Who won the Battle of New Orleans?
The Americans won. On 8 January 1815, at the end of the War of 1812, Major General Andrew Jackson's mixed army, dug in at Chalmette just below New Orleans, threw back a British frontal assault. The British lost about 2,000 men, including their commander, General Sir Edward Pakenham; American losses were about 70.
At the end of the War of 1812 a British army arrived to seize New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi. Waiting for them was Andrew Jackson, a hard, determined general with a patchwork force of regulars, militia, free Black soldiers, frontiersmen and even pirates. What followed was one of the most one-sided battles in American history.3
Part of The greatest battles in American history · Before: The Battle of Baltimore and Fort McHenry · See also: The Battle of Lake Erie
The last battle of a war
The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain was grinding to a close when a British expedition sailed for the Gulf Coast to take New Orleans, the key to the Mississippi. Command of the American defense fell to Major General Andrew Jackson, who threw together every fighting man he could find.4
The prize was enormous. New Orleans was the gateway to the whole Mississippi Valley, and its capture would have put Britain astride the trade of the American West and the lands bought from France in the Louisiana Purchase. In the autumn of 1814 a fleet of more than 50 ships under Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane carried the army into the Gulf of Mexico. Jackson, commander of the Seventh Military District, reached the city on 1 December.5
Lake Borgne
The British chose to come not up the river but across the shallow lakes east of the city. On 14 December, at dawn, about 1,200 sailors and marines in open barges, each with a short cannon in the bow, rowed against five American gunboats under Lieutenant Thomas ap Catesby Jones, becalmed on Lake Borgne. After a fierce fight with muskets, pikes and cutlasses the British boarded and took every boat. The National Park Service's history of the campaign counts 17 British killed and 77 wounded against 6 Americans killed and 35 wounded. Jackson had lost his eyes on the lakes.6
New Orleans panicked, and Jackson answered with energy. He declared martial law, called every able-bodied man to arms and summoned his Tennessee and Kentucky brigades; according to the park's history, General John Coffee's men covered 135 miles in a little more than three days. He also accepted an offer he had earlier refused, from the Baratarian smugglers of Jean Lafitte, whose gunners would serve his artillery with deadly skill.7
The night battle of 23 December
Guided by fishermen, the British found an unguarded waterway, Bayou Bienvenue, and on the morning of 23 December their advance guard burst onto the Villeré plantation, just nine miles below the city. Jackson heard the news early that afternoon. The park's history repeats the story that he leapt up and swore "they shall not sleep on our soil," and that evening he attacked with about 2,000 men.8
At half past seven the schooner Carolina opened fire on the British camp from the river, and Jackson's men went in. The fighting in the dark broke into scores of small, confused clashes; Coffee's Tennesseans cut their way through the camp before fog ended the action. Neither side won outright. The Americans lost 24 killed, 115 wounded and 74 missing, the British 46 killed, 167 wounded and 64 missing. But the counterattack shook the invaders, who now moved with caution, and Jackson fell back two miles to the Rodriguez Canal.9
Jackson's line
Jackson chose a strong position on the Chalmette plain below the city, with the Mississippi on one flank and a swamp on the other, and dug in behind a canal and a rampart of earth. His mixed force, regulars, Tennessee and Kentucky riflemen, Louisiana militia, free men of color, Choctaw allies and Jean Lafitte's Baratarian pirates, waited behind the works with massed artillery.10
"Line Jackson" ran about three-quarters of a mile from the river to the cypress swamp. Soldiers, civilians and enslaved laborers built it of logs, earth and mud-coated cotton bales behind the old millrace of the Rodriguez Canal, which was 10 to 20 feet wide and 4 to 8 feet deep. Eight batteries of artillery stood along it. Across the river, General David Morgan held a weaker line on the west bank with about 1,000 men and 16 guns.11
Sir Edward Pakenham, 36 years old, known as the "Hero of Salamanca" and brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, arrived on Christmas Day to take command. On 28 December he tested the line with a reconnaissance in force, and on 1 January 1815 his heavy guns dueled with Jackson's batteries for a whole morning; both times the British fell back. Reinforcements came to both armies. General John Lambert landed with two more British regiments on 6 January, while some 2,250 Kentucky militia reached Jackson on the 4th, though by the park's count only 550 of them had muskets.12
The assault
On the morning of 8 January the British launched a frontal assault on Jackson's line. Jackson's guns and rifles tore the advancing columns apart. The attackers, brave but exposed, were shot down in rows; General Pakenham was killed trying to rally them. Within a short time the assault collapsed, having cost the British around two thousand men against about 70 Americans.13
Pakenham had about 8,000 men in all; Jackson about 4,000 on the main line. The British plan was to strike on both banks at once, but it went wrong from the start. The boats meant to ferry Colonel William Thornton's force across the river were late, and on the east bank the 44th Regiment, chosen to lead the attack with fascines and scaling ladders, marched past the redoubt where they were stored, so the main column started late and in confusion.14
At first light a rocket went up, and General Samuel Gibbs's column advanced in close order against the American left. American batteries tore gaps in it, and then the Tennessee and Kentucky riflemen opened fire, standing three and four deep behind the mud wall so that a fresh man fired as each one stepped down to reload. Gibbs was mortally wounded. Pakenham rode forward to rally the troops and was killed. Of the 3,000 men under Gibbs and General John Keane, about 2,000 were shot down in less than half an hour.15
Near the river Keane's men and Colonel Robert Rennie's light troops briefly stormed an unfinished redoubt in front of the American line before Rennie was shot dead on the parapet. Keane led the kilted 93rd Highlanders obliquely across the field toward Gibbs's broken column, and they too were shot down; Keane was badly wounded. With Pakenham and Gibbs dying, General Lambert took command and pulled the army back. The whole battle lasted about two hours.16
The other bank
Across the Mississippi the battle went the other way. Thornton's late-landing force overran Morgan's thinly held line on the west bank, and only Commodore D. T. Patterson's spiking of his naval guns kept the British from turning them on the rear of Jackson's line. It made no difference. With the main army shattered, Lambert recalled Thornton too. The British fleet bombarded Fort St. Philip, below the city, for more than a week to no effect, and on 18 January the British army slipped away.17
How many died at the Battle of New Orleans?
The American Battlefield Trust counts 2,034 British casualties on 8 January, 285 of them killed, 1,265 wounded and 484 missing or captured; the National Park Service's history cites a British report of nearly 2,000. Among the dead were Pakenham and Gibbs. The Americans lost 71, 13 of them killed; on Jackson's main line only 7 were killed.18
Why was the Battle of New Orleans important?
The battle saved New Orleans, the gateway to the Mississippi Valley, from British capture. It did not change the peace treaty, already signed at Ghent, but it restored national pride at the end of a frustrating war, was celebrated for decades as a national holiday and carried Andrew Jackson toward the White House.19
In a famous irony, the battle took place after the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed in Europe in December 1814, though it had not yet been ratified, so the war was not legally over, and news had not yet reached America. The victory did not change the treaty, but it electrified the young country, wiped away the humiliations of the war, and launched Andrew Jackson toward the presidency. In 1862, during the Civil War, New Orleans was captured for the Union by David Farragut.20
News of the victory reached Washington on 4 February, and the National Park Service's history describes the celebrations that followed as greater than for any other American victory of the war. The treaty itself was ratified on 16 February. For about half a century afterward, 8 January was celebrated across the country as a national holiday, much like the Fourth of July, and Jackson rode its fame to the White House in 1828.21 › The Battle of Lake Erie, 1813
The battlefield today
The field is preserved as the Chalmette Battlefield, part of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, six miles below the French Quarter. Living historians demonstrate musket firing on the ground where the riflemen stood. The Malus-Beauregard House, built in the early 1830s, stands near the river, and at the far end of the field lies Chalmette National Cemetery, created during the Civil War for Union dead.22
Over the field rises the Chalmette Monument, an obelisk modeled on the Washington Monument. Its cornerstone was laid in January 1840, a few days after the aged Jackson visited the battlefield for the 25th anniversary. The State of Louisiana began building it in 1855, the Civil War stopped work at about 55 feet, and the federal government finally completed it in 1908, at roughly 100 feet, half the height first planned.23 › 8 January in military history: the Battle of New Orleans, 1815
