IV
NEW ORLEANS
A glance at the map will give the reader some idea of the doubts that must have beset Jackson concerning the point at which the enemy would probably attack New Orleans. The island on which the city stands was accessible from the sea by at least three general routes. The British might approach by the Mississippi River, which flows by the city on the west, or over Lake Pontchartrain, which stretches out to the north, or over Lake Borgne, from the southeast. Jackson first inspected Fort St. Philip, sixty miles below, on the river; besides the fort, there were, for river defences, the schooner Carolina and the sloop Louisiana. His next move was to Lake Pontchartrain, and he was still in that quarter when news came that the enemy had chosen the third route and was already on Lake Borgne. The British found there six American gun-boats, which were all destroyed or taken after a brief but gallant struggle. That was December 14, and New Orleans was not yet in any good posture of defence. The most natural route from the lake to the immediate neighborhood of the city was up the Bayou Bienvenu, which led to the southern end of a level plain bounded on the west by the river and on the east by a dense cypress swamp. At the northern end of the plain lay New Orleans, and the distance was but six or seven miles; the plain was in most places about a mile wide. Between the head of the bayou and the city there was not a fort or even a line of intrenchments. For this state of things Jackson has not escaped blame from military critics.
But if illness or any other cause had robbed him of his usual energy, the news of the disaster on Lake Borgne was the signal for a change in him and in the situation. Coffee, with part of the Tennessee volunteers, was up the river at Baton Rouge. A hurried summons brought him a hundred and twenty miles in two days, and on the 19th he was in camp a few miles above the city with eight hundred men. Two days later came General Carroll and a brigade of Tennessee militia, two thousand strong; with them came also a squadron of mounted Mississippi volunteers. Louisiana furnished a thousand militia; the city of New Orleans five or six hundred volunteers, of whom about a third were mulattoes. Jackson had also two incomplete regiments of regulars numbering together about eight hundred rank and file. A Kentucky brigade of twenty-five hundred men was on the way, but without arms. Of Carroll's men, only one in ten had a musket. To provide arms for these new troops was a difficult matter, and many of the Kentuckians were still unarmed when the final struggle came. The city became panic-stricken and disorderly, and Jackson promptly placed it under martial law.
Such was the situation when, on the morning of December 23, the British advance party, numbering about seventeen hundred, conveyed in small boats over the shallow Lake Borgne and up the Bienvenu, landed six miles below the city and seized the mansion of Major Villeré, a Creole gentleman of the neighborhood. Villeré was captured, but escaped, and at half past one o'clock Jackson knew in New Orleans that the enemy was at hand. By good luck, Major Latour, a French engineer, and the best historian of the campaign, was among the first to view the invaders, and he gave the general a correct idea of their position and numbers. As in all other crises, Jackson's resolve was taken at once. "By the Eternal," he exclaimed, "they shall not sleep on our soil!" He set his troops in motion for a night attack.
Had the British marched on to New Orleans without stopping, it seems probable that they would have taken it that evening. But at nightfall upwards of two thousand Americans were between them and the city. Jackson was on the American right, near the river, with the regulars and the Louisiana contingent. Coffee, with his Tennesseans and the Mississippi horsemen, was on the left, next the cypress swamp. Carroll's brigade and the city militia were left to guard New Orleans on the north. The Carolina had crept down the river opposite the enemy's position, and at half past seven one of her guns gave the signal for attack.
What followed, in the fog and darkness, is not clearly known. The British were surprised; but British soldiers are proverbially hard to drive from their own position. The Americans had the advantage of making the attack; but they were nearly all raw troops. Each side was confused and uncertain of its own and the enemy's position. Coffee, on the left, drove the British back towards the river, where they were protected by an old levee, while the new levee on the bank shielded them from the Louisiana's fire. On the right, the Americans were repulsed. Reinforcements reached the British army during the action. At half past nine the attack ceased. The enemy lost two hundred and sixty-seven killed, wounded, and missing; the Americans, two hundred and thirteen. The night attack, however, strengthened the Americans. The enemy, overrating Jackson's force, became too cautious to advance at once, but waited until the entire army should be landed. The Americans gained time to build defenses.
Jackson chose a line two miles above the battlefield, marked by a shallow canal or ditch which crossed the plain at its narrowest point, from the swamp to the river. Behind the ditch he threw up a parapet. In some places cotton bales were used, for the soil was but three feet deep; at that depth one found water, as indeed one found water almost everywhere, – in the foggy air, in the bayous, the river, the swamps, of that low land about New Orleans. In a few days Jackson's arrangements for defence were completed. Fifteen guns were disposed at intervals along the line, some of them manned by Lafitte and his buccaneers. The whole force numbered about three thousand, and the Kentuckians, though not all armed, were used as a reserve. On the river the Louisiana and the Carolina gave the enemy much trouble.
The British army, when completely disembarked, seemed to justify the Duke of Wellington's confidence that it could rout any American army he ever heard of. Seven thousand trained British soldiers, seamen, and marines, and a thousand West Indian blacks, were assembled at Villeré's plantation, with from twenty-five to thirty guns. There were regiments which had helped Wellington to win Talavera, Salamanca, and Vitoria, and within a few short months some of these same regiments were to stand at Waterloo in that thin red line which Ney and Napoleon's guard could never break. Their general, Pakenham, Wellington's brother-in-law, was a distinguished pupil of his illustrious kinsman. Could frontiersmen who had never fought together before, who had never seen the face of a civilized foe, withstand the conquerors of Napoleon? But two branches of the same stubborn race were represented on that little watery plain. The soldiers trained to serve the strongest will in the Old World were face to face with the rough and ready yeomanry embattled for defence by the one man of the New World whose soul had most of iron in it. It was Salamanca against Tohopeka, discipline against individual alertness, the Briton of the little Isle against the Briton of the wastes and wilds. But there was one great difference. Wellington, "the Iron Duke," was not there; "Old Hickory" was everywhere along the American lines. A grave and moderate historian, comparing the defense of New Orleans with the defence of Washington, finds the two situations not unlike. "The principal difference," he remarks, "was that Jackson commanded."
Pakenham's first concern was to get rid of the Carolina and the Louisiana. Heavy guns were with great labor hauled from the fleet, and on December 27 the Carolina's crew were forced to abandon her, and the Louisiana was with difficulty got out of range; but meanwhile Commodore Patterson had mounted a battery across the river which in a measure made up for the ships. On the 28th, Pakenham advanced with his whole army, but retired, without making any assault, to await the result of an artillery duel. This was fought on New Year's day, 1815. The British used at least twenty-four guns, throwing some three hundred and fifty pounds of metal; the Americans, fifteen guns, throwing two hundred and twenty-four pounds. On both sides novel defences were employed, – cotton bales by the Americans, barrels of sugar by the British. The bales quickly caught fire, and from that time were discarded; the barrels proved as useless as if they had been empty. The result of the action would have been utterly surprising but for the discovery already made in Canada that Americans were better marksmen than British regulars. Three American guns were damaged; every one of the British batteries was silenced and abandoned. The American loss was thirty-four killed and wounded; the British, somewhat heavier.
Pakenham waited a week for General Lambert to come up with two of his regiments, and then made his supreme effort. His plan was to advance on both sides of the river. During the night of January 7, Colonel Thornton, with 1200 men, was thrown across to the left bank, where General David Morgan had 450 Louisiana militia, reinforced at the last moment by four hundred Kentuckians. Both British divisions were to attack before dawn. But the dawn came before Thornton was ready. He was, however, successful in his part of the programme. Morgan was driven back, his guns taken, and the British on the west bank passed up the river a mile beyond Jackson's line. Jackson never forgave the Kentuckians, although military critics incline to think they did all that should have been expected.
But on the east bank it was a different story. At six o'clock the main body of the British rushed upon the American lines. General Gibbs, with 2200, sought to pierce the defenses near the swamp. General Keane led 1200 along the river bank. General Lambert, with the reserve, brought up the rear. The whole force engaged was over 5000. Gibbs first came under the American fire. The head of his division melted before it. Gibbs himself fell, mortally wounded. Pakenham, dashing forward to rally the column, was killed three hundred yards from the lines. Keane, on the British left, was wounded and carried from the field. Nowhere did the enemy pierce or break the line of defense. A brave major did indeed cross the ditch and lift his head above the breastworks; but he lived only long enough to send back word that he died on the parapet like an English soldier. In truth, Pakenham's assault was a desperate venture, such as British commanders, relying on the valor of their men, have been too often led to make. At eight o'clock Jackson walked from end to end of his works, and not a British soldier was anywhere to be seen in an attitude of offence. The smoke of the artillery, clearing, discovered the enemy far distant, in full retreat to his camp, and the battlefield littered with piles of dead and wounded. "I saw," said Jackson, "more than five hundred Britons emerging from the heaps of their dead comrades, all over the plain, rising up, and still more distinctly visible as the field became clearer, coming forward and surrendering to our soldiers."
Here was revenge, indeed, for the sufferings of little Andy in the Waxhaws, for the sabre cut on his head, for his brothers, for his mother. But it is not known that any low word of vengeance passed his lips at the awful sight before him. The British dead were seven hundred, their wounded twice as many, and five hundred were taken. In the American lines on that side of the river eight were killed and thirteen wounded. Such a victory, so cheaply bought, is not paralleled in the warfare of civilized men. Lambert, succeeding Pakenham, recalled Thornton and gave up the important advantage the British won on the western bank. For ten days the armies lay as they were, and then the enemy withdrew as he had come. A few days later, Fort Bowyer, on Mobile Point, was taken, and then the fighting ceased.
During the closing weeks of January, by the slow methods of travel prevalent in those days, three messengers were hastening to Washington with tidings which the wearied President awaited with eagerness or fear according to the quarter from which they came. From Hartford, Conn., where the convention of New England malcontents had sat, he was to learn what demands were made by Americans who chose a time of war to change and weaken, if not indeed to destroy, the constitution of their country. From the American commissioners at Ghent he hoped against hope for news of a peace. To the Southwest he looked with dread, for few had dared to believe that New Orleans could be defended. The three messages arrived almost together, and all three were to stick in men's minds for years to come, and to mould men's thoughts about their country. From Ghent came tidings of a peace, not, indeed, glorious, or such as we had gone to war to win, but better than we had a right to expect. From New Orleans, tidings of a victory so splendid that it stirred the blood and brightened the eyes of every true American, and made it hard to remember that the war had not been altogether glorious. The threatening message from Hartford lost its terrors. In the great balance of the sections, the Northeast sank, the Southwest rose. When men recalled the war with shame, it was because of Hartford; when they spoke of it with pride, as in time they came to do, it was because they saw, on the parapet of New Orleans, looking out over heaps of British dead, the thin, tall figure of the horseman in Lafayette Square. True, the victory might seem worthless, for the peace was made before the battle was fought; but the victor had won for his countrymen something dearer than anything set forth in treaties. He had won them back their good opinion of themselves. In the prosperous years that were to follow, Andrew Jackson, the man of the Southwest, was to stand as no other man could for the American's faith in his country against the world.
But the victorious general was still the same Andrew Jackson; he did not leave New Orleans without exhibiting some of the characteristics that were so well known in Tennessee. Relaxing none of his vigilance, he kept the city under martial law after the British had sailed, and even after the British admiral had sent him word of the peace. Many New Orleans people protested, and certain of them claimed exemption from the work of defense on the ground that they were citizens of France. All such he ordered out of the city. Mr. Louaillier, a leading citizen, published a protest, and Jackson promptly arrested him. Judge Hall, of the United States District Court, issued a writ of habeas corpus for the prisoner, and Jackson as promptly arrested the judge himself, and did not release him until, early in March, official notice of the peace was received. The judge fined the general a thousand dollars for contempt of court, and nearly thirty years afterwards the American Congress voted money enough to repay the sum with interest. Between the battle and the news of peace, Jackson also signed the order for the execution of six militiamen whom a court-martial had found guilty of mutiny and desertion. There were circumstances which seemed to recommend these men to mercy, and in after years the order was cited along with other things to prove that Jackson was a cruel and arbitrary commander.
However, the War Department gave him only the mildest of reproofs for his treatment of the civil authorities at New Orleans, and when he returned to Tennessee it was to a welcome even more heartfelt and stirring than the one he got on his return from the Creek war. In the autumn he was called to Washington to consult with his superiors about putting the army on a peace footing, and on the journey and at the capital he was universally received as the hero of the war. The army was reduced to ten thousand men, and distributed into a northern and a southern department. The command of the northern department was given to General Jacob Brown; Jackson got the southern department.
It was about this time that Governor Alston, of South Carolina, got a letter from his father-in-law, Aaron Burr, of New York, concerning the approaching presidential election. Burr thought Monroe, the leading candidate and the man preferred by President Madison, too weak a man for the great office. He wanted a man of firmness and decision, and he added, "that man is Andrew Jackson." But as yet Jackson himself had no such ambition. As late as 1821, in fact, he said, in reply to a suggestion that he might be President: "No, sir; I know what I am fit for. I can command a body of men in a rough way; but I am not fit to be President." He cordially supported Monroe in 1816, and after his election wrote to him and made a few suggestions about his administration. One of these suggestions was to appoint a Federalist, Colonel William Drayton, Secretary of War. Jackson declared that, had he been in command in New England, he would have hanged the leaders of the Hartford Convention; but he was in favor of recognizing the loyalty of such Federalists as had served the country faithfully during the war. That letter to Monroe was "copied" for the general by his neighbor and friend, William B. Lewis, as were hundreds of others. The general himself was a poor writer, and Major Lewis was a skilful man with a pen. He was also an exceedingly clever politician, and he showed his cleverness by keeping a second copy of the letter to Monroe for future use. In the course of the correspondence, Monroe let Jackson know that he himself might be Secretary of War if he chose; but Jackson was content with his command.
V
THE SEMINOLES AND THE POLITICIANS
For three years General Jackson was mainly occupied with the duties of a military officer in time of peace; but he was also employed to make treaties with several Indian tribes, and won another royal welcome home from the Tennesseans by throwing open to settlement large areas of Indian lands. Even in peace, however, he found an opportunity to display his readiness to do the right thing in a way to make trouble. Being several times annoyed by orders issued direct from the War Department to his inferiors, and seeing clearly that this was not the proper procedure, he issued a general order forbidding his subordinates to obey any commands which did not reach them through him. Calhoun, who became Secretary of War soon afterwards, conceded the justice of the general's position, but Jackson's course in the matter was certainly rather high-handed. General Winfield Scott criticised it in private conversation, and a mischief-maker brought his words to Jackson's attention. The result was some fiery and abusive letters to Scott, and a challenge to a duel, which Scott, on religious grounds, very properly declined. Jackson also carried on an angry correspondence with General Adair, of Kentucky, who defended the Kentucky troops from the charge of cowardice at New Orleans.
It was late in the year 1817 before General Jackson was again called to active service in the field. Once more the call was from the southward, and his old enemies, the Red Sticks, the English, and the Spaniards, were all in some measure responsible for it. A number of Red Sticks had taken refuge with their kinsmen, the Seminoles, in Florida. Colonel Nichols and a small force of British had also remained in Florida some time after the war ended, and had done things of a nature to stir up the Indians there against the Americans across the border. Negro slaves, escaping from American masters, had fled to the Spanish province in considerable numbers, and a body of them got possession of a fort on the Apalachicola River which had been abandoned by the British. To add to the disorder of the province, it was frequented by adventurers, some of them claiming to be there in order to lead a revolution against Spain, some of them probably mere freebooters. The Spanish authorities at Pensacola were too weak to control such a population, and Americans near the border were anxious to have their government interfere. The negro fort was a centre of lawlessness, and some American troops marched down the river, bombarded it, and by a lucky shot blew up its magazine and killed nearly three hundred negroes. Troubles arose with the Indians also, and Fowltown, an Indian village, was taken and burned. A considerable body of Indians took to the war-path, and Jackson was ordered to the scene.
Impatient as ever with the Spaniards, he wrote to President Monroe: "Let it be signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of Florida would be desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished." Monroe was ill at the time, and for some reason did not attend to the general's letter for a year. The President was trying to get Florida peaceably, by purchase, and not by conquest. Jackson, however, got the idea that his suggestion was approved, and acted accordingly.
Raising troops in Tennessee on his own authority, he marched rapidly to the scene of trouble, crossed the border into Florida, and in a few weeks crushed the Seminoles. Of fighting, in fact, there was very little; what there was fell almost entirely to the friendly Indians, and not a single American soldier was killed. But Jackson's actions in the campaign brought on the bitterest controversies of his career. By his order four men were put to death, and he captured Pensacola again, claiming that some Indians had taken refuge there. Two of the four men were Creek Red Sticks. The other two were white men and British subjects. One was Alexander Arbuthnot, an old man of seventy, a trader among the Indians, and, so far as is known, a man of good character. He was taken prisoner, however, and it is supposed a letter he wrote to his son, telling him to take their merchandise to a place of safety, warned some Indians of Jackson's approach. The other British subject was an Englishman named Robert Ambrister, who had been a lieutenant in the British army. He was nephew to the governor of New Providence, one of the British West Indies, and seems to have been in Florida rather in search of adventure than for any clearly ascertainable purpose. A court-martial found Arbuthnot guilty of inciting the Creek Indians to rise against the United States, and of aiding the enemy. Ambrister was found guilty of levying war against the United States. He was first sentenced to be shot; then, on reconsideration, the court changed the sentence to fifty stripes and hard labor for a year. Jackson firmly believed that both were British emissaries, sent to Florida to stir up the Indians. He disapproved the change of Ambrister's sentence, and ordered him to be shot and Arbuthnot to be hanged.
Such fierce and energetic measures, whether justifiable or not, put an end to the disorder on the border, and Jackson was again free to return home a victor. The country was disposed to approve what he had done, but the President and Cabinet saw that grave international questions would be raised; for Jackson had invaded the soil of a country at peace with the United States, taken possession of its forts, and put to death citizens of another country also at peace with the United States. John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, the Secretary of War, was in favor of censuring the general for his conduct; but John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, the Secretary of State, thought his acts necessary under the circumstances, and declared himself ready to defend them. In the end he did defend them so well that neither Spain nor Great Britain made serious trouble over them. The President and his Cabinet followed Adams's advice instead of Calhoun's, and Calhoun himself, as Jackson's superior, wrote to him about the campaign in a friendly way. Jackson naturally thought that Calhoun had been his friend in the Cabinet, and had no reason to suspect that it was Adams who defended, and Calhoun who wished to censure him. He did not learn the truth for many years. Had he known it sooner, there is no telling how different the political history of the next twenty years might have been.
For henceforth Jackson was to be a great figure not in warfare but in politics. His military career was practically ended. He kept his commission until July, 1821, but from this time he fought no more battles. He had not, as a soldier, given such evidence of military genius as to set his name alongside those of the great captains of history, but he had shown himself a strong and successful leader of men; in his masterful, often irregular and violent way, he had done his country good service. Were his place in history merely a soldier's, it would be a safe one, though not the highest. But his actions in the field soon gave him the leading part on a different stage. One day in January, 1819, he rode up to the house of his neighbor, Major Lewis, who had just bought a new overcoat, and asked him to get himself another; the general wanted the one already made to wear on a long journey. "Major," he said, "there is a combination in Washington to ruin me. I start to Washington tomorrow."
The chief of those who, as Jackson firmly believed, were combined to ruin him, was the man who could with best reason be compared to the hero of New Orleans for the place he had in the affections of the Western people and as the representative of the new American spirit, born of the second war with Great Britain. If Jackson was the hero of the war, Henry Clay was its orator; if it was Jackson who sent from one quarter the news of a glorious victory, it was Clay who, with Adams and Gallatin, had secured the peace. Leaving Ghent, Clay was lingering in Paris when he heard the news of New Orleans. "Now," he exclaimed, "I can go to England without mortification." But the great orator was not in sympathy with Monroe's administration. His enemies declared he was in opposition because he was not asked to be Secretary of State, and because he feared that Adams, who had the place, would become President four years later. However that may have been, it was Clay who led the attack on the administration about the campaign in Florida. Protesting his deep respect for "the illustrious military chieftain" who commanded there, he yet condemned the hanging of the two Red Sticks, the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, the taking of Pensacola.
From the moment Jackson read that speech he was Clay's enemy, and a warfare began that lasted twenty-five years. Every man, in fact, who in the course of the long debate that followed condemned the acts of General Jackson in Florida was written down an enemy on the tablets of his memory. He remained in Washington until the House had voted down every resolution unfavorable to his course, and he had thus won his first victory over Clay. Then he set forth on a northern journey which showed him the immense popularity he had in places like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and gave him an opportunity to increase it by the fine appearance he made in public. He returned to find that a Senate committee had reported unfavorably on his conduct, but the Senate never acted on the report, and on his journey homeward the people gave him every reason to believe that the great majority of his countrymen approved the votes of the lower house. As if to complete his triumph, he was soon called once more to Florida; and this time he entered Pensacola, not as a soldier invading a foreign province, but as the chief magistrate of an American territory. In February, 1821, after so many years of negotiation, Florida was bought by the United States. President Monroe appointed Jackson governor and commissioner to receive the province, and he, bidding farewell to the army, entered again upon the duties of a civil office.
Even in his farewell to his troops, Jackson took occasion to attack a policy recently favored by his superior, General Jacob Brown, and any one who knew Jackson might have guessed that the holding of a civil office would never keep him from violent courses, particularly in Pensacola. He held the office only a few months, for he was in wretched health. His wife, who was with him, tells in one of her letters how pale and solemn he was when he rode into Pensacola for the third time, and how ill he was while he was there. He resigned in October, but before he resigned he had made another cause of dispute with Spain. The retiring Spanish governor, Callava, was accused of attempting to carry away papers which were necessary to establish the property rights of a quadroon family. The correspondence on the subject led to a series of misunderstandings, and General Jackson was soon convinced that villainy was afoot. The upshot of the dispute was that the American governor put the Spanish governor in jail; and when the United States judge of West Florida, a curious character named Fromentin, tried to mend the matter with a writ of habeas corpus, he fared little better than Judge Hall of New Orleans had fared before him.