A History of the American People

first real hero since Washington. When he reached New Orleans on December i he found it
virtually undefended. He worked swiftly. He formed the local pirates, who hated the Royal
Navy, on whose ships they were periodically hanged, into a defensive unit. Hundreds of free
blacks were turned into a battalion under white officers (but with their own NCOs). He paid
them well. When his paymaster protested, Jackson told him: Be pleased to keep to yourself your opinions ... without inquiring whether the troops are white, black or tea.' He brought as many troops into the city as possible and, using his experience at the Horseshoe, built a main defense line of great strength and height. By the time the British, who had sixty ships and 14,000 troops, mostly Peninsula veterans, were ready to attack on January 8, 1815, New Orleans was strongly defended. Even so, it could have been outflanked. And that was the British intention. Jackson's main defense was behind Rodriguez's Canal, a ditch 4 feet deep and 10 feet wide, which he reinforced by a high mud rampart. The British land commander, General Sir Edward Pakenham, a stupendously brave but impatient man-'not the brightest genius,' as his brother-in-law the Duke of Wellington put it-planned a two-pronged assault, up the almost undefended left bank of the Mississippi, to take the rampart from the rear, while his troops in front kept the defenders occupied. But the force landed in the wrong place and fell behind schedule. Pakenham decided he could not wait and, relying on the sheer professionalism of his veterans, decided on a frontal assault alone and fired the two Congreves which were the signal for attack. A frontal assault against a strongly defended position not enfiladed from the rear was a textbook example of folly which would have made Wellington despair. It became even more murderous when the leading battalion failed to bring up the fascines to fill the ditch and the ladders to scale the rampart. The result was a pointless slaughter of brave men. The advancing redcoats met a combination of grapeshot, canister-shell, rifles, and muskets, all skillfully directed by Jackson himself. The attack wavered and, in goading on their men, all three British general officers were killed- Pakenham on the spot, Sir Samuel Gibbs, commanding the attack column, fatally wounded, General Keane taken off the field writhing in agony from a bullet in his groin. By the time the reserve commander arrived to take over, the men were running and it was all over. Jackson lost only thirteen killed, the British 291, with another 484 missing and over a thousand wounded. Codrington, watching from HMS Tonnant, could only shake his head in disbelief at the debacle. There never was,' he wrote to his wife, a more complete failure.' Thus ended one of the shortest and most decisive battles of history. Three days later the first rumors arrived that Britain and America had made peace. The British expedition continued to fight until formally notified, and on February 11 took Fort Bower, preparatory to occupying Mobile. But by the time Admiral Cochrane was ready to enter the town a dispatch-boat arrived with orders to cease hostilities, and in March his fleet sailed for home. The peace had actually been signed on Christmas Eve, in theneutral' town of Ghent, and it had taken six months to
negotiate. It might have come sooner, had the American team been less ill assorted-a typical
example of Madison's lack of realism. It consisted of the Treasury Secretary, Albert Gallatin, and
the federalist Senator from Delaware, James Bayard-two men of opposing viewpoints on
virtually all subjects. Then there was John Quincy Adams, the minister to St Petersburg and son
of the second President, and Henry Clay, leader of the War Hawks. Clay was a Westerner from
Kentucky, a thruster, not quite a gentleman, a drinker, gambler, and womanizer. Adams was a
Harvard man and a Boston Brahmin, who had spent his life in embassies, was fluent in foreign
languages and the diplomatic arts. He was also argumentative, puritanical and prissy, thin-
skinned, quick to take offense, a superb hater, and constant compiler of enemies lists. His final