Patriotic Fire by Winston Groom
On February 21 Livingston returned and brought with him reports of the peace treaty. It would not be official, however, until it was ratified by Congress and signed by the president, so Jackson remained on his guard. News of the treaty quickly spread and was made public by the Louisiana Gazette, but Jackson demanded a retraction and published a proclamation of his own in which he cautioned that the report might only be a ruse “by an artful enemy,” to throw the Americans off their guard.
Despite this, the militia became even more restless, and desertions mounted. Governor Claiborne pleaded with Jackson to release the militia; even Abbé Dubourg came to him with stories of starving wives and children in Terre aux Boeufs, below the battlefield. The weather had warmed somewhat, and more than 1,000 soldiers contracted yellow fever; many perished from it. The French consul began issuing nationality papers to French and French Creole soldiers so that they could get discharged. When Jackson heard of this, Latour said, “he banished the consul and everyone to whom he had given discharges to Baton Rouge.”
On March 3 an unsigned article appeared in a local French newspaper taking Jackson to task and reminding him that the French Creoles were largely responsible for his victory. In part, this stirred up a mutiny among several groups of militia, and when Jackson found that the author of the newspaper article was one Louis Louailler, a member of the legislature, he had him arrested for “abetting and inciting mutiny.” When Louailler’s lawyer attempted to spring him from the calaboose on a writ of habeas corpus, Jackson caused the federal judge who had issued the writ, the Honorable Dominick Hall, also to be arrested and put into the same cell as Louailler.
To many, Jackson was seen as being high-handed. Even Jean Laffite was unhappy with the general’s harsh behavior. “The General was beginning to take secret measures like dictating bellicose orders and imprisonments,” Laffite wrote. “He was excessively emotional and was inclined to a mental defect of forgetting past favors.” For his part, Jackson considered the Louisianans ungrateful and naive with respect to the enemy’s intentions.
Laffite had his own hands full trying to regain the property that had been confiscated by Commodore Patterson and Colonel Ross following their September raid on Grand Terre. In this endeavor he was represented not only by Livingston but by the able district attorney John Randolph Grymes, who had resigned his position (enticed, some said, by a $20,000 fee—or bribe—from Laffite) to pursue the recovery of Laffite’s property, which included a dozen or so large sailing vessels as well as goods and riches of every description that had been piling up on Grand Terre for years.
On February 6 President Madison sent out a proclamation pardoning Laffite and all the other Baratarians who had fought with the army. Laffite assumed that since this had apparently cleared him of being a criminal, it also freed him to recover the property that he had accumulated during a perfectly legal privateering enterprise, or so he claimed. Patterson and Ross disagreed; they had the property now and were backed up by the army and the navy. Laffite’s lawyers filed suit, but Ross and Patterson began to auction off the property anyway. It caused Laffite to become bitter against the government and resulted in a return to his old ways.
Seventeen
The British, in the meantime, were languishing on Dauphine Island, at the mouth of Mobile Bay. Like Jackson’s, Cochrane’s interpretation of the Treaty of Ghent was that there would be no formal peace until he had received official word that it was ratified; until such time as he received that news, he was determined to keep his forces in American waters and attack when feasible. For the redcoats, Dauphine Island was certainly a great improvement over the miseries of Villeré’s plantation, and they began to set up housekeeping. Major Harry Smith remembered that they fabricated baking ovens out of a liquid mortar combining oyster shells and sand,* 74 and that to amuse themselves they organized theatrical productions.
With the warming of the weather, however, came a plague of unpleasantries. First, as in New Orleans, mosquitoes brought yellow fever and malaria, and soon hundreds of British soldiers and seamen were stricken. Latour wrote after the British had gone, “We are not sure of the exact number of them that died, but from the graves on Dauphine Island there must have been a great many.” Then the sand flies hatched, making life even more miserable.
Worse, the warm weather brought out “multitudes of snakes from their lurking places,” according to Lieutenant Gleig, “which infested the camp, making their way in some instances into our very beds.” Alarmingly, many of these would have been rattlesnakes and water moccasins.
“That was bad enough,” Gleig continued, “but the alligators, which during the winter months lie in a dormant state, now began to awaken, and created no little alarm and agitation. At first these monsters confined themselves to the marshy part of the island, but becoming by degrees more familiar, they soon ventured to approach the very precincts of the camp. One of them entered a tent, in which only a woman and child chanced to be, and having stared round as if in amazement, walked out again without offering to commit any violence.”
Nevertheless, this reptilian visit, Gleig recalled, “was of too serious a nature to be overlooked,” so hunting parties were organized in which “it was common, upon their return, instead of asking how many birds, to demand how many snakes and alligators they had shot.” Harry Smith noted that some of the younger men skinned, cooked, and ate small alligators: “I tasted one once; the meat was white, and the flavour was like coursely-fed pork.”
Finally, on March 5, confirmation of the treaty ratification was received, and the fleet prepared to embark. After all their ordeals, at last they were going home, and it was reported that many shed tears of joy. Alas most—though they did not yet know it—would not be going home after all. Since they had been away, Napoleon had escaped from his banishment on the Isle of Elba and was on the loose in Europe again with another Grand Armée of “citizen soldiers.” The Duke of Wellington was preparing for his Waterloo, and he needed all the army he could find, including the one in Cochrane’s fleet.
Confirmation of the treaty did not arrive in New Orleans for another week, and Jackson was yet enduring all the complaints of an indignant city under martial law. More arrests were made on his orders; to many he seemed on the verge of becoming a tyrant. Then, at about this time, news of what Parton called “the catastrophe” reached the city. Two weeks earlier, “six coffins were placed in a row, several feet apart, in an open place near the village of Mobile.” It was an occasion that signaled one of the greatest mistakes Jackson ever made, overshadowing even his infamous duels.
On September 19, 1814, the same day that the British fleet sailed for America, a mutiny had occurred at Fort Jackson, above Mobile, in which a number of Tennessee troops began to march north toward home. At issue was whether or not the militiamen had been enlisted for three or six months. The Tennesseans believed it was three, and they were correct, except that the secretary of war had extended their term to six. Even though this new order had been widely published in their camp, they considered it unfair, and the six men selected for court-martial had been singled out because they were the ones who had been the most vociferous in inciting and complaining.
Jackson had ordered a court-martial to be formed from Tennessee officers only, and then proceeded about his business, which included the defense of Mobile, the first attack on Fort Bowyer, the attack and occupation of Pensacola, and the British invasion of Louisiana. On November 22, he left Mobile for New Orleans and was, of course, preoccupied from that point on.
The court-martial took testimony on, and from, each of the six defendants, beginning on December 5, 1814. Most of the evidence against the men was that they had been “grousing” about having to exceed their anticipated enlistment expiration; there were no acts of violence. Even though the soldiers pleaded that they had misunderstood the enlistment orders, the court concluded that they were guilty as charged and ordered that they “receive the punishment of death by shooting.”
Some
The condemned were brought in a wagon to the execution grounds at Mobile and paraded before nearly 1,500 soldiers, who had been drawn up in a square for this instructive lesson. They were ordered to get out of the wagon and stand by their coffins, while a Colonel Russell stood before them and said in an undertone, “You are about to die by the sentence of a court-martial. Die like men—like soldiers. You have been brave in the field. Do no discredit to your country or dishonor to the army or yourselves by any unmanly fears. Meet your fate with courage.”
It must have been a truly dreadful scene. Most of the condemned stood straight and showed no visible emotion. “But one of the prisoners, John Harris, by name, a poor illiterate Baptist preacher, the father of nine children, several of whom were very young, a weak, heavy-laden man who had enlisted for the purpose of accompanying his son to the wars, was still unable to control his emotions. He continued to apologize for what he had done and wept bitterly as he spoke.” Only the most heartless person could have felt nothing for him.
The previous night Harris had sent a pitiable letter to his wife, probably penned by his son, who was in the same regiment, in which he said, “I did not expect to have had this awful news to write to you. But my sentence is come and tomorrow I have to encounter death. Tomorrow by twelve o’clock, which is a terrible thing to think of. And I know your tenderness to me as a wife to a husband has been so great that it must be a grief to you and as such I wish you to meet it with as much fortitude as possible.
“It grieves me hard to have to part with you all. But I must resign to God; and we all have to part some time. I hope you will bring my little son up in the fear of God and my little daughters also. My mind is pestered, so I cannot write as I would wish. Remember me to all inquiring friends. So, my dear wife and children, I bid you adieu. This from your loving husband and father until death.”
There is no record of whether the soldier son was forced to watch his father’s fate before the firing squad.
The prisoners were then blindfolded and made to kneel upon their coffins. “Thirty-six soldiers were detailed, and drawn up before them; six to fire at each. The signal was given, the bloody deed was done.”
All of the prisoners fell dead except a soldier named Lewis, who, “though pierced with four balls, raised his head and, finally crawled upon his coffin. The officer in command approached him.”
“Colonel,” the man said, “I am not killed but I am sadly cut and mangled. Colonel, did I not behave well?”
“Yes, like a man,” replied the colonel with a faltering voice.
“Well sir, haven’t I atoned for my offense? Shall I not live?”
The colonel, with cruel kindness, granted the poor fellow’s prayer, but the case was past surgery. He lingered some four days in extreme agony and then died.* 75
What on earth had possessed Jackson at the time he signed those death warrants is not recorded; later, though, during his political campaigns, he wrote several letters justifying his action on grounds that the six had inspired mutiny and desertion during a time of war, and also that “it will be recollected in the Revolutionary war, at a time of great trial, General Washington ordered deserters shot without trial.”
Jackson had just gone through an exhausting ordeal against the British army. Doubtless he had been hardened by the death and horror he’d been a part of, and he must have been suffering as well from the emotional strain of contemplating another British attack. But a man of his intellect, an attorney and judge by trade, in the light of meditating on these men’s crimes, which weren’t even crimes in civilian life—and these were civilian soldiers—surely might have, and should have, been disposed to grant them some sort of leniency, at least not to have them shot dead in cold blood. This blight on Jackson’s escutcheon would follow him across the years and nearly cost him the presidency. Nor did it make him any more popular in New Orleans.
In early March M. Louailler went on trial for “abetting and inciting a mutiny, spying,” and other charges, and was promptly acquitted by a jury of his peers—meaning that they were Creoles. Jackson was furious, but on March 11 he ordered that Judge Hall be released from the guardhouse and banished from New Orleans “until the radification of the peace is regularly announced.”
This occurred two days later, March 13, when a courier arrived from Washington with a copy of the treaty and the ratification. Jackson immediately rescinded martial law, prepared to discharge his militia, and issued another proclamation.
“And in order that the general joy attending this event may extend to all manner of persons,” he concluded, “the commanding general proclaims and orders a pardon for all military offenses heretofore committed in this district.” It is a poignant irony and a pity, in a war filled with irony and pity, that the Senate had ratified the peace treaty on February 16, five days before the execution of the six militiamen, for they surely would have been set free with the rest.
When he dismissed his army, Jackson issued yet another proclamation of the flowery variety, wrapped in sentences such as this: “Go then my brave companions, to your homes, to those tender connections and those blissful scenes which render life so dear—full of honor and crowned with laurels which will never fade.” One can almost imagine the expression of serenity on his face as he penned such lines.
With the peace, the relief from martial law, and the dissolution of the army, New Orleans society began once again to preen. The city seemed to have forgiven Jackson, and he was again their great hero, feted at dinners and balls.
Into all this joy and relief descended plump, homely Rachel Jackson with their adopted son Andrew Jr., age seven. An intensely religious woman, Rachel was shocked at “the wickedness, the idolatry of this place! unspeakable the riches and splendor. Great Babylon has come up before me.”
A number of Creole ladies, led by Livingston’s elegant wife, attempted to entertain Mrs. Jackson, whom they found likable and amusing and who had never been to a city outside Nashville. Rachel admitted to them that she knew nothing about fine company and fine clothes “and had no resource but to throw herself upon the guidance of her friends.” Mrs. Livingston therefore “undertook the task of selecting for her suitable dresses for the various public occasions on which she was expected to appear.”
The ladies even raised a subscription to buy her jewelry worth $4,000. The subscriptions fell short, but the jewels were bought anyway. Rachel was dazzled at one of the banquets held in her and her husband’s honor, on Washington’s birthday, by “the splendor, the brilliant assemblage the Magnificence of the supper and orniments of the room,” adding that, “ther[e] was a gold ham on the table.”
Vincent Nolte was present, and recorded, “After supper we were treated to a most delicious pas de deux” by Jackson and poor Rachel, whom he snippily referred to as “an emigrant of the lower classes.
“To see these two figures,” Nolte wrote, “the general a long, haggard man, with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la Generale, a short fat dumpling, bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild melody of Possum up de Gum Tree and endeavoring to make a spring into the air, was very remarkable, and far more edifying a spectacle than any European ballet could possibly have furnished.”
One person who had not forgiven Jackson, however, was dour old Judge Dominick Hall. No sooner had he returned to the city than he issued an arrest warrant for Jackson for contempt of court, for disregarding the writ of habeas corpus in the case of Louis Louailler, and “for having imprisoned the hono
Jackson was now vulnerable, since he had revoked his rule of martial law. Livingston drew up a defense, but it was an uphill battle; an angry federal judge was a very troublesome individual to confront. On March 31 Jackson appeared for his trial, accompanied by the voices of “nearly a thousand excited people.” This must be an exaggeration, but the courtroom was indeed packed, mostly, we are told, by Baratarians, who had learned to worship their general during the battle and had come to support him now. Wearing civilian clothes, Jackson acted with lawyerly decorum and silenced the rough privateers, reminding them that they were in a court of law.
It was a peculiar trial, even for those days. Judge Hall had rejected, and refused even to read, Livingston’s pleadings, in which he and Jackson had tried to explain the general’s position regarding the arrests in terms of his powers under martial law. Instead Hall had the district attorney draw up a list of nineteen questions (viz: “Did you not arrest the judge of this court?”), to which Jackson was apparently supposed to answer yes or no, with no explanation. Jackson was smart enough to see where this was headed and refused to answer them. He told the judge to just go ahead and sentence him, which Hall did, fining him $1,000.
At this the Baratarians could restrain themselves no longer and began cheering Jackson and booing (or whatever passed for booing in the day) Judge Hall. Then they carried Jackson out of the courthouse on their shoulders to a nearby coffeehouse, where drinks flowed all around. Jackson’s “hellish banditi” offered to pay the fine for him, but he declined. He had not always been so universally admired.
Eighteen
The Battle of New Orleans became a defining event of the American nineteenth century, ranking in the nation’s history with Bunker Hill and, later, Gettysburg, with which it has eerie parallels.
Great infantry or cavalry charges are as often remembered for the ones that failed as for the ones that succeeded. On July 3, 1863, General Robert E. Lee sent 15,000 Confederate infantry under George Pickett charging into the Union lines at Gettysburg. The resulting failure presaged the decline of the Confederacy. A decade earlier, England’s Lord Cardigan had dispatched his light brigade of cavalry to charge against a strong Russian position during the Crimean War, and nearly all were killed or wounded; this became the stuff that poems were made of. In World War I, millions of soldiers were killed in frontal infantry assaults; it was likewise with the Japanese in World War II, who died by the tens of thousands in pointless banzai charges.