Moving on to Battery No. 5, nearly two hundred yards down the rampart, they passed by the lines of Major Pierre Lacoste’s 180 free men of color and Major Jean Daquin’s 150 free men of color. Here, near the center, Jackson had ordered erected a tall flagstaff flying a large red, white, and blue Stars and Stripes, “visible to both armies and to the countryside all around, on both sides of the river.” Battery No. 5 consisted of two six-pounders, served by army regulars.
As they moved from Battery No. 5 to No. 6, just thirty-six yards apart, they passed by the 240 men of the 44th. Battery No. 6 contained one brass twelve-pounder served by a company of Frenchmen under General Garrigues Flaujac, a French royalist and one of the handful of Louisiana legislators who actually fought at the front.
Nearly two hundred yards farther on was Battery No. 7, with a long brass eighteen-pounder and a six-pounder under two lieutenants. Sixty yards beyond was Battery No. 8, consisting only of a small brass carronade commanded by an artillery corporal with General Carroll’s soldiers. Here the swamp began, but the rampart, such as it was at this point, continued nearly a half mile into the morass, where Coffee’s and Carroll’s men “were compelled, for many days and nights, to live the lives of amphibious creatures—even sleeping in the mud.”
Precisely what General Adair thought of the fortifications Jackson had erected is not recorded, but he surely must have been impressed. Running for more than a mile and a half from the river to the swamp, the rampart in many places was eight feet high and in some places twenty feet thick at the top, where the artillery batteries were situated. The gun platforms were solid and commanded an impressive view of the battlefield. The moat or ditch in front was an imposing obstacle. What was even more impressive was the fact that two weeks before this line did not exist, and during those two frantic weeks it had rained half the time and three days of it were spent actually fighting the British. That it was here, now, and of such obviously formidable strength, is remarkable testimony to American ingenuity and perseverance under Jackson.
“Well,” Jackson asked Adair, “what do you think of our situation? Can we defend these works or not?” That Jackson posed such a question of a brigadier general of militia is evidence enough of his esteem.
“There is one way, and one way only,” Adair replied without a blink. “We must have a strong corps of reserve to meet the enemy’s main attack, wherever it may be. No single part of the lines is strong enough to resist the united force of the enemy. But,” he continued, “with a strong column held in our rear, ready to advance upon any threatened point, we can beat them.”
It was sage advice, and Jackson took it, just as he had listened to Jean Laffite’s recommendation that they extend the line well into the swamp to prevent being outflanked. Iron-handed Jackson might have been, but iron-headed he was not.
With the arrival of the Kentuckians, Jackson now had about 8,800 men. Five thousand of them were in the main line behind the canal, and the bulk of these, Carroll’s and Coffee’s, were at the far left, where the canal ran into the swamp. Since Jackson did not have enough artillery to fully protect that part of the line, he apparently loaded it up with riflemen. In reserve behind the canal line he sent about 1,500 of Adair’s Kentucky brigade, though only a third of them were armed. Across the river, he had about 1,000 men, Kentuckians and Louisiana militia. The rest were posted at other locations in the area.
On January 6, two days before the battle, Dudley Avery, a young physician serving as a volunteer with a regiment of militia, wrote to his wife, whom he had sent to safety in Baton Rouge:
Dear Mary Ann,
I have just time to say to you that I am well, and employed in my profession as a volunteer in the regt of Drafted Milita. How long I shall remain I cannot tell, I have not seen Saml. for two or three days and where he is I do not know. The enemy are everyday in sight[,] say about one mile distant. New Year’s day they gave us a very handsome salute. They began about nine o’clock and kept up a most tremendous cannonade and rocket firing all day till after sundown and it was returned with interest. . . . I was that day with Doct. Lee, on the east side of the river. The shott [sic] seemed to come in showers. We have picked up more than 200 of their shott. They had to remove from their batteries and have not occupied them since. We are everyday exchanging more or less shott. Our pickets are always skirmishing. I expect something decisive will be done shortly. More when I know more. Yours Affectionally,
Dudley Avery* 67
Pakenham did not know exactly how many men Jackson had in his army, but he assumed there were more than his own 10,000. Aside from the 1,400 men he was sending across the river under Colonel Thornton, Pakenham intended to attack the canal line with 5,500 infantry, supported by artillery and rockets. The remaining 2,000-man infantry brigade under the newly arrived General John Lambert—the 7th Fusiliers and the 43rd Foot—would be in reserve, ready to exploit any breakthrough.
The plan was that 2,600 infantry under General Gibbs would attack Jackson’s far left, near the swamp, where there were fewer cannon, while an equal number under General Keane would attack near the center. This decision had been reached by Pakenham after he’d ascended a pine tree with a spyglass and thoroughly studied the American position. He saw that the rampart was not as high or wide on Jackson’s left, an observation he had also made during the reconnaissance attack on December 28. As if to cement his judgment, a Spanish informer, one Señor Galvez, “made [his] way out of the American cordon on the night of [January] 6th and informed General Pakenham most positively that the whole left of the works was held by militia imperfectly organized, not regularly armed and totally unprovided with bayonets!”
Depending on developments, Keane would either move left to support Gibbs, should he be successful, or move right and attack near the river, if Thornton’s assault across the river was triumphant and the American guns were taken and turned on Jackson’s lines from behind. Meanwhile, a force of several hundred redcoats under Colonel Rennie was to move down the levee road and capture the little redoubt that Jackson had predicted “will give us trouble.” It was a complicated plan, requiring much coordination, and during the heat and confusion of battle, even in the best of times, things rarely go exactly as planned.
On the night of January 7 Pakenham sent an aide to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Mullins of the 44th Regiment. His would be the first regiment in line next morning, and his crucial task was to carry the fascines and heavy ten-foot scaling ladders to the ditch. This equipment, which had been constructed by the engineers, would be found at a forward redoubt about five hundred yards from the American lines. Pakenham had told his aide to make sure Mullins understood his instructions.
“Nothing could be clearer,” Mullins had replied, and the aide returned satisfied that the colonel knew his orders. After he had gone, however, Mullins turned to his adjutant and moaned, “My regiment has been ordered to execution. Their dead bodies are to be used as a bridge for the rest of the army to march over.” Clearly, here was an officer who did not wish to be in charge of the leading regiment of the assault.
Meanwhile, Pakenham was inspecting the deepening of the Villeré Canal in preparation for bringing the boats across for Thornton’s assault on the west bank. He still did not like what he saw. A dam had been built near where the cut in the levee was to be, in order to hold the water in the canal, since the river was low and would otherwise run out into the river when the final cut was made. Pakenham asked the engineer if he was certain the dam would hold and suggested building a second one, just in case. The engineer assured him that the present dam was all that was needed.* 68
As luck would have it, the engineer was wrong, and as soon as the final cut in the levee was made at about nine p.m.—the intended time of Thornton’s departure—the dam burst and most of the water drained out of the canal. Thus the boats had to be hauled nearly a mile through the mud of the canal by sailors and anyone else who could be dragooned to help. But it took all night, and even then none of the larger boat
s could be moved through the canal. By dawn it was decided that Thornton would have to go on with what he had, and so, instead of 1,400 British infantry arriving on the west bank well before daylight, he now could bring only about 500, crammed into the few small boats available.
Unfortunately, no one had bothered to wake Pakenham and tell him of this misfortune, and he was understandably “greatly agitated” when he found out about it. According to Captain Smith, “the general complained, ‘The dam, as you heard me say it would, gave way, and Thornton’s people will be of no use whatever to the general attack.’ ” He may or may not have believed this entirely, because right up until the time of the attack Pakenham kept listening for the sounds of Thornton’s movements across the river. In any event, the failure to wake Pakenham and alert him to the situation had dire effects. If he’d had time to think about it, he might have sent as many of Thornton’s men as possible across the river in the boats then available and had them come back for more; he might have called off the attack before all the men had moved forward and waited for all of Thornton’s regiment to get established on the west bank. As it was, he did neither.
In the meantime, artillerymen and engineers had been busy all night setting up batteries about seven hundred yards from Jackson’s line. At about four a.m., on January 8, 1815, the army was moved forward quietly for attack at first light. Many marched in high spirits, confident that they would be away from this miserable plain and feasting in New Orleans by nightfall. Others, who had heard the same promise before, felt differently.
Thirteen
There were many things to unsettle Jackson’s peace of mind that night, not the least of which was the situation on the west bank of the river. What exactly the British intended to do there he did not yet know, but he believed that by dispatching the 400 Kentucky reinforcements he had done all he could. In fact, he hadn’t; he had treated the west bank almost as an afterthought, though that is somewhat understandable, since the bulk of the British army was directly before him. If Jackson had known precisely what the situation was on the west bank, it might have given him much more pause.
It will be remembered that a week earlier he had ordered the 600 inexperienced militia under General David B. Morgan, then posted at English Turn, to cross the river and set up a defense of the west bank. To facilitate this, Jackson sent engineer Latour to assist Morgan in establishing a line similar to his own. Morgan was a forty-two-year-old Massachusetts Yankee who had arrived in New Orleans a decade earlier and become a politician. He was a slightly pudgy man whose most popular likeness shows him dressed in buckskins like a backwoodsman, instead of as the Louisiana legislator he was.
Unfortunately, Morgan did not seem to appreciate the skill of military engineering. When Latour began laying out a line up near the plantation of “fat old Doctor Flood,” Morgan rejected it as being too far away from Patterson’s marine batteries, which were trained across the river to catch the British in flank if they should try another attack. He might have had something there, considering that if the British were to cross to the west bank in force, Patterson would have to rely on Morgan for protection, as he had none of his own.
The problem was that the site selected by Morgan for his redoubt was nearly two thousand yards long, more than a mile—and almost twice as long as Jackson’s fortification, which contained 5,000 men, compared with the measly 800 that Morgan could now muster, including the newly arrived Kentuckians. Morgan had begun work on his line only four days earlier. He employed the labor of some 500 slaves, but in that short a period they could do little more than throw up a shallow, mile-long earthwork behind the ditch they had dug for the dirt. There were twelve American guns on the west bank, but only three of them in Morgan’s line; the rest belonged to Commodore Patterson’s batteries facing east across the river.
After studying the British preparations from the west bank for several hours on the evening of January 7, Patterson had seen enough. He had watched boat after boat move through the cut in the levee and heard the cheers of the sailors and redcoats as they entered the river. What Patterson concluded from this was that he and Morgan were going to be attacked the next morning and apparently with the bulk of Pakenham’s troops. It would make perfect sense that, instead of assaulting Jackson’s strong line, they were going to bring their main force across the Mississippi, roll over the small body of Americans there, and enter New Orleans from the west bank of the river. Patterson supposed that once the enemy had landed, and put his cross-river batteries out of action, the British could simply row the empty boats upriver and have them waiting for their infantry when they arrived, to carry them across the river into an undefended city.
Patterson did not at all like the looks of Morgan’s line—never had, actually—and it became evident, even to this navy man, that more soldiers were urgently needed. Accordingly, after conferring with Morgan, late that night he sent a messenger to Jackson.
Jackson and his staff had been sleeping on blankets on the downstairs floor of the Macarty house, fully dressed, we are told, although they had “removed their sword belts.” When the messenger arrived Jackson asked, “Who’s there?” and was given Patterson’s message.
“Hurry back,” he replied, “and tell General Morgan he is mistaken. The main attack will come on this side [of the river], and I have no men to spare. He must maintain his position at all hazards.”
According to Jackson’s watch it was past one a.m. He told his resting aides, “Gentlemen, we have slept enough. Rise. The enemy will be on us in a few minutes. I must go and see Coffee.”
During the next several hours, to the rattle of drums, Jackson’s men were herded into their positions along the embrasure. They were lined up four deep, one man to shoot and then return to the rear of the line to reload, while the second man stepped up and did the same, and so on, to ensure a continuous front of fire. The artillery pieces were readied for action; powder bags and fuses were brought up; cannonballs were set out, as well as canister, grape, and chain shot; boxes of nails, musket balls, and rusty scrap iron were placed close at hand.
In the dark, for one last time, Jackson inspected his entire fortification, walking down the length of the line to Coffee’s position at the far end of the cypress swamp. From Battery No. 1 he passed by his battalion of New Orleans businessmen. Reaching Battery No. 2 he gave encouraging words to the regulars of the 7th Infantry Regiment. Halfway between Batteries No. 2 and No. 3, his party was nearly overpowered by the aroma of strong coffee, which, according to adjutant Butler, “was black as tar and could be smelled twenty yards away.” It was emanating from the camp of Captain Dominique You, where several of the Baratarians were huddled around a large tin-coated drip pot, ladling boiling water over coffee grounds and frying cornbread, beignets, and bacon.
“That smells like better coffee than we can get,” Jackson remarked. “Where did you get such fine coffee? Maybe you smuggled it in?”
“Mebbe so, Zeneral,” chuckled the irrepressible privateer. He told his men to pour a cup for the commander, and as Jackson proceeded toward Battery No. 4, near the big American flagstaff, he was overheard to say, “I wish I had fifty guns on this line, with five hundred such devils as those fellows behind them.”
As Jackson passed by the men, he spoke to a number of them personally, especially those he knew from Tennessee. The mood was neither frigid nor light. As to the emotions a man feels on confronting an enemy, one whom he will actually see at any moment, there is no known expression in the English language; his mind can only work through an abstract collage of uncertain thoughts. This morning the men stood or squatted, honing knives, cleaning weapons, talking in low tones, smoking, writing letters by firelight, or dreaming restlessly of violence. It lay ineradicably at the bottom of their minds that within hours they could be killed or mutilated. Nevertheless, they were ready to hold their ground.
On Jackson went, saluting the battalions of the free men of color and spreading encouragement and confidence to the 44th’s regul
ars and the Tennesseans of Generals Carroll and Coffee. Echoing Colonel William Prescott’s famous order at the Battle of Bunker Hill, Jackson told them, “Don’t shoot, boys, until you see the whites of their eyes.”
Over in the British lines simultaneous preparations were being made. Captain Cooke records that there was an uncommon atmosphere of gaiety and boisterousness among the soldiers, who had been told that at last they were going into New Orleans. Walking through the camp with a companion, Cooke observed a “looseness and bawling in the sugar-cane bivouac which we had never seen or heard before within sight of an enemy and on the eve of an attack. We agreed that there was a screw loose somewhere.”
Cooke lamented, “I do not remember ever looking for the first signs of daybreak with more intense anxiety than on this eventful morning. It augured not of victory; an evil foreboding crossed my mind, and I meditated in solemn reflection. All was tranquil as the grave, and no camp fires glimmered from either friends or foes.” The earlier laughter, one suspects, was mostly braggadocio, mirthless as the cold, bland smile of the Sphinx.
Likewise, quartermaster Surtees felt that no good would come of the enterprise: “I own I did not at all feel satisfied with what I had seen and heard, and retired to rest with a considerable degree of despondency on my mind. . . . I almost felt confident of its failure.”
Pakenham was vexed by the failure caused by the breaking of the dam in the boat canal. It threatened to upset an important part of his plan: the overcoming and seizure of the American guns on the west bank in order to turn them upon the rear of the American positions. When the dam collapsed and the soggy mud began sinking back into the canal, hundreds of soldiers and sailors were set to work to drag the boats through the muck. The plan had been for Thornton’s people to have crossed by midnight and to have been formed up and in good marching order on the west bank by four a.m. at the latest, so as to capture the American weapons and direct them against Jackson’s lines in concert with the main British assault. Now Sir Edward could only fret and wonder and hope.