Beacon Lights of History, Volume 12 | Page 8

now learned the strength of the enemy.
On the 23d--as always, eager to be at his enemy, and moving with his
characteristic energy--Jackson sent a small force down to make a night
attack on the British camp; also a schooner, heavily armed with cannon,
to co-operate from the river. It was a wild and inconsequent fight; but it
checked the advance of the British, who now were still more impressed
with the need of reinforcements; it aroused the confidence and fighting
spirit of the Americans, and it enabled Jackson to take up a defensive
line behind an old canal, extending across the plain from river to
swamp, and gave him time to fortify it. At once he raised a formidable
barricade of mud and timber, and strengthened it with cotton-bales

from the neighboring plantations. The cotton, however, proved rather a
nuisance than a help, as it took fire under the attack, and smoked,
annoying the men. The "fortifications of cotton-bales" were only a
romance of the war.
On the 25th arrived Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of
Wellington and an able soldier, to take command, and on the 28th the
British attacked the extemporized but strong breastworks, confident of
success. But the sharp-shooters from the backwoods of Tennessee
under Carroll, and from Kentucky under Coffee, who fought with every
advantage, protected by their mud defences, were equally confident.
The slaughter of the British troops, utterly unprotected though brave
and gallant, was terrible, and they were repulsed. Preparations were
now made for a still more vigorous, systematic, and general assault,
and a force was sent across the river to menace the city from that side.
On the 8th of January the decisive battle was fought which
extinguished forever all dreams of the conquest of America, on the part
of the British. General Pakenham, who commanded the advancing
columns in person, was killed, and their authorities state their loss to
have been two thousand killed, wounded, and missing. The American
loss was eight killed and thirteen wounded. It was a rash presumption
for the British to attack a fortified entrenchment ten feet high in some
places, and ten feet thick, with detached redoubts to flank it and three
thousand men behind it. The conflict was not strictly a battle,--not like
an encounter in the open field, where the raw troops under Jackson,
most of them militia, would have stood no chance with the veterans
whom Wellington had led to victory and glory.
Jackson's brilliant defence at New Orleans was admirably planned and
energetically executed. It had no effect on the war, for the treaty of
peace, although not yet heard of, had been signed weeks before; but it
enabled America to close the conflict with a splendid success, which
offset the disasters and mistakes of the Northern campaigns. Naturally,
it was magnified into a great military exploit, and raised the fame of
Jackson to such a height, all over the country, that nothing could ever
afterwards weaken his popularity, no matter what he did, lawful or

unlawful. He was a victor over the Indians and over the English, and all
his arbitrary acts were condoned by an admiring people who had but
few military heroes to boast of.
His successes had a bad effect on Jackson himself. He came to feel that
he had a right to ride over precedents and law when it seemed to him
expedient. He set up his will against constituted authorities, and
everybody who did not endorse his measures he regarded as a personal
enemy, to be crushed if possible. It was never said of him that he was
unpatriotic in his intentions, only that he was wilful, vindictive, and
ignorant. From the 8th of January, 1815, to the day of his death he was
the most popular man that this country ever saw,--excepting, perhaps,
Washington and Lincoln,--the central figure in American politics, with
prodigious influence even after he had finally retired from public life.
Immediately after the defence of New Orleans the legislatures of
different States, and Congress itself, passed grateful resolutions for his
military services, and the nation heaped all the honor on the hero that
was in its power to give,--medals, swords, and rewards, and Congress
remitted a fine which had been imposed by Judge Hall, in New Orleans,
for contempt of court. Jackson's severity in executing six militia-men
for mutiny was approved generally as a wholesome exercise of military
discipline, and all his acts were glorified. Wherever he went there was a
round of festivities. He began to be talked about, as soon as the war
was closed, as a candidate for the presidency, although when the idea
was first proposed to him he repelled it with genuine indignation.
Scarcely had the British troops been withdrawn from the Gulf of
Mexico to fight more successfully at