Patriotic Fire (19 page)

W
ith New Orleans just a few miles in the rear, Jackson had no such rations problem, and Laffite’s supply of munitions from his secret stashes seemed to be endless. Still Jackson was fearful, and with good reason. He was outnumbered by about two to one by seasoned British professionals, as opposed to his mostly untrained militia; his position on the Rodriguez Canal was the only thing standing between the British and New Orleans. It was plain to Jackson and the others that so long as the British remained, they could expect a major attack; they simply did not know when or how it would fall. It was said that Jackson, ill and frail as he was, did not sleep at all during this trying period, except to nap on a couch in the now-wrecked Macarty house, which was barely habitable.

Finally, on January 3, word came that the long-anticipated, sorely needed 2,368-man brigade of Kentucky militia was in the area, still on the river but expected first thing the next morning. The bad news was that fewer than about 10 percent of them were well armed, and less than a third had any arms at all! This came as a shock to Jackson, who roared, “I don’t believe it! I have never known a Kentuckian who did not always have on his person a rifle, a pack of cards, and a bottle of whisky!” But it was true. The Kentuckians had been told that arms and other military equipment awaited them at New Orleans.

Jackson renewed his scouting upriver for the missing munitions boat (and, by the way, to arrest its captain and bring him to New Orleans in chains), but it was to no avail—the boat would not arrive for another two weeks. In frustration, he sent his aides to scour New Orleans for any piece of firearm whatsoever, but the best they could find was a cache of antiquated Spanish muskets that had been squirreled away by the city government in case of a slave revolt. Most of these weapons were rusty and probably better used as clubs than as firing pieces.

Almost as bad for the Kentuckians was the condition of their clothing. Most of them were in rags after their two-month-long journey downriver, and the weather had turned freezing cold again. The sight of them marching through the streets of New Orleans so tattered and torn, and often clutching at the rents in their clothes to cover themselves from immodesty, actually brought tears to the eyes of many of the women of the city, who immediately began a campaign to fashion blankets, draperies, and bed linens into clothing for these unfortunate creatures. The Louisiana legislature appropriated $6,000, and Louisiana citizens—including many of the men in Jackson’s camp—contributed another $10,000; in less than a week the ladies of New Orleans, according to Major Latour, had produced “twelve hundred blanket cloaks, two hundred seventy-five waistcoats, eleven hundred twenty-seven pairs of pantaloons, eight hundred shirts, four hundred and ten pairs of shoes, and a great number of mattresses.”

J
ackson was concerned, as he had been ever since he arrived in New Orleans, that the British might come at him from different directions, and it was a logical fear, given the wide variety of approaches into the city. He knew he had defeated Pakenham’s army twice now, and the question on his mind was: Would the British general try it again, or would he try to find some other way, farther up the bayou perhaps, to attack Jackson from the rear?

Accordingly, he summoned his old friend Colonel Reuben Kemper*
 
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and told him to take a detachment to reconnoiter the British positions on the bayou and see if there were any signs that the enemy was about to leave. Kemper was the ideal officer for the job, as well as a man after Jackson’s own heart. According to historian Walker, he was an inveterate English- and Spaniard-hater, who had once been kidnapped by the Spanish authorities in New Orleans for complaining about their imperialist outrages.

Kemper and his two brothers somehow escaped their supposed fate of a lifetime in chains in the gold mines of Spanish Cuba, and for their revenge, when they later ran into one of their kidnappers, they “inflicted upon his naked back one hundred lashes, then one hundred more for their brother Nathan who was absent, cut off his ears with a dull knife, and then let him loose. These gory trophies were long preserved in a bottle of spirits and hung up in one of the Kempers’ parlors.”

It took Kemper a full twenty-four hours, stealing through canal to bayou to swamp, until he reached a position overlooking the British beachhead at Bayou Bienvenue. If the enemy intended to leave, Kemper reported, he certainly did not show any signs of it. The British had fortified their positions and put out pickets, and even burned away the eight-foot-high reed grass of the prairies, apparently to prevent the Americans from sneaking through it and attacking from the rear. The boats Kemper saw arriving were being off-loaded with men and military equipment.

What Jackson quickly deduced from this information was that the British were planning to attack him again on his front. On Friday, January 6, he received another important piece of intelligence.

One of the sailing masters who had escaped the carnage during the Battle of Lake Borgne had observed a small British supply boat headed across the lake toward Bayou Bienvenue, and he dashed out with three armed boats and captured her. From her crew, now prisoners, it was learned that the British were widening and deepening the Villeré Canal from the bayou to the Mississippi. When Jackson imparted this news to Commodore Patterson, the naval officer went down to a point on the right bank of the river just opposite the British encampment and for several hours studied it through his spyglass. When he reported back to Jackson, it was to say that in his opinion the enemy was planning to use the Villeré Canal to launch an invasion of the west bank of the river. Jackson immediately understood the peril, because if the British were successful and captured Patterson’s guns, these arms could be turned to bombard the rear of his lines with disastrous effect.

The Kentucky brigade commander, General John Thomas, had fallen too ill on the trip downriver to assume his duties; Brigadier General John Adair, his subordinate, would have to take his place. Actually, this might have been a good thing. Adair was an extremely knowledgeable and competent fighter, with the added benefit that he was good friends with Jackson, who trusted him implicitly. One of the first things Jackson asked Adair was for his opinion of the American fortifications.

It was Saturday, January 7, 1815, and Jackson had spent most of the afternoon at his telescope high in his little aerie in the Macarty house. He could observe that the British in their encampment were as busy as a swarm of bees. Some appeared to be making scaling ladders, and he saw a great number of redcoats clustered about an immense object, apparently in the act of moving it, but whether it was a boat or piece of artillery he could not tell. One thing Jackson did sense, however, was that the following morning the British were going to come at him on both sides of the river. “Oh, there’s no doubt of it,” he said. “They mean business; they will attack at daybreak.”

Jackson ordered General Adair to send across the river as reinforcements 400 of his Kentuckians, who must first march up to New Orleans to collect whatever weapons had been made available to them, then cross the river by boat, and then march back down the six or eight miles to the lines established by General Morgan and the Louisiana militia.

They did not get off until nearly seven p.m., and when they reached the city it was found that there were only weapons enough for half of them—and those the mostly rusted and antiquated Spanish muskets. So about half of the Kentuckians crossed the river to join Morgan’s defense and the others returned to Jackson’s lines. Jackson tried to consider everything he had done to prepare, and late in the afternoon he asked Adair to tour the line with him.

They started at the river, where construction was still incomplete on the little redoubt out in front of Jackson’s line. Jackson had been skeptical of the idea to start with, not happy about leaving an outpost where it could be overrun just in front of his position and its three cannon possibly turned and used against him. But his engineers had persuaded Old Hickory that the redoubt was needed to enfilade the enemy flank, shooting straight down the length of the ditch if the British should get that far. It was manned by a company of regulars of the 44th and supported directly behind Jackson’s line by Captain Beale’s company of New Orleans lawyers, bankers, and merchants.

This time, though, when Jackson came upon the small gunpost he studied it for a moment, then shook his head and complained to Adair, “That will give us trouble!”

Moving down the line they reached Battery No. 1, on the levee road. This consisted of two brass twelve-pounders and a howitzer and was commanded by the cigar-chomping Captain Humphrey of the 44th. Any British column attempting to attack up the levee road would have to face a hail of iron from these considerable guns.

Less than one hundred yards down the rampart, walking past the 430 regulars of the 7th Infantry, they came to Battery No. 2, a twenty-four-pounder served by the crew of the
Carolina.
And fifty yards beyond this was Battery No. 3, “the famous battery of the privateers,” containing two twenty-four-pounders.

Just twenty yards farther, walking past part of Major Plauché’s battalion—289 men strong—was Battery No. 4, with the big thirty-two-pounder, manned by more of the
Carolina
’s crew.

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*
 
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