In late 1814, the British opened a two-pronged
attack on the U.S. Coming up the Chesapeake, they ran the government
out of Washington City (as it was called then), burned much of
the city, including the White House and the Capitol, and shelled
nearby Baltimore.
They also planned to invade from the Gulf of
Mexico, where the greatest prize was New Orleans, controlling
sea access to the Mississippi, the water-highway of the states.
The British commander, Cochrane, felt the area could be taken
with minimal forces with the help of the Spanish and Indians.
This was now Jackson's theatre of operations,
and he first took the offensive, capturing parts of Spanish Western
Floridas, adjacent to New Orleans.
In New Orleans, he set out, with his soldiers
and locals, to organize a strong defense against British attack.
He dazzled the local society which, expecting a backwoods wild
man found him to be a man of poise, relaxed style and charisma.
Jackson called a conference of engineers to find
out how best to seal off New Orleans from invasion. As New Orleans
was largely surrounded by swamps, one method was to fell huge
trees to clog the smaller waterways leading to the city. This
was done, but not thoroughly enough, so the British did come through
in boats.
Jackson also accepted the services of Jean Lafitte,
a famous local pirate, and 600 free blacks of New Orleans, and
brooked no criticism of the use of the black volunteers.
In the climactic battle, Jackson used some 3,000
men, with carefully dug fortifications, to hold off approximately
twice as many British troops who made a massed assault, taking
over 2,000 casualties, while the Americans sustained 13 killed,
39 wounded, and 19 missing. The British dead included the top
commanders, and the troops fled in a rout.
As it happened, a treaty was signed, in the Netherlands,
before the battle in this age of slow communication. But most
Americans heard about New Orleans first. The U.S. had declared
war, lost much, fought for the most part incompetently, and had
to sign a treaty ratifying the old status quo. The battle was
thus an enormous boost to U.S. morale, and was the main personal
factor that put Jackson in the White House 14 years later.
It also was a show of strength by a formerly
weak-looking nation, increasing the United States' negotiating
powers with Spain, Mexico, and Britain in the future.
Jackson maintained martial law in the territory
until the official end of the war. He was at first idolized in
New Orleans, but lost much of his popularity due to the harshness
of his regime, and such acts as jailing a legislator who published
a "subversive" article, and a judge who tried to rescind
the jailing of the legislator.
Essay by Hal Morris based mainly on:
Robert V. Remini's, The Life of Andrew Jackson.
© 1995 by Hal Morris. Copying for non-commercial purposes allowed,
if proper citation is given.
Downloaded from Tales of the Early Republic:
A History Web Site, Focusing on the 1830s-1840s.
