding the fact that there was a price on his head, he would
never miss an opportunity of serving his adopted country. A few days
later Lafitte forwarded through the same channels much valuable
information which his agents had gathered as to the strength, resources,
and plans of the British expedition, enclosing with it a letter
addressed to Governor Claiborne in which he offered the services of
himself and his men in defence of the State and city on condition that
they were granted a pardon for past offences.
Receiving no reply to this communication, Lafitte sailed up the river to
New Orleans in his lugger and made his way to the residence of the
governor. Governor Claiborne was seated at his desk, immersed in the
business of his office, when the door was softly opened, and Lafitte,
stepping inside, closed it behind him. Clad in the full-skirted,
bottle-green coat, the skin-tight breeches of white leather, and the
polished Hessian boots which he affected, he presented a most graceful
and gallant figure. As he entered he drew two pistols from his pockets,
cocked them, and covered the startled governor, after which ominous
preliminaries he bowed with the grace for which he was noted.
"Sir," he remarked pleasantly, "you may possibly have heard of me. My
name is Jean Lafitte."
"What the devil do you mean, sir," exploded the governor, "by showing
yourself here? Don't you know that I shall call the sentry and have you
arrested?"
"Pardon me, your Excellency," interrupted Lafitte, moving his weapons
significantly, "but you will do nothing of the sort. If you move your
hand any nearer that bell I shall be compelled to shoot you through the
shoulder, a necessity, believe me, which I should deeply regret. I have
called on you because I have something important to say to you, and I
intend that you shall hear it. To begin with, you have seen fit to put a
price upon my head?"
"Upon the head of a pirate, yes," thundered the governor, now almost
apoplectic with rage.
"In spite of that fact," continued Lafitte, "I have rejected a most
flattering offer from the British government, and have come here, at
some small peril to myself, to renew in person the offer of my services
in repelling the coming invasion. I have at my command a body of brave,
well-armed, and highly disciplined men who have been trained to fight.
Does the State care to accept their services or does it not?"
The governor, folding his arms, looked long at Lafitte before he
answered. Then he held out his hand. "It is a generous offer that you
make, sir. I accept it with pleasure."
"At daybreak to-morrow, then," said Lafitte, replacing his pistols, "my
men will be awaiting your Excellency's orders across the river." Then,
with another sweeping bow, he left the room as silently as he had
entered it.
Governor Claiborne immediately communicated Lafitte's offer to General
Andrew Jackson, then at Mobile, who had been designated by the War
Department to conduct the defence of Louisiana. Jackson, who had already
issued a proclamation denouncing the British for their overtures to
"robbers, pirates, and hellish bandits," as he termed the Baratarians,
promptly replied that the only thing he would have to do with Lafitte
was to hang him. Nevertheless, when the general arrived in New Orleans a
few days later, Lafitte called at his headquarters and requested an
interview. By this time Jackson was conscious of the feebleness of the
resources at his disposal for the defence of the city and of the
strength of the armament directed against it, which accounts, perhaps,
for his consenting to receive the "hellish bandit." Lafitte, looking the
grim old soldier squarely in the eye, repeated his offer, and so
impressed was Jackson with the pirate's cool and fearless bearing that
he accepted his services.
On the 10th of December, 1814, ten days after Jackson's arrival in New
Orleans, the British armada reached the mouth of the Mississippi. Small
wonder that the news almost created a panic in the city, for the very
names of the ships and regiments composing the expedition had become
famous through their exploits in the Napoleonic wars. It was a
nondescript and motley force which Jackson had hastily gathered to repel
this imposing army of invasion. Every man capable of bearing arms in New
Orleans and its vicinity--planters, merchants, bankers, lawyers--had
volunteered for service. To the local company of colored freedmen was
added another one composed of colored refugees from Santo Domingo, men
who had sided with the whites in the revolution there and had had to
leave the island in consequence. Even the prisoners in the calaboose had
been released and provided with arms. From the parishes round about came
Creole volunteers by the hundred, clad in all manner of clothing and
bearing all kinds of weapons. From Mississippi came a troop of cavalry
under Hinds, which was followed a few hours later by Coffee's famous
brigade of "Dirty Shirts," composed of frontiersmen from the forests of
Kentucky and Tennessee, who after a journey of eight hundred miles
through the wilderness answered Jackson's message to hurry by covering
the one hundred and fifty miles between Baton Rouge and New Orleans in
two days. Added to these were a thousand raw militiamen, who had been
brought down on barges and flat-boats from the towns along the upper
river, four companies of regulars, Beale's brigade of riflemen, a
hundred Choctaw Indians in war-paint and feathers, and last, but in many
respects the most efficient of all, the corps of buccaneers from
Barataria, under the command of the Lafittes. The men, dragging with
them cannon taken from their vessels, were divided into two companies,
one under Captain Beluche (who rose in after years to be
admiral-in-chief of Venezuela) and the other under a veteran
privateersman named Dominique You. These men were fighters by
profession, hardy, seasoned, and cool-headed, and as they swung through
the streets of New Orleans to take up the position which Jackson had
assigned them, even that taciturn old soldier gave a grunt of
approbation.
Jackson had chosen as his line of defence an artificial waterway known
as the Rodriguez Canal, which lay some five miles to the east of the
city, and along its embankments, which in themselves formed pretty good
fortifications, he distributed his men. On the night of December 23 a
force of two thousand British succeeded, by means of boats, in making
their way, through the chain of bayous which surrounds the city, to
within a mile or two of Jackson's lines, where they camped for the
night. Being informed of their approach (for the British, remember, had
the whole countryside against them), Jackson, knowing the demoralizing
effect of a night attack, directed Coffee and his Tennesseans to throw
themselves upon the British right, while at the same moment Beale's
Kentuckians attacked on the left. Trained in all the wiles of Indian
warfare, the frontiersmen succeeded in reaching the outskirts of the
British camp before they were challenged by the sentries. Their reply
was a volley at close quarters and a charge with the tomahawk--for they
had no bayonets--which drove the British force back in something closely
akin to a rout.
Meanwhile Jackson had set his other troops at work strengthening their
line of fortifications, so that when the sun rose on the morning of the
day before Christmas it found them strongly intrenched behind
earthworks, helped out with timber, sand-bags, fence-rails, and
cotton-bales--whence arose the myth that the Americans fought behind
bales of cotton. The British troops were far from being in Christmas
spirits, for the truth had already begun to dawn upon them that men can
fight as well in buckskin shirts as in scarlet tunics, and that these
raw-boned wilderness hunters, with their powder-horns and abnormally
long rifles, were likely to prove more formidable enemies than the
imposing grenadiers of Napoleon's Old Guard, whom they had been fighting
in Spain and France. On that same day before Christmas, strangely
enough, a treaty of peace was being signed by the envoys of the two
nations in a little Belgian town, four thousand miles away.
On Christmas Day, however, the wonted confidence of the British soldiery
was somewhat restored by the arrival of Sir Edward Pakenham, the new
commander-in-chief, for even in that hard-fighting day there were few
European soldiers who bore more brilliant reputations. A brother-in-law
of the Duke of Wellington, he had fought side by side with him through
the Peninsular War; he had headed the storming party at Badajoz; and at
Salamanca had led the charge which won the day for England and a
knighthood for himself. An earldom and the governorship of Louisiana, it
was said, had been promised him as his reward for the American
expedition.
Pakenham's practised eye quickly appreciated the strength of the
American position, which, after a council of war, it was decided to
carry by storm. During the night of the 26th the storming columns, eight
thousand strong, took up their positions within half a mile of the
American lines. As the sun rose next morning over fields sparkling with
frost, the bugles sounded the advance, and the British army, ablaze with
color, and in as perfect alignment as though on parade, moved forward to
the attack. As they came within range of the American guns, a group of
plantation buildings which masked Jackson's front were blown up, and the
British were startled to find themselves confronted by a row of ship's
cannon, manned as guns are seldom manned on land. Around each gun was
clustered a crew of lean, fierce-faced, red-shirted ruffians, caked with
sweat and mud: they were Lafitte's buccaneers, who had responded to
Jackson's orders by running in all the way from their station on the
Bayou St. John that morning. Not until he could make out the brass
buttons on the tunics of the advancing British did Lafitte give the
command to fire. Then the great guns of the pirate-patriots flashed and
thundered. Before that deadly fire the scarlet columns crumbled as
plaster crumbles beneath a hammer, the men dropping, first by twos and
threes, then by dozens and scores. In five minutes the attacking
columns, composed of regiments which were the boast of the British army,
had been compelled to sullenly retreat.
The British commander, appreciating that the repulse of his forces was
largely due to the fire of the Baratarian artillery, gave orders that
guns be brought from the fleet and mounted in a position where they
could silence the fire of the buccaneers. Three days were consumed in
the herculean task of moving the heavy pieces of ordnance into position,
but when the sun rose on New Year's morning it showed a skilfully
constructed line of intrenchments, running parallel to the American
front and armed with thirty heavy guns. While the British were thus
occupied, the Americans had not been idle, for Jackson had likewise
busied himself in constructing additional batteries, while Commodore
Patterson, the American naval commander, had gone through the sailors'
boarding-houses of New Orleans with a fine-tooth comb, impressing every
nautical-looking character on which he could lay his hands, regardless
of nationality, color, or excuses, to serve the guns. With their
storming columns sheltered behind the breastworks, awaiting the moment
when they would burst through the breach which they confidently expected
would shortly be made in the American defences, the British batteries
opened fire with a crash which seemed to split the heavens. Throughout
the artillery duel which ensued splendid service was rendered by the men
under Lafitte, who trained their guns as carefully and served them as
coolly as though they were back again on the decks of their privateers.
The storming parties, which were waiting for a breach to be made, waited
in vain, for within an hour and thirty minutes after the action opened
the British batteries were silenced, their guns dismounted, and their
parapets levelled with the plain. The veterans of Wellington and Nelson
had been out-fought from first to last by a band of buccaneers,
reinforced by a few-score American bluejackets and a handful of
nondescript seamen.
Pakenham had one more plan for the capture of the city. This was a
general assault by his entire army on the American lines. His plan of
attack was simple, and would very probably have proved successful
against troops less accustomed to frontier warfare than the Americans.
Colonel Thornton, with fourteen hundred men, was directed to cross the
river during the night of January 7, and, creeping up to the American
lines under cover of the darkness, to carry them by assault. His attack
was to be the signal for a column under General Gibbs to storm Jackson's
right, and for another, under General Keane, to throw itself against the
American left, General Lambert, who had just arrived with two fresh
regiments, being held in reserve. So carefully had the British
commanders perfected their plans that the battle was already won--in
theory.
No one knew better than Jackson that this was to be the deciding round
of the contest, and he accordingly made his preparations to win it with
a solar-plexus blow. He also had received a reinforcement, for the
long-expected militia from Kentucky, two thousand two hundred strong,
had just arrived, after a forced march of fifteen hundred miles, though
in a half-naked and starving condition. Our history contains nothing
finer, to my way of thinking, than the story of how these mountaineers
of the Blue Ridge, foot-sore, ragged, and hungry, came pouring down from
the north to repel the threatened invasion. The Americans, who numbered,
all told, barely four thousand men, were scattered along a front of
nearly three miles, one end of the line extending so far into a swamp
that the soldiers stood in water to their waists during the day, and at
night slept on floating logs made fast to trees.
Long before daybreak on the morning of the 8th of January the divisions
of Gibbs and Keane were in position, and waiting impatiently for the
outburst of musketry which would be the signal that Thornton had begun
his attack. Thornton had troubles of his own, however, for the swift
current of the Mississippi, as though wishing to do its share in the
nation's defence, had carried his boats a mile and a half down-stream,
so that it was daylight before he was able to effect a landing, when a
surprise was, of course, out of the question. But Pakenham, naturally
obstinate and now made wholly reckless by the miscarriage of his plans,
refused to recall his orders; so, as the gray mists of the early morning
slowly lifted, his columns were seen advancing across the fields.
"Steady now, boys! Steady!" called Jackson, as he rode up and down
behind his lines. "Don't waste your ammunition, for we've none to spare.
Pick your man, wait until he gets within range, and then let him have
it! Let's get this business over with to-day!" His orders were obeyed
to the letter, for not a shot was fired until the scarlet columns were
within certain range. Then the order "Commence firing" was repeated down
the line. Neither hurriedly, nor excitedly, nor confusedly was it
obeyed, but with the utmost calmness and deliberation, the frontiersmen,
trained to use the rifle from boyhood, choosing their targets, and
calculating their ranges as unconcernedly as though they were hunting in
their native forests. Still the British columns pressed indomitably on,
and still the lean and lantern-jawed Jackson rode up and down his lines,
cheering, cautioning, exhorting, directing. Suddenly he reined up his
horse at the Baratarian battery commanded by Dominique You.
"What's this? What's this?" he exclaimed. "You have stopped firing? What
the devil does this mean, sir?"
"Of course we've stopped firing, general," said the buccaneer, touching
his forelock man-o'-war fashion. "The powder's good for nothing. It
might do to shoot blackbirds with, but not redcoats."
Jackson beckoned to one of his aides-de-camp.
"Tell the ordnance officer that I will have him shot in five minutes as
a traitor if Dominique complains again of his powder," and he
galloped off. When he passed that way a few minutes later the rattle
of the musketry was being punctuated at half-minute intervals with the
crash of the Baratarian guns. "Ha, friend Dominique," called Jackson,
"I'm glad to see you're at work again."
[Illustration: The battle of New Orleans.