Patriotic Fire by Winston Groom
These “Kentucky rifles,” as they were incorrectly known, had been designed as all-purpose personal hunting guns, or as Indian fighting tools, and were individually hand-crafted “to suit the customer” in small independent forges mostly in the state of Pennsylvania. Many of them had elaborate engravings in silver and gold and hand-carved stocks and fore ends. They were only about half the caliber (muzzle diameter) of the British musket, but their ball would kill just as readily, and from a lot farther away.
While most of the British soldiers had been trained in the use of firearms by the army, the Tennessee and Kentucky frontiersmen had learned from their fathers, grandfathers, or on their own, ever since they were old enough to hold the piece and shoot it, and they were almost invariably deadly shots. William A. Meuse, in his excellent pamphlet The Weapons of the Battle of New Orleans, published in 1965 on the 150th anniversary of the battle, points out that it was common practice in those days for hunters to shoot just beneath a squirrel sitting way up in a tree, since if you hit it squarely the ball would blow the squirrel to pieces. But hitting just below caused splinters from the branch to do the creature in. They called this method “barking.”
Cannon were of either iron or bronze and, like the rifles and muskets, were muzzle-loaded. As previously noted, most of these guns were denoted by the weight of the ball they threw: six-pounder, twelve-pounder, eighteen-pounder, twenty-four-pounder, thirty-two-pounder. Most of these were served by a crew of five, and no fewer than twenty-five different commands were required to be executed before each shot could be fired. Still, a crack gun crew could get off as many as four rounds per minute.
Field artillery was moved about on a carriage with large wheels designed to be horse-drawn and travel along with an army. Fortification guns were usually carriaged on “trucks,” small-wheeled conveyances that were designed to be moved short distances inside an embrasure in a fort. Naval guns also sat on the small-wheeled trucks and, like fortification guns, were very difficult to move long distances in a field, especially the large ones, because they weighed thousands of pounds and their little wood wheels were designed to roll on wooden decks or bricks, not on soft ground.
The big guns had an accurate range of more than a thousand yards and could be loaded with a solid iron ball, called a shot, the weight of which was the gun’s designation. These were terribly damaging against enemy artillery or fortifications or troop formations if they were made to ricochet across a battlefield. The muzzle velocity of these guns was slow, so gunners could actually see the black ball arc up in the air, and the opposing side often could see it come bouncing over the ground. It looked so slow that sometimes, as a lark, inexperienced soldiers would stick out their feet to try and stop it, which usually resulted in a torn-off foot.
A shell was a hollow ball filled with gunpowder that exploded on a timed fuse and threw deadly shrapnel in all directions. For closer-in work there was canister, a canlike container filed with iron musket balls that spread out in a large fan like a shotgun and could kill a dozen or more of the enemy with a single blast. Variations on canister fire were grapeshot, with balls the size of grapes and looking like a cluster of them. Chain shot, as the name implies, consisted of simply ramming a big iron chain down the barrel and flinging it at an approaching enemy line or column, mowing down or decapitating whoever was unlucky enough to be in the width of the chain. Also available, in a pinch, was what Jackson’s men called landinage, plain old scrap iron—nails, metal washers, screws, or what have you—put into a bag and sent flying toward an advancing enemy. Meuse points out that this last “had much the same effect as canister, though it was not quite as gentlemanly in its concept.”
Pakenham now understood that it wasn’t going to be easy to eject the Americans from their line, so he decided to blow them out of it. After a council of war with Cochrane, Gibbs, and Keane, it was agreed that thirty big cannons from the fleet would be brought up to silence the five pieces of American artillery that Pakenham had counted during his reconnaissance as well as the Louisiana.
Since bringing up the fleet guns was going to take several days, Pakenham sought in the meanwhile to annoy the Americans with a series of night raids and reconnaissance operations through the cypress swamp, but Captain Jugat’s Choctaws, of whom it was said that “they could maneuver on logs like alligators,” were lying in wait and made short work of those people. The practice was quickly discontinued.
Then, in a stunning display of hypocrisy, Pakenham sent by flag of truce a protest requesting that Jackson stop the nightly “assassinations” of British sentries by the dirty-shirts. Jackson coolly replied that he was “repelling an invasion of his country” and was not at all concerned with gentlemanly warfare.
Pakenham’s delay had another effect that he had not counted on. Jackson used the time to dramatically strengthen his line. Working night and day like a disturbed colony of ants, the American soldiers and slaves dragged up cannon from other fortifications, for it was now assumed it would not be needed elsewhere, but here instead. They also continued to work on building up Jackson’s rampart, which at that point was only about waist high in most places and predominantly mud. It would need to dry out in order to make it more formidable.
As a “just in case,” Jackson began fortifying two other strong lines right behind his own—the first one about two miles back, called Line Dupre, and a second one a mile behind that called Line Montreuil, both named for the plantations they rested upon. This left no doubt that Jackson intended to fight it out to the finish.
During these days, “there was no rest for General Jackson,” according to one of his early biographers, “and what is more remarkable, he seemed to need none.” Still sick and still feeding himself from a few cups of cooked rice, which he ate in the saddle when he was not at his telescope studying the enemy, Jackson was usually out riding his lines exhorting his men to their tasks. After sundown he would pen encouraging messages to his far-flung outposts, such as, “Our troops have covered themselves with glory; it is a noble example and worthy to be followed by all.”
In the midst of all this, the riverfront scene was graced with an unusual spectacle. Around the big bend from the north, belching smoke and a shower of sparks, came the newfangled steamboat Enterprise, which tied up at the levee. It aroused a great deal of excitement in the city, which had seen only one of the craft before, in 1812, when a boat built by the Roosevelt family arrived with the promise of great things to come.
Indeed, the steamboat would become the future of New Orleans in later years, able to ascend the river against the current as well as descend it, but with the outbreak of war its production was severely reduced. The steamboat’s inventor, Robert Fulton, had gone into partnership with a Hudson River Valley neighbor of the Roosevelts, the wealthy Robert Livingston, who was the brother of Andrew Jackson’s aide Edward Livingston. Fulton and Robert Livingston had managed to secure from Congress a concession for operating steamboats on the Mississippi that amounted to an absolute monopoly, and it was to break this monopoly that the Enterprise had brazenly arrived, captained by a young officer named Henry Miller Shreve.
When Edward Livingston heard the news, he acted to have the Enterprise seized for illegal operation, but Jackson stopped him. The general sent for Shreve and told him that inasmuch as New Orleans was under martial law, Shreve should assume that he and his crew and steamboat fell under that category, and so should “hold him self in readiness” for any instructions. Shreve agreed, but was soon besieged with requests from citizens that he put women and children aboard the boat and steam them north out of the danger zone. This he did, but only after a dangerous contretemps with Jackson, who could have had him shot for disobeying orders. In the end Jackson came to depend heavily on Shreve.
Jackson sent Shreve upriver to look for the missing munitions boats, and dangerously downriver, past the British positions, to deliver reinforcing guns, powder, and personnel to Fort St. Philip. This Jackson deemed necessary after he received word th
When the Enterprise was finally safe at her dock in New Orleans, Captain Shreve volunteered to Jackson as an artilleryman and was assigned to Captain Humphrey’s Battery No. 1. Shreve’s good and valuable work during the battle was partly responsible for his getting the Fulton-Livingston steamboat monopoly broken, and in later years he became so successful a river man that the city of Shreveport was named after him.
At the same time, after conferring with Commodore Patterson, Jackson decided to position a sizable battery on the opposite (right bank) side of the river to enfilade the British flank, should they decide to make further attacks. This they set up in an old brick kiln, with two long twenty-four-pounders, which most likely had been blown ashore when the Carolina exploded. Over the next week he added five more guns to that side of the river. In addition, he ordered General David Morgan, who commanded the 500-man Louisiana state militia, to cross over from his encampment at English Turn to the right bank of the river and begin building fortifications in case the British tried a landing there (which was precisely what would come to Pakenham’s mind). To help accomplish this, Jackson sent over his engineer Latour and Jean Laffite, who knew the territory.
Meantime, in New England things had progressed for the worse. Two weeks earlier a convention had opened in Hartford, Connecticut, whose purpose was described by the one-word headline in the Hartford Courant: “SECESSION!”
Hit hardest, first with Jefferson’s embargo and now by the British blockade, the New Englanders were determined to end what they derisively called “Mr. Madison’s War,” even at the risk of splitting the Union. Sympathy with England was openly expressed, with such luminaries as George Cabot of Boston branding the war “unjust” and “morally wrong.” It was reported that some New Englanders had even tried to free British prisoners-of-war from an American prison ship. Newspapers, especially in Boston, were rabidly antiwar and pro-secession.
When news of all this reached Jackson, he proposed a handy solution: “I would hang them all,” he said.
It took until New Year’s Eve to haul up the big British naval guns. It had been a stupendous task, dragging these iron monsters through the greasy swamps and bogs and then across the muddy cane fields. The night was foggy and the Americans could not see what the British were up to, but they could hear all sorts of banging and hammering and other loud noises, racketing out of the gloom a few hundred yards in front. The British artillerymen and sailors, 500 of them, worked through the night and day, as they had ever since the order was given to bring up the guns.
They had no heavy-lifting tripods, such as are used in the field to hoist artillery (aboard ship, the heavy lifting was done by the yardarms), and so all movement of these six-thousand-pound guns was accomplished by hand. Then there was the problem of how to protect the batteries once the guns were in place. Since digging only a few inches produced water, excavation was not the answer. Someone came up with a solution of using some of the sugar barrels or hogsheads that had been piling up on the plantations ever since the embargo and the blockade.* 63
These were laboriously hauled or rolled on their sides to the batteries and stacked in such a way as to afford some protection to the gun crews—at least that’s what was hoped. Finally all the banging and racketing ceased. The British army then moved forward as quietly as possible to a position about five hundred yards from the American line and just behind the artillery batteries. By Pakenham’s order, the artillery bombardment that was to crush the Americans was to begin at first light, but first light brought an impenetrable fog of the kind seen only in those reaches of coastal Louisiana. As they waited for it to lift, the British were startled to hear the tunes of several musical bands wafting out of the fog. They were playing gay martial music: “La Marseillaise,” “Yankee Doodle,” and “Chant du Départ.” The British waited, thus serenaded for several hours, until ten a.m., when the mist began to clear and the artillery gunners started to light their firing matches.
Twelve
When a midmorning breeze suddenly blew the fog off the cane fields an astounding spectacle unveiled itself to the British army. One officer compared the lifting of the fog to “a change of scene at a theater.” In fact, what they were now beholding, strangely enough, was a great American military parade.
It was New Year’s Day 1815, and despite indications that the redcoats had been up to something with all that banging and hammering, Jackson had decided that some kind of celebration was in order and decreed that a grand military review be held in the open cane fields just behind the American lines. Citizens of New Orleans, ladies and children mostly, came down in their carriages to watch.
Soldiers brushed the mud and dirt off their uniforms and wiped their shoes and hats to give the best possible impression. Marching bands began by entertaining the crowd with all kinds of tunes* 64 as the approximately 4,000-man American army formed up in regiments and companies to parade past its commander, who was putting the last touches on his finest dress uniform at his headquarters in the Macarty plantation house.
Then all hell broke loose.
The British artillery was grouped in six batteries, including one for rockets, and at ten a.m. they began blasting away as one, with “unexampled celerity.” Singled out for particular attention was the Macarty house itself, which was wrecked by more than one hundred cannonballs during the first ten minutes. Miraculously, neither Jackson nor any of his staff was injured. Covered with plaster dust, they quickly rushed out to form up the army for battle.
It must have been a wild scene. Lieutenant Gleig describes how “mounted officers were riding backwards and forwards through the ranks, bands were playing and colors floated in the air. In a word, all seemed jollity and gala.” Then the British batteries opened up. “The ranks were broken, the different corps dispersing, fled in all directions while the utmost terror and disorder appeared to prevail. Nothing but confused crowds could be observed. Oh,” he lamented, “that we had charged at that instant!”
His lament was all too true, because it did not take the Americans long to collect themselves and get back behind their fortifications, which were in fact the safest place on the field. During the first ten minutes or so of confusion, if the British had swiftly attacked they might well have succeeded, having caught the Americans so off their guard. Those were not Pakenham’s orders, however, because he had not anticipated fog, nor its sudden lifting to reveal the American army out of its lines and on parade, and it seems to have caught him off his guard as well. His plan was to knock out the American artillery batteries with counterbattery fire of his own and then send his splendid veterans over the ditch to deal with these American upstarts. If the British artillerists had been supplied with shell (antipersonnel) as opposed to shot (antifortification) ammunition, they might well have caused a great deal of loss of life, but that was not the case.
In the American lines Jackson went with his staff from battery to battery, despite the hail of iron. First he came to Captain Enoch Humphrey’s battery, where the old artilleryman stood, “dressed in his usual plain attire, smoking that eternal cigar, coolly leveling his guns and directing his men.”
“Ah,” Jackson exclaimed, according to historian Walker, “all is
Just then Robert Butler, Jackson’s adjutant, rushed up to the battery, covered from head to toe with white plaster dust from the Macarty house.
“Why, Colonel Butler,” Jackson roared. “Is that you? I thought you were killed.”
“No, General; only knocked over,” Butler replied.
Meanwhile, Captain Humphrey was sighting in on the British batteries, “structures of a narrow front and slight elevation, lying low and dim upon the field.” Adjusting a twelve-pounder with exactness, he quietly gave the word, “Let her off.”
For the next hour and a half an artillery duel “so loud and rapid shook the delta as had never before been heard in the western world.” So wrote historian James Parton, and he was probably correct, assuming that he was referring to the western part of the United States. “Imagine,” he went on, “fifty pieces of cannon,* 65 of large caliber, each discharged from once to thrice a minute, often a simultaneous discharge of half a dozen pieces, an average of two discharges every second; while plain and river were so densely covered with smoke that the gunners aimed their guns from recollection chiefly and knew scarcely any thing of the effect of the fire.”
According to the German merchant Vincent Nolte, the main British battery, which was situated just to the right of a road that ran through the center of sugarcane fields, “directed its fire against the battery of the pirates Dominique You and Beluche.” Once, as Dominique was examining the enemy through a glass, “a cannon shot wounded his arm; he caused it to be bound up, saying, ‘I will pay them for that!’ and resumed his glass. He then directed a twenty-four-pounder, gave the order to fire, and the ball knocked an English gun carriage to pieces and killed six or seven men.”