VI
General Pakenham, realizing that further delays would only give Jackson additional time in which to make his position more secure, concluded that a day-break frontal attack would break the resistance of the Americans. He was still not convinced of their ultimate ability to withstand Britannia’s veterans. Strangely, he was joined in this opinion by his supporting officers, although they had witnessed the bravery and skill of the American in arms in both night and day engagements.
Sitting in the top of a tree, surveying the American works on the afternoon of January 7, Pakenham was inclined to agree with a deserter to his ranks that the weakest point in the American position was the extreme left, where some of Coffee’s militiamen stood knee-deep in the swamp. So far as he could determine, the outlook appeared good that the morning would bring a memorable victory. His plan called for three columns to attack. The smaller one, numbering about 800 men, was to invest the American right. Two thousand soldiers were in the middle column, while the 4,000 on the British right were to storm Coffee’s militiamen and attack Jackson’s rear. To begin the attack, 1,400 troops would be transported across the Mississippi by boats brought in from Lake Borgne to capture an American battery erected there to rake the British ranks.
Jackson also was observing Pakenham on the afternoon of the seventh and he concluded that a major assault upon his works was imminent. Fascines and scaling ladders were in evidence, as were additional troops which had arrived the previous day under the command of Major General John Lambert, who had sailed from England at the end of October. Jackson’s plan of defense, a simple one, was designed to frustrate and repulse the British onslaught. The riflemen were numbered “one” and “two.” At the signal, the “ones” would fire first, step back, reload, and then wait for the “twos” to fire.
The night hours wore slowly on until the first vestiges of morning light which was hardly perceptible because of the low-hanging fog. Every Tennessean fingered his trigger, checking occasionally to see if his trusty long knife was in place should hand-to-hand struggle become necessary. Finally, when the rolling mists parted, there was seen a red line advancing across the plain of Chalmette toward the American entrenchments. When Jackson saw this, he felt that the plan of attack would fail because no frontal attack could storm his entrenchments. Coffee strode up and down his line encouraging his men to remain steady and to withhold their fire until “one could see their belt-buckles.”29 On and on the silent line flowed, until it seemed like a great red carpet across the battlefield. Coffee recalled seeing the provocative scene of Redcoats advancing “in solid column in superior numbers and great order.” Within a few moments a mighty blast of artillery mowed down entire columns, but failed to halt the now surging tide streaming dangerously near the entrenchments. The British had come to within forty yards of Coffee’s flank before he roared: “Now men, aim for the center of the cross belts–fire!”30
The smoke from the long rifles hung so heavy in that misty morning that Jackson, slightly to the right of center, could not ascertain the result of the militiamen’s blast. So with Abner Duncan and Tom Overton he rode to Coffee’s end of the line. A few moments later there was another sharp, ringing volley, and Jackson increased his horse’s gallop. When he was within 100 yards of Coffee, the smoke lifted just enough for the surprised commander to see the British “falling back in a confused mass with the first ranks of their column … blown away.”31 So far as Coffee was concerned, the grape and canister were “nothing to the carnage of our rifles and muskets when they (the British) reached them.”
General Carroll also caught the force of the attack when nearly 2,000 men bore down upon the center of his line. As before, his rifles answered with an authority which inspired one officer to write: “The determined firmness of the men, silent as death at their posts, convinced me that on that day they would add fresh laurels to those already won by Tennessee.”32
Regrouping, the British line advanced a second time only to be cut down again. It was now apparent that Pakenham’s well devised plans had gone awry. The depleted columns which did reach the works could not scale them because an Irish regiment and a West Indian regiment, entrusted with the responsibility of carrying the fascines and scaling ladders, had failed in their duty. A major, a lieutenant, and twenty men finally pressed across the ditch on the American left, and the two officers started up the works. The major was riddled immediately with bullets, but the lieutenant managed to scale the top and demanded the surrender of a couple of militia officers facing him. To this demand they suggested that he look behind him, which he did and discovered to his consternation that the men whom he thought were following him “had vanished as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.”33 Of greater consequence to the British, however, was the death of General Pakenham, who had been cut down as he attempted to arouse his stricken troops for another assault.
During the struggle, several Tennesseans became mixed with the Kentuckians and one of them was accidentally killed by a Kentucky sharpshooter when a gun discharged prematurely. One Tennessean, remembered only as Paleface, remained with the Kentuckians throughout the battle. A gaunt little man, Paleface received the sword of a surrendering British officer and, in the closing minutes of the fight, killed at nearly 300 yards a retreating Redcoat who was making obscene gestures at the defenders.
As the firing died down, captives began to trickle into the works, one of whom was a young man about 19 or 20 years old, apparently in great pain. He was assisted by several Kentuckians who sought to alleviate his suffering by removing his accouterments. At the same time a Tennessean returned from the river with a tin coffee pot filled with water. The stricken soldier asked if he could have just a drop. “Oh yes!” said the Tennessean, “I will treat you to anything I’ve got.” After taking two or three sips out of the spout, the young man returned the pot, sank backward, took a gasp or two, and died.34
By now, the tide of battle was receding as the aggressors retired from the field “under cover of a very thick fog.”35 When the smoke and fog lifted, the gallant defenders witnessed a sight which would forever be etched upon their minds. Before them were the tortured forms of the dead and dying, many of them convulsing in the agonies of death. Across the battlefield, there also arose sounds which would reverberate across the years in their memories—the groans and lamentations of fallen men. Witnessing that scene, few could dispute Coffee’s conviction that the “famous campaign against Orleans is at rest at present, and has thus far been marked with better fortune to the American arms than anything heretofore known.”36 Over 2,000 British were either dead, wounded, or missing, while the American loss stood at seven killed and six wounded.37
Thus, within two hours the Battle of New Orleans belonged to history. General Lambert, the only remaining British officer of general rank, covered the retreat and that afternoon assumed the melancholy task of retrieving and burying the dead. The bodies were delivered to the British lines by the Tennesseans and Kentuckians on the unused scaling ladders they found strewn across the battlefield. The dead soldiers were interred in a site on the Bienvenu plantation. Ironically, some British officers were buried in Villere’s garden, which had been their headquarters prior to the battle. It was not until the night of January 18, however, that the entire British army withdrew from its encampments and returned across Lake Borgne to their fleet still anchored in deep water between Cat and Ship islands. Their departure was carefully observed by Jackson, who distributed his forces to protect every approach to the city should the frustrated enemy attempt to strike another blow.