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The Naval War of 1812

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There were a number of other engagements where the British were
successful but where it is difficult to compare the forces. Twice
a 74 captured or destroyed two frigates, and a razee performed a
similar feat. An 18-gun brig, the _Weasel_, fought two 16-gun brigs
till one of them blew up.

The loss of the two navies at each other's hands during the four
years was:--

English Ships. French Ships.
1 16-gun brig 3 line-of-battle ships
1 12-gun brig 11 frigates
1 10-gun cutter 2 26-gun flûtes
2 16-gun brigs
1 10-gun brig
many gun-boats, etc.

Or one navy lost three vessels, mounting 38 guns, and the other 19
vessels, mounting 830 guns.

During the same time the English lost to the Danes one 14-gun brig,
and destroyed in return a frigate of 46 guns, a 6-gun schooner, a
4-gun cutter, two galliots and several gun-brigs.

In the above lists it is to be noticed how many of the engagements
were indecisive, owing chiefly to the poor gunnery of the combatants.
The fact that both the _Eurotas_ and the _Amelia_, though more
powerfully armed and manned than the _Hebrus_, yet failed to capture
the sister ships of the frigate taken by the latter, shows that heavy
metal and a numerous crew are not the only elements necessary for
success; indeed the _Eurotas_ and _Amelia_ were as superior in force
to their antagonists as the _Constitution_ was to the _Java_.

But the chief point to be noticed is the overwhelming difference
in the damage the two navies caused each other. This difference was,
roughly, as five to one against the Danes, and as fifty to one against
the French; while it was as four to three in favor of the American.
These figures give some idea of the effectiveness of the various
navies. At any rate they show that we had found out what the European
nations had for many years in vain striven to discover--a way to
do more damage than we received in a naval contest with England.



Chapter X


1815

THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS

_The war on land generally disastrous--British send great expedition
against New Orleans--Jackson prepares for the defence of the city--Night
attack on the British advance guard--Artillery duels--Great battle
of January 8, 1815--Slaughtering repulse of the main attack--Rout
of the Americans on the right bank of the river--Final retreat of
the British--Observations on the character of the troops and
commanders engaged._

While our navy had been successful, the war on land had been for
us full of humiliation. The United States then formed but a loosely
knit confederacy, the sparse population scattered over a great expanse
of land. Ever since the Federalist party had gone out of power in
1800, the nation's ability to maintain order at home and enforce
respect abroad had steadily dwindled; and the twelve years' nerveless
reign of the Doctrinaire Democracy had left us impotent for attack
and almost as feeble for defence. Jefferson, though a man whose views
and theories had a profound influence upon our national life, was
perhaps the most incapable Executive that ever filled the presidential
chair; being almost purely a visionary, he was utterly unable to
grapple with the slightest actual danger, and, not even excepting
his successor, Madison, it would be difficult to imagine a man less
fit to guide the state with honor and safety through the stormy times
that marked the opening of the present century. Without the prudence
to avoid war or the forethought to prepare for it, the Administration
drifted helplessly into a conflict in which only the navy prepared
by the Federalists twelve years before, and weakened rather than
strengthened during the intervening time, saved us from complete
and shameful defeat. True to its theories, the House of Virginia
made no preparations, and thought the war could be fought by "the
nation in arms"; the exponents of this particular idea, the militiamen,
a partially armed mob, ran like sheep whenever brought into the field.
The regulars were not much better. After two years of warfare, Scott
records in his autobiography that there were but two books of tactics
(one written in French) in the entire army on the Niagara frontier;
and officers and men were on such a dead level of ignorance that
he had to spend a month drilling all of the former, divided into
squads, in the school of the soldier and school of the company.
[Footnote: "Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Scott," written by himself
(2 vols., New York, 1864), i, p. 115.] It is small wonder that such
troops were utterly unable to meet the English. Until near the end,
the generals were as bad as the armies they commanded, and the
administration of the War Department continued to be a triumph of
imbecility to the very last. [Footnote: Monroe's biographer (see
"James Monroe," by Daniel C. Gilman, Boston, 1883, p. 123) thinks
he made a good Secretary of War. I think he was as much a failure
as his predecessors, and a harsher criticism could not be passed
on him. Like the other statesmen of his school, he was mighty in
word and weak in action; bold to plan but weak to perform. As an
instance, contrast his fiery letters to Jackson with the fact that
he never gave him a particle of practical help.] With the exception
of the brilliant and successful charge of the Kentucky mounted infantry
at the battle of the Thames, the only bright spot in the war in the
North was the campaign on the Niagara frontier during the summer of
1814; and even here, the chief battle, that of Lundy's Lane, though
reflecting as much honor on the Americans as on the British, was
for the former a defeat, and not a victory, as most of our writers
seem to suppose.

But the war had a dual aspect. It was partly a contest between the
two branches of the English race, and partly a last attempt on the
part of the Indian tribes to check the advance of the most rapidly
growing one of these same two branches; and this last portion of
the struggle, though attracting comparatively little attention, was
really much the most far-reaching in its effect upon history. The
triumph of the British would have distinctly meant the giving a new
lease of life to the Indian nationalities, the hemming in, for a time,
of the United States, and the stoppage, perhaps for many years, of
the march of English civilization across the continent. The English
of Britain were doing all they could to put off the day when their
race would reach to a worldwide supremacy.

There was much fighting along our Western frontier with various Indian
tribes; and it was especially fierce in the campaign that a backwoods
general of Tennessee, named Andrew Jackson, carried on against the
powerful confederacy of the Creeks, a nation that was thrust in like
a wedge between the United States proper and their dependency, the
newly acquired French province of Louisiana. After several slaughtering
fights, the most noted being the battle of the Horse-shoe Bend, the
power of the Creeks was broken for ever; and afterward, as there
was much question over the proper boundaries of what was then the
Latin land of Florida, Jackson marched south, attacked the Spaniards
and drove them from Pensacola. Meanwhile the British, having made
a successful and ravaging summer campaign through Virginia and
Maryland, situated in the heart of the country, organized the most
formidable expedition of the war for a winter campaign against the
outlying land of Louisiana, whose defender Jackson of necessity became.
Thus, in the course of events, it came about that Louisiana was the
theatre on which the final and most dramatic act of the war was played.

Amid the gloomy, semi-tropical swamps that cover the quaking delta
thrust out into the blue waters of the Mexican Gulf by the strong
torrent of the mighty Mississippi, stood the fair, French city of
New Orleans. Its lot had been strange and varied. Won and lost, once
and again, in conflict with the subjects of the Catholic king, there
was a strong Spanish tinge in the French blood that coursed so freely
through the veins of its citizens; joined by purchase to the great
Federal Republic, it yet shared no feeling with the latter, save
that of hatred to the common foe. And now an hour of sore need had
come upon the city; for against it came the red English, lords of
fight by sea and land. A great fleet of war vessels--ships of the
line--frigates and sloops--under Admiral Cochrane, was on the way
to New Orleans, convoying a still larger fleet of troop ships, with
aboard them some ten thousand fighting men, chiefly the fierce and
hardy veterans of the Peninsular War, [Footnote: "The British infantry
embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, some for England." ("History
of the War in the Peninsula," by Major-General Sir W. F. P. Napier,
K. C. B. New Edition. New York, 1882, vol. v, p. 200.) For discussion
of numbers, see farther on.] who had been trained for seven years
in the stern school of the Iron Duke, and who were now led by one
of the bravest and ablest of all Wellington's brave and able
lieutenants, Sir Edward Packenham.

On the 8th of December 1814, the foremost vessels, with among their
number the great two-decker _Tonnant_, carrying the admiral's flag,
anchored off the Chandeleur Islands [Footnote: See, ante, p. 343.];
and as the current of the Mississippi was too strong to be easily
breasted, the English leaders determined to bring their men by boats
through the bayous, and disembark them on the bank of the river ten
miles below the wealthy city at whose capture they were aiming. There
was but one thing to prevent the success of this plan, and that was
the presence in the bayous of five American gun-boats, manned by
a hundred and eighty men, and commanded by Lieutenant Comdg. Catesby
Jones, a very shrewd fighter. So against him was sent Captain Nicholas
Lockyer with forty-five barges, and nearly a thousand sailors and
marines, men who had grown gray during a quarter of a century of
unbroken ocean warfare. The gun-boats were moored in a head-and-stern
line, near the Rigolets, with their boarding-nettings triced up,
and every thing ready to do desperate battle; but the British rowed
up with strong, swift strokes, through a murderous fire of great
guns and musketry; the vessels were grappled amid fierce resistance;
the boarding-nettings were slashed through and cut away; with furious
fighting the decks were gained; and one by one, at push of pike and
cutlass stroke the gun-boats were carried in spite of their stubborn
defenders; but not till more than one barge had been sunk, while the
assailants had lost a hundred men, and the assailed about half as many.

There was now nothing to hinder the landing of the troops; and as the
scattered transports arrived, the soldiers were disembarked, and ferried
through the sluggish water of the bayous on small flat-bottomed craft;
and finally, Dec. 23d, the advance guard, two thousand strong, under
General Keane, emerged at the mouth of the canal Villeré, and camped on
the bank of the river, [Footnote: Letter of Major-General John Keane,
Dec. 26, 1814.] but nine miles below New Orleans, which now seemed a
certain prize, almost within their grasp.

Yet, although a mighty and cruel foe was at their very gates, nothing
save fierce defiance reigned in the fiery creole hearts of the Crescent
City. For a master-spirit was in their midst. Andrew Jackson, having
utterly broken and destroyed the most powerful Indian confederacy
that had ever menaced the Southwest, and having driven the haughty
Spaniards from Pensacola, was now bending all the energies of his
rugged intellect and indomitable will to the one object of defending
New Orleans. No man could have been better fitted for the task. He
had hereditary wrongs to avenge on the British, and he hated them
with an implacable fury that was absolutely devoid of fear. Born
and brought up among the lawless characters of the frontier, and
knowing well how to deal with them, he was able to establish and
preserve the strictest martial law in the city without in the least
quelling the spirit of the citizens. To a restless and untiring energy
he united sleepless vigilance and genuine military genius. Prompt
to attack whenever the chance offered itself, seizing with ready
grasp the slightest vantage-ground, and never giving up a foot of
earth that he could keep, he yet had the patience to play a defensive
game when it so suited him, and with consummate skill he always
followed out the scheme of warfare that was best adapted to this
wild soldiery. In after-years he did to his country some good and
more evil; but no true American can think of his deeds at New Orleans
without profound and unmixed thankfulness.

He had not reached the city till December 2d, and had therefore but
three weeks in which to prepare the defence. The Federal Government,
throughout the campaign, did absolutely nothing for the defence of
Louisiana; neither provisions nor munitions of war of any sort were
sent to it, nor were any measures taken for its aid. [Footnote:
"Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana" (by
Major A. Lacarriex Latour, translated from the French by H. P. Nugent,
Philadelphia, 1816), p. 66.] The inhabitants had been in a state of
extreme despondency up to the time that Jackson arrived, for they
had no one to direct them, and they were weakened by factional
divisions [Footnote: Latour, 53.]; but after his coming there was
nothing but the utmost enthusiasm displayed, so great was the confidence
he inspired, and so firm his hand in keeping down all opposition.
Under his direction earthworks were thrown up to defend all the
important positions, the whole population working night and day at
them; all the available artillery was mounted, and every ounce of
war material that the city contained was seized; martial law was
proclaimed; and all general business was suspended, every thing
being rendered subordinate to the one grand object of defence.

Jackson's forces were small. There were two war vessels in the river.
One was the little schooner _Carolina_, manned by regular seamen,
largely New Englanders. The other was the newly built ship _Louisiana_,
a powerful corvette; she had of course no regular crew, and her officers
were straining every nerve to get one from the varied ranks of the
maritime population of New Orleans; long-limbed and hard-visaged Yankees,
Portuguese and Norwegian seamen from foreign merchantmen, dark-skinned
Spaniards from the West Indies, swarthy Frenchmen who had served under
the bold privateersman Lafitte,--all alike were taken, and all alike
by unflagging exertions were got into shape for battle. [Footnote:
Letter of Commodore Daniel G. Patterson, Dec. 20, 1814.] There were
two regiments of regulars, numbering together about eight hundred
men, raw and not very well disciplined, but who were now drilled
with great care and regularity. In addition to this Jackson raised
somewhat over a thousand militiamen among the citizens. There were
some Americans among them, but they were mostly French Creoles,
[Footnote: Latour, 110.] and one band had in its formation something
that was curiously pathetic. It was composed of free men of color,
[Footnote: Latour, 111.] who had gathered to defend the land which
kept the men of their race in slavery; who were to shed their blood
for the Flag that symbolized to their kind not freedom but bondage;
who were to die bravely as freemen, only that their brethren might
live on ignobly as slaves. Surely there was never a stranger instance
than this of the irony of fate.

But if Jackson had been forced to rely only on these troops New Orleans
could not have been saved. His chief hope lay in the volunteers of
Tennessee, who, under their Generals, Coffee and Carroll, were pushing
their toilsome and weary way toward the city. Every effort was made
to hurry their march through the almost impassable roads, and at last,
in the very nick of time, on the 23d of December, the day of which
the British troops reached the river bank, the vanguard of the
Tennesseeans marched into New Orleans. Gaunt of form and grim of
face; with their powder-horns slung over their buckskin shirts; carrying
their long rifles on their shoulders and their heavy hunting-knives
stuck in their belts; with their coon-skin caps and fringed leggings;
thus came the grizzly warriors of the backwoods, the heroes of the
Horse-Shoe Bend, the victors over Spaniard and Indian, eager to pit
themselves against the trained regulars of Britain, and to throw
down the gage of battle to the world-renowned infantry of the island
English. Accustomed to the most lawless freedom, and to giving free
reign to the violence of their passions, defiant of discipline and
impatient of the slightest restraint, caring little for God and nothing
for man, they were soldiers who, under an ordinary commander, would
have been fully as dangerous to themselves and their leaders as to
their foes. But Andrew Jackson was of all men the one best fitted
to manage such troops. Even their fierce natures quailed before the
ungovernable fury of a spirit greater than their own; and their sullen,
stubborn wills were bent as last before his unyielding temper and
iron hand. Moreover, he was one of themselves; he typified their
passions and prejudices, their faults and their virtues; he shared
their hardships as if he had been a common private, and, in turn,
he always made them partakers of his triumphs. They admired his
personal prowess with pistol and rifle, his unswerving loyalty to
his friends, and the relentless and unceasing war that he waged alike
on the foes of himself and his country. As a result they loved and
feared him as few generals have ever been loved or feared; they obeyed
him unhesitatingly; they followed his lead without flinching or murmuring,
and they ever made good on the field of battle the promise their
courage held out to his judgment.

It was noon of December 23d when General Keane, with nineteen hundred
men, halted and pitched his camp on the east bank of the Mississippi;
and in the evening enough additional troops arrived to swell his force
to over twenty-three hundred soldiers. [Footnote: James ("Military
Occurrences of the Late War," by Wm. James, London, 1818), vol. ii,
p. 362, says 2,050 rank and file; the English returns, as already
explained, unlike the French and American, never included officers,
sergeants, drummers, artillerymen, or engineers, but only "sabres and
bayonets" (Napier, iv, 252). At the end of Napier's fourth volume
is given the "morning state" of Wellington's forces on April 10, 1814.
This shows 56,030 rank and file and 7,431 officers, sergeants, and
trumpeters or drummers; or, in other words, to get at the real British
force in action, even supposing there are no artillerymen or engineers
present, 13 percent, must be added to the given number, which includes
only rank and file. Making this addition, Keane had 2,310 men. The
Americans greatly overestimated his force, Latour making it 4,980.]
Keane's encampment was in a long plain, rather thinly covered with
fields and farmhouses, about a mile in breadth, and bounded on one
side by the river, on the other by gloomy and impenetrable cypress
swamps; and there was no obstacle interposed between the British
camp and the city it menaced.

At two in the afternoon word was brought to Jackson that the foe had
reached the river bank, and without a moment's delay the old backwoods
fighter prepared to strike a rough first blow. At once, and as if
by magic, the city started from her state of rest into one of fierce
excitement and eager preparation. The alarm-guns were fired; in every
quarter the war-drums were beaten; while, amid the din and clamor,
all the regulars and marines, the best of the creole militia, and
the vanguard of the Tennesseeans, under Coffee,--forming a total of
a little more than two thousand men, [Footnote: General Jackson, in
his official letter, says only 1,500; but Latour. in a detailed
statement, makes it 2,024; exclusive of 107 Mississippi dragoons
who marched with the column, but being on horseback had to stay behind,
and took no part in the action. Keane thought he had been attacked
by 5,000 men.]--were assembled in great haste, and the gray of the
winter twilight saw them, with Old Hickory at their head, marching
steadily along the river bank toward the camp of their foes. Patterson,
meanwhile, in the schooner _Carolina_, dropped down with the current
to try the effect of a flank attack.

Meanwhile the British had spent the afternoon in leisurely arranging
their camp, in posting the pickets, and in foraging among the farm-houses.
There was no fear of attack, and as the day ended huge campfires were
lit, at which the hungry soldiers cooked their suppers undisturbed.
One division of the troops had bivouacked on the high levee that kept
the waters from flooding the land near by; and about half past seven
in the evening their attention was drawn to a large schooner which
had dropped noiselessly down, in the gathering dusk, and had come to
anchor a short distance offshore, the force of the stream swinging her
broadside to the camp. [Footnote: I have taken my account of the night
action chiefly from the work of an English soldier who took part in
it; Ensign (afterward Chaplain-General) H. R. Gleig's "Narrative of
the Campaigns of the British Army at Washington, Baltimore, and New
Orleans." (New edition, Philadelphia, 1821, pp. 286-300.) ] The soldiers
crowded down to the water's edge, and, as the schooner returned no
answer to their hails, a couple of musket-shots were fired at her.
As if in answer to this challenge, the men on shore heard plainly the
harsh voice of her commander, as he sung out, "Now then, give it to
them for the honor of America"; and at once a storm of grape hurtled
into their ranks. Wild confusion followed. The only field-pieces with
Keane were two light 3-pounders, not able to cope with the _Carolina's_
artillery; the rocket guns were brought up, but were speedily silenced;
musketry proved quite as ineffectual; and in a very few minutes the
troops were driven helter-skelter off the levee, and were forced to
shelter themselves behind it, not without having suffered severe loss.
[Footnote: General Keane, in his letter, writes that the British suffered
but a single casualty; Gleig, who was present, says (p. 288): "The
deadly shower of grape swept down numbers in the camp."] The night
was now as black as pitch; the embers of the deserted camp-fires,
beaten about and scattered by the schooner's shot, burned with a
dull red glow; and at short intervals the darkness was momentarily
lit up by the flashes of the _Carolina's_ guns. Crouched behind the
levee, the British soldiers lay motionless, listening in painful
silence to the pattering of the grape among the huts, and to the
moans and shrieks of the wounded who lay beside them. Things continued
thus till toward nine o'clock, when a straggling fire from the pickets
gave warning of the approach of a more formidable foe. The American
land-forces had reached the outer lines of the British camp, and the
increasing din of the musketry, with ringing through it the whip-like
crack of the Tennesseean rifles, called out the whole British army
to the shock of a desperate and uncertain strife. The young moon had
by this time struggled through the clouds, and cast on the battle-field
a dim, unearthly light that but partly relieved the intense darkness.
All order was speedily lost. Each officer, American or British, as fast
as he could gather a few soldiers round him, attacked the nearest
group of foes; the smoke and gloom would soon end the struggle, when,
if unhurt, he would rally what men he could and plunge once more into
the fight. The battle soon assumed the character of a multitude of
individual combats, dying out almost as soon as they began, because
of the difficulty of telling friend from foe, and beginning with
ever-increasing fury as soon as they had ended. The clatter of the
firearms, the clashing of steel, the rallying cries and loud commands
of the officers, the defiant shouts of the men, joined to the yells
and groans of those who fell, all combined to produce so terrible a
noise and tumult that it maddened the coolest brains. From one side
or the other bands of men would penetrate into the heart of the enemy's
lines, and would there be captured, or would cut their way out with
the prisoners they had taken. There was never a fairer field for the
fiercest personal prowess, for in the darkness the firearms were of
little service, and the fighting was hand to hand. Many a sword, till
then but a glittering toy, was that night crusted with blood. The
British soldiers and the American regulars made fierce play with
their bayonets, and the Tennesseeans, with their long hunting-knives.
Man to man, in the grimmest hate, they fought and died, some by bullet
and some by bayonet-thrust or stroke of sword. More than one in his
death agony slew the foe at whose hand he himself had received the
mortal wound; and their bodies stiffened as they lay, locked in the
death grip. Again the clouds came over the moon; a thick fog crept
up from the river, wrapping from sight the ghastly havoc of the
battlefield; and long before midnight the fighting stopped perforce,
for the fog and the smoke and the gloom were such that no one could
see a yard away. By degrees each side drew off. [Footnote: Keane
writes: "The enemy thought it prudent to retire, and did not again
dare to advance. It was now 12 o'clock, and the firing ceased on
both sides"; and Jackson: "We should have succeeded... in capturing
the enemy, had not a thick fog, which arose about (?) o'clock,
occasioned some confusion.... I contented myself with lying on the
field that night." Jackson certainly failed to capture the British;
but equally certainly damaged them so as to arrest their march till
he was in condition to meet and check them. ] In sullen silence
Jackson marched his men up the river, while the wearied British
returned to their camp. The former had lost over two hundred,
[Footnote: 24 killed, 115 wounded, 74 missing.] the latter nearly
three hundred [Footnote: 46 killed, 167 wounded, 64 missing. I take
the official return for each side, as authority for the respective
force and loss.] men; for the darkness and confusion that added to
the horror, lessened the slaughter of the battle.

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