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F OR YEARS, OC CASIONAL reports appeared in England of smugglers who infested the bayou country below New Orleans. From the northwest end of Grand Terre Island, commanding one of the passes into Barataria Bay, they used questionable commissions from revolutionary juntas in Cartagena, Colombia, Venezuela, and other Spanish provinces, to sail as “privateers” and prey on Spanish merchant vessels. A privateer was not necessarily a pirate. The latter was a man with no country, taking whatever vessels he could, regardless of their nationality, and keeping all the plunder he took. A privateer was theoretically licensed by a government to prey on its enemies’ shipping in return for a share of the proceeds of the sale of goods captured. The problem with the Grand Terre privateers is that their commissions, or letters of marque, usually came from juntas that no other nation recognized. Every week the privateers sailed their pirogues, filled with the stolen bounty, up the bay and into the twisting bayous to an open market where they held sales, then smuggled any remaining goods into New Orleans itself. 1
The United States wanted an end to the enterprise, which robbed the cash-strapped government of customs duties and drained hard cash from the city. Yet Louisianans almost gleefully encouraged the black-market business. Merchants openly placed the privateers’ stolen goods on their shelves while customers shrugged. 2 Indeed, the smugglers were romanticized, and one had already become a national folk hero. Independent though they were, many of the privateersmen called him “the Governor.” 3 He and his brother left most of the sailing to others, rather acting as middlemen to get goods to the markets, and in return the corsairs acknowledged their loose authority. They were the Laffites, Jean and Pierre, half brothers from Pauillac in the French Médoc. Pierre was the elder at forty-four, probably dominant in planning their enterprises, but poor eyesight and occasional seizures kept him from being very active. That left the more stylish and dynamic Jean, aged now about thirty-two, to manage affairs in the field. He was their public face, often seen on the city’s banquettes walking arm in arm with merchants who bought their goods. 4 Stories of their smuggling empire had been circulating for some time when Lord Byron published his poem The Corsair in February 1814. Depicting a pirate in the Aegean, the work referred to an apocryphal story in the British press about the generosity of a “Monsieur LaFitte” of Barataria. Readers leapt to the false conclusion that Jean Laffite inspired Byron’s hero. The poem proved so popular that in April the story debuted on the London stage. 5
There were less benign views of the Baratarians, as they were commonly known. Rumors said they might aid the British in an invasion. 6 The New Orleans press accused them of outright piracy, melodramatically attributing 1,500 murders to them that no one could prove since “dead men tell no tales.” In fact, they murdered no one, and routinely released captives after robbing them. Still, an editor warned that the brothers would soon take over New Orleans itself, and asked “whether we shall still constitute an integral part of the American union, or be compelled to swear allegiance to John Lafitte.” 7
That sounded good to Edward Nicolls, who thought the Laffites could command eighty hundred followers. 8 Their numbers might not be significant, but their knowledge of the approaches to New Orleans and its environs could make them of immense value as pilots and guides. As men without a country, they might be bought. On August 29, Nicolls and Percy sent Captain Nicholas Lockyer’s Sophie to make contact with the smugglers. 9 At midmorning on September 3, Sophie sighted Grand Isle. Jean Laffite himself met Lockyer with a pirogue but did not reveal his identity, instead persuading him to come ashore, where he finally identified himself.
Lockyer handed him a proclamation by Nicolls calling on Louisianans to rise and rally to him, and letters from Nicolls and Percy promising Laffite a captaincy in the colonial militia and generous land grants in Britain’s American colonies if he handed over his “fleet” to Percy, with a stern admonition to remain neutral otherwise and not aid the Americans or Percy would destroy the establishment at Grand Isle and every vessel there. Laffite responded at first that he would not fight against the Americans, but that did not entirely preclude being of some service. In fact, he stalled for time and finally sent Lockyer back to his ship, telling him that he needed fifteen days to reply to the offer, after which “I will be entirely at your service.”
He had not explicitly accepted the British offer, but he forestalled any British act against Grand Isle by implying that he would agree. In fact, Percy had offered him nothing. Giving their ships to the British would put the privateers out of business, and land grants would not turn corsairs into farmers. Laffite cannily realized that, regardless of who won the war, his enterprise faced extinction. Either victorious nation could sweep his associates from the Gulf, while the peacetime end of embargoes would kill their virtual monopoly on foreign goods. From informants in New Orleans, Laffite also knew that at that very moment Patterson planned to raid Barataria to prevent it from aiding the British. Moreover, Pierre had been caught and jailed in the city, indicted in federal court for piracy. If Jean helped the Yankees, it might halt Patterson and open the cell door for his brother. Self-interest, and not romanticized patriotism, dictated that he stall Percy and inform the Americans. Jean immediately enlisted city banker—and privateer investor—Jean Blanque to act as go-between with Governor Claiborne, sending him Lockyer’s documents.
Laffite played a deep game with the British. 10 Refusing their offer might help Pierre. Actually, aiding in New Orleans’s defense might even yield pardons for Pierre and others. As it happened, Pierre broke out of jail before Jean’s letter reached Blanque. Then within a few days Vincent Gray’s August 8 letter to Claiborne came into Jean’s hands and he sent it to Blanque as further evidence of his good faith. When Pierre reached Grand Terre on September 10, the brothers decided to offer to defend Barataria against their common enemy, perhaps hoping to forestall Patterson’s strike and give them time to get their associates’ vessels safely to the Mexican coast. “I am the stray sheep, wishing to return to the fold,” Jean wrote Claiborne that day, asking in return for quashed indictments and a general pardon. 11 Their lightly armed schooners and feluccas could be nimble gadflies on the bays, closing a back door to New Orleans. 12 He never answered Nicolls and Percy.
Claiborne should have welcomed the Laffites’ offer, for the security of New Orleans seemed threatened from within as well as from without. Rumors that summer spoke of a creole plot to disrupt the state government. 13 Other gossip warned that Spain would declare war on the United States unless it abandoned its claim to Louisiana. 14 By mid-August the divisions within the population had the governor complaining that if he must rely on local militia alone, he could not defend the city, begging Jackson to come assume command. 15 The general had heard from others of a “rottenness” among the city’s people and how they would flee at sight of the enemy, but he tried to calm Claiborne, promising they had more to dread from internal enemies than from the British; but if they remained vigilant, all would be well. 16
Then came a turn in sentiment, perhaps because Nicolls’s presence at Pensacola made the threat suddenly more tangible, and his call for runaway slaves conjured new fears of servile insurrection. When Washington and Jackson ordered Claiborne to raise several new militia companies, the city press supported him and the chosen company captains promised their cooperation. 17 By late August the governor felt guardedly more optimistic, as did loyal men in the city. Sixteen-year-old Henry Palfrey enthusiastically volunteered, promising his family that if the enemy came, his company would be ready to meet them and “return their visits & their Shot with Interest.” 18 At the same time another Orleanian wrote a friend in New York that “I presume we are as secure as you are.” 19
Certainly, people in New York and all across the nation felt concern for New Orleans as they looked on from the vantage of distance and time. An information revolution had taken place in the post-1776 generation. Newspaper circulation exploded to more than 22 million copies. 20 Thanks to editorial exchanges, pieces from one journal migrated to dozens of others, traveling on more than 36,000 miles of government post roads. 21 It was slow, to be sure, routinely taking just over a month for New Orleans papers to reach Washington, but they gradually spread information at destinations along the way, meaning readers in Tennessee or Ohio could learn of events in Louisiana weeks before the capital.
As a result, Americans were better informed than ever, and that summer they all knew of a planned invasion of Louisiana. 22 They also knew there was talk of making peace, but when or at what cost, none could say. Rumor said the enemy would demand yielding Louisiana as a condition, and indeed they did at the first meetings in Ghent, where the British agents denied the legitimacy of Jefferson’s Purchase. 23 They wanted far more besides that, which America’s diplomats flatly rejected, calling instead for a return to the prewar status quo. Unfortunately, they bargained from weakness, with no leverage except threats to halt the talks. The British could afford to stall and await favorable news from the Gulf to strengthen their hand. 24 Yankee delegate Albert Gallatin warned Secretary of State Monroe that the British very much wanted New Orleans, and if they got it, it might be impossible to get it back. 25
Until he could come himself, Jackson asked Tennessee militia commander Brigadier General John Coffee to raise 1,000 mounted men, which Coffee soon tripled and had on their way. Meanwhile, Jackson ordered detachments of the 7th Infantry to the city to augment Colonel George T. Ross’s 44th Infantry, which unfortunately had but three hundred men, and half of its officers were questionable creole s. 26 Perhaps worse, Ross frequented the American Coffee House, drinking something stronger than coffee, and often had to be carried to his lodgings. 27 Jackson promised to visit the city soon but meant to go home to Nashville for a few weeks’ rest first. He saw no need to hurry. 28 Then, on August 26, he received incontrovertible evidence that the British were coming with as many as 10,000 redcoats to invade and take New Orleans. 29
Soon came news of the British offer to the privateers’ leader, Laffite. Claiborne, Patterson, Ross, militia major general Jacques Villeré, and others met to examine the letters delivered by Blanque. Thinking them forgeries, all but Villeré recommended that they refuse to deal with the Laffites. 30 But Villeré countered that he knew the brothers and they were legitimate privateers, not pirates. 31 A wavering Claiborne thought the Laffites might be useful and proposed postponing Patterson’s raid, which Patterson emphatically refused. His orders allowed him no latitude, and Washington had returned his armed schooner Carolina with its orders to clean out the nest. Ross seconded him, Patterson was ready, and that settled the matter. In the predawn hours of September 11, he launched the operation.
New Orleans was a city of few secrets. Word of Patterson’s departure reached the Laffites before the raid’s boats left the Mississippi. Privateers were not fighters. They preyed on unarmed vessels and most never fired a shot in action. When Jean called the captains together to discuss options, he told them that for his part he “never would fight against the Americans.” 32 He left the rest to choose their own courses. They held a big sale on Grand Terre on September 15 and sold as much as they could, intending to hide the rest and then get their ships to sea and safety. In the end they managed to conceal only several thousand gunflints and some gunpowder before Patterson appeared the next morning. 33
The smugglers made no resistance. The Laffites and some associates rowed pirogues up Barataria Bay to take refuge in the interior. Patterson’s boats landed Ross’s men, their commander once more drunk, and in several hours of burning and looting destroyed the privateer base. 34 They took ten vessels and $200,000 in booty, eliminating any possibility of the smugglers lending their fleet to the enemy, and showing that the British were not the only ones interested in prize money. 35 What would the Baratarians do now? Pierre was free, their fleet was gone, and little incentive remained for them to come to the city’s aid. Would they seek vengeance for their losses by helping the enemy after all? Like most other questions outstanding that fall, the answer would depend on Andrew Jackson.
Wars make heroes, and this one made its share thus far, but no star in that constellation shone brighter at the moment than Jackson’s. He was forty-seven now, a native of colonial South Carolina, where as a boy during the Revolution he had been captured by the British and given a sabre cut on his forehead that left a lifelong scar. After the war he studied law and moved to Nashville, where he prospered, married Rachel Donelson, daughter of one of the town’s first families, and became territorial attorney general at age twenty-four. When statehood came in 1796, he was elected Tennessee’s first member of the House of Representatives. As a Jeffersonian Republican, he won a Senate seat a year later, only to resign when he became disgusted with congressional politics.
What launched Jackson on the path to commanding the 7th Military District in this war was his 1802 election as major general of the state militia. Killing an opponent in a duel tarnished his reputation for a time, and then he ill-advisedly endorsed Aaron Burr’s nebulous projects until he learned that they included taking New Orleans from the United States. When war came in 1812, the War Hawk Jackson first led his militia on a wasted march to Natchez and back whose only benefit was to give him the priceless sobriquet “Old Hickory” for his resilience. Another duel on his return to Nashville left him with a bullet in his shoulder for the rest of his life. No one could say he lacked courage. “When danger rears its head,” he boasted, “I can never shrink from it.” 36
Jackson’s career to date also revealed a character hotheaded, violent, vengeful, and ever ready to see plots and conspiracies against him in the motives of others. He displayed many of the salient traits of the Appalachian South’s poor white population: resentment of the privileged, mistrust of the wealthy, and suspicion of the landed aristocracy. Unlike them, however, he was neither lazy nor shiftless but an energetic, driven, self-made man. 37 Imperious and disinclined to care about consensus, he preached democracy but showed the instincts of a dictator. When Jefferson gave the Louisiana governorship to Claiborne rather than himself, “Old Hickory” fell out with both, his contempt for their class suiting him to a role he already played for his army as a champion of the common man. 38 Now in wartime his position freed his petty side to tweak Claiborne with veiled insults and condescension that Jackson never lost an opportunity to inflict. He was also loyal to a fault, generous, unselfish, and absolutely devoted to his wife, a man of many friends and many feuds. He had the rare ability to inspire.
The Creek War made “Old Hickory” a national figure. In June 1814, Washington made him a brigadier general in the regular army, then days later elevated him to major general and assigned him command of the 7th Military Division that included Tennessee, the Mississippi Territory, and Louisiana. Antipathy to England was the bedrock of his Republican Party. 39 “I owe to Britain a debt of retaliatory, Vengeance,” he told his wife that summer. “Should our forces meet I trust I shall pay the debt.” 40 Settling that debt might take him to New Orleans.
After defeating the Creeks, he moved to Mobile on August 22, not expecting to go to New Orleans until late September or October. Clearly he felt no particular urgency. 41 Then, late in the afternoon of August 27, a caller handed him Vincent Gray’s letter, while another letter from Gray arrived directly. 42 Undaunted by Gray’s revelations, the general resolved to ensure that “bloody noses there will be” before the enemy took New Orleans. 43 He stayed up nearly to midnight drafting orders to muster friendly Indian volunteers and the militia from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi Territory. His eyes so sore from writing by candlelight that he could hardly see, he wrote that night to the secretary of war that “we must now trust to the Justice of our cause and the bravery of our citizens.” 44 Warning Claiborne to be watchful for spies among the disaffected Spaniards and to guard all roads in and out of the city, Jackson told him that “our friends must be separated from our enemies.” 45
The British were not long in coming. On September 13 a combined force under Percy and Nicolls attacked Fort Bowyer on the western tip of Mobile Point, which commanded the entrance to Mobile’s bay. Confined to a sickbed with dysentery, the redoubtable Nicolls crawled out on a frigate’s deck to help man her guns, only to add to his catalog of wounds when grapeshot from the fort hit his leg and put out an eye. 46 The attack repulsed, Nicolls suspected that traitors in Pensacola had warned the defenders, and he was right, one of them being an Irish priest who heard the Spanish governor’s confession, including a mention of the pending attack, and broke confessional sanctity by sending word to the Americans. 47
The failure to take Mobile was a setback, but hardly critical, for Cochrane had not yet left the Atlantic coast. At home the planning for an expedition was still evolving. The Admiralty settled on December 1 for a landing on the Louisiana coast, well after the hurricane season, then worked backward from that date to determine when the several components of the invasion must be on their way. Components from England would sail to Barbados or another British island, refit and resupply, and then rendezvous off Negril about November 15. Cochrane and Ross’s Chesapeake army would meet them at the same time. A fortnight’s sail from Negril would put them on the Louisiana coast by December 1. 48
Orders headed “Most Secret” went out. Eventually Cochrane was to be sent about 3,000 soldiers and instructions that he should command overall but share strategic decisions with General Ross. 49 Sailing from Ireland would be the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders; the 95th Rifles; detachments from the 21st Royal North British Fusiliers; the 44th East Essex Regiment; the 4th King’s Own and the 85th Bucks Volunteer Light Infantry, with a company of artillery; a detachment from the 14th Duchess of York’s Own Light Dragoons; a company of “rocketeers” with Congreve rockets; and engineers and other ratings. At Jamaica they would take aboard the black 5th West India Regiment and at Guadeloupe the 1st West India. Adding his own command, Ross would have 6,000 men. 50 Meanwhile, logistics began assembling muskets, carbines, pistols, artillery, rockets, more than a million rounds of ammunition, and shoes, clothing and medical stores, and more than eight hundred tons of provisions. 51 By mid-September a dozen ships were to depart when weather allowed, including a “rocket ship” from which the rocketeers could practice on the voyage. Orders went to Admiral William Brown commanding at Jamaica to collect small craft for the landings. Every precaution was being taken, every detail attended to. It was a perfect specimen of British organized war. 52
Whitehall also refined Cochrane and Ross’s goals. It did not want permanent control of the Mississippi Valley, but the expedition ought to “occupy” an important place or places whose return in a treaty could be the condition of better terms for Britain, or of which they might even demand indefinite possession for themselves as a price of peace. Secretary of State for War Lord Bathurst did not specify New Orleans, leaving Cochrane and Ross wide latitude. Moreover, Bathurst did not believe it could not be held long without substantial reinforcement, which could take months. They were free to lend aid if the inhabitants opted for independence or return to Spain, but under no circumstances were they to encourage hope of Louisiana coming under permanent British rule, and they must not encourage slave revolt. When the admiral and general felt the time suitable, they could leave a small force of occupation and withdraw the army to Bermuda. The British public followed much of this with interest, and by late September common opinion said the expedition was bound for an easy conquest of New Orleans, where they would make the Yankees “little better than prisoners at large, in their own country.” 53
Meanwhile, on the American coast, Cochrane wanted more specific information to make the army’s landing and march on New Orleans as smooth as possible. He turned to Captain James Alexander Gordon, a battle-seasoned Scot with twenty-one years in the Navy, who stood an imposing six feet, three inches tall. He had served with Admiral Nelson at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, then in the West Indies and the Caribbean, winning promotion to captain when just twenty-two. Gordon liked to amuse his men by standing in an empty water cask and then jumping from it into five more in quick succession. His jumping days abruptly ended on November 29, 1811, at the Battle of Palagruža in the Adriatic, where he commanded the frigate Active . A cannonball took the leg off a seaman standing in front of Gordon and then shattered his own left knee, leaving the lower leg dangling by tendons. With typical aplomb, Gordon insisted that the ship’s surgeon tend the wounded sailor first. Then, as he was being carried to his cabin, he recognized one of the men holding him as an impressed Yankee sailor who earlier had protested that he had a useless arm and could not serve. “I am sorry you have lost your leg,” the American told the captain. Having seen the man working one of the ship’s guns with both hands earlier, Gordon quipped back, “I am happy to see you have found your arm.”
In seven months he was back at sea, a “cork-leg” thanks to a wooden peg, and now commanded the thirty-eight-gun frigate Seahorse in Cochrane’s fleet. He led a raid on Alexandria, Virginia, in August that resulted in considerable prize goods and some modest destruction in the city, for which he would be branded a vandal in the United States. 54 He served Cochrane well, adding luster to his reputation as a fighting captain. 55 The two clearly liked each other. “Sir Alexander is just the man for the Americans,” Gordon told his wife, Lydia, and knew how to deal with them. When Cochrane resolved to match Yankee destruction in Canada by doing likewise in the States, Gordon concluded that “it is the only way to treat an American.” 56
In mid-September, Cochrane ordered Gordon to command a squadron cruising the Gulf, where the admiral would join him in November, and gave him a secret directive to find an anchorage for the fleet and a landing place near New Orleans for soldiers. 57 Beyond that, he should aid Nicolls and look for shallow-draft boats to move soldiers through the lakes and bayous to attack New Orleans. He should also scout enemy defenses at the water passes between Lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain and elsewhere, as well as roads redcoats might use. Gordon was even to sound sentiment among the creole militia to see if some might assist with the invasion. He could even try to take the city himself if he found it lightly defended and felt he could hold it. In addition to much more, Cochrane also charged Gordon to hire coastal pilots to conduct the fleet from the Atlantic past the Bahamas and Florida Keys into the Gulf. 58
Gordon’s most immediate concern was security. He would tell his officers nothing until some distance at sea, but Cochrane gave it away himself aboard his flagship Tonnant when, at dinner with Gordon’s officers, he asked if Seahorse would chart a course through the Straits of Florida or sail farther south into the Caribbean to pass around Cuba. Any officer knew that passing the Florida Straits or around Cuba meant heading for the Gulf. Gordon tried to cover for the gaff, replying that “I am not to know where I am going, sir,” but the damage was done. Hours later Gordon wrote Lydia that “he had let the secret out.” 59
Once at sea, the flotilla moved southward, Gordon entertaining hopes of considerable prize money to come, and looking forward to seeing Nicolls. “I have known him many years,” he wrote Lydia. “He is as gallant a fellow as ever stepped, but I think he is rather too venturous.” He even joked that Nicolls might wind up commanding an Indian/slave/ creole army to take the city, and “ I may be made Governor of New Orleans!” 60 In fact, many expected much of Nicolls, but the distinguished artilleryman Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Dickson disagreed, regarding him as an impractical fraud who served his own interest with Cochrane. 61 When Gordon anchored off Pensacola on October 31, he learned of the Fort Bowyer debacle, saw how few Creeks had actually been enlisted, and could have had doubts of his own. 62
Worse, Jackson was coming. “ Victory or Death ” was their watchword, Old Hickory told Coffee, who organized his volunteers even as they force-marched south, sleeping in the open for want of tents, to meet Jackson just a few days’ march from Pensacola in early November. 63 , 64 Gordon and Nicolls offered to help defend the town, but when the Spanish commander wavered, Gordon began an evacuation to Apalachicola on November 3. Nicolls stayed to make a brave but Quixotic defense, then joined Gordon and left the city to the Americans. Gordon meanwhile dropped Nicolls and his Creeks at Apalachicola but decided not to remain, joking to his wife that “the ground is too soft for my wooden leg.” A few days later he headed for Negril. 65 “We are now going to strike a great blow,” he believed, although he had no idea “what part of the play I shall act.” 66
Cochrane ordered Malcolm to move the Chesapeake army to Negril by November 20, and wrote ahead to Admiral Brown to have pilots, landing boats, and provisions ready. 67 The admiral himself expected to reach Guadeloupe by November 1 to meet the fleet from Plymouth and then proceed to Negril. They would take Mobile and make it their base of operations. Again secrecy was vital, lest the Yankees reinforce the Gulf. In private correspondence, however, Cochrane made it clear that the government wanted him to take New Orleans, while at home the prime minister informed Wellington that the city was Cochrane’s goal. 68
The admiral still expected his crony Nicolls to produce a small army of Indians, but a spy in the major’s camp at Prospect Bluff above Apalachicola kept the Americans steadily informed of his efforts. 69 Nicolls remained optimistic of success. Before leaving Pensacola, one of his subordinates even sent a playful announcement to New Orleans that they expected to be dancing with its ladies on Christmas Eve, though, to date, their feet’s only activity was the hasty flight to Apalachicola. 70 Then, in the first week of December, orders came from Cochrane. He was off Pensacola and summoned Nicolls and his Creeks to meet him for the push to New Orleans. 71
By this time people in that city felt increasingly exposed, with little to defend them but “mud, musquitoes & Climate,” according to a shopkeeper. 72 Claiborne fussed over fears of enemy infiltrators, asking for the arrest of anyone deemed suspicious, and ordered nightly patrols of town and suburbs, warning Major Nicholas Girod that they were “exposed to much danger from without and from within .” 73 The disaffection among the ethnicities still worried him. Traitors might be on every street, and reinforcements too late to help. He was not sanguine that in such a state the city could be defended. 74 With Patterson and Ross still at Barataria, only militia guarded the city. Citizens formed mounted patrols to guard against any slave revolt seeking to take advantage of the moment, and on September 14 city authorities banned plays and dances for slaves, forestalling large gatherings that might attract enemy agents. 75
Then, as September progressed, signs looked more hopeful. The governor’s efforts with the militia began to yield better results. A detachment of the 7th Infantry arrived, and two mounted volunteer companies arrived from Feliciana Parish, the first new militia to rush to New Orleans. 76 Word also came of the meeting at Ghent, although peace was not to be taken for granted. Federalist merchant William Kenner thought it possible but not inevitable, and if the enemy came to New Orleans first, he believed that “we shall certainly have ‘scissors to grind.’” 77
With that in mind, on September 15 a group of merchants and leading citizens met at the call of Edward Livingston, whose older brother Robert had negotiated the Louisiana Purchase for Jefferson and shared credit with Robert Fulton for developing the first practical steamboat. 78 He offended some yet enjoyed almost unqualified respect as a lawyer from others. The ardent Republican was an authority on history and literature, spoke four languages, and could read more. He seemed to lack grace or dignity, but his talent showed in his face. 79 He would inspire perhaps the most famous political insult in American history when the brilliant John Randolph of Roanoke declared that “he is highly talented and utterly corrupt, and stinks and shines like rotten mackerel by moonlight.” 80
The meeting convened at Bernard Trémoulet’s Exchange Commercial Coffee-House, which sat on Levee Street facing the Place d’Armes, the open square in front of the St. Louis Cathedral and next door to the state capitol known as Government House. It was a noisy and ill-kept venue, the resort of leading men and legislators. 81 Livingston called on them to unite in the crisis and presented resolutions repudiating division, supporting volunteers, and calling for a nine-man Committee of Defense to lubricate relations between civil and military authorities. After its unanimous approval, the meeting made Livingston president of the committee and then appointed members equally from the French and American communities, but not one Spaniard. Then it issued an address by Livingston that emphasized the threat to their property and called on them to unite and “form one body, one soul, and defend to the last extremity your sovereignty, your property.” 82 Almost at once over $4,000 in pledges for defense came from their pockets—a modest sum, but a beginning. 83
Livingston and Claiborne loathed each other, and the unofficial committee was a direct challenge to the governor, who was apparently unaware of the meeting. It began corresponding directly with Jackson rather than through Claiborne, who reacted by having the popular General Villeré propose creation of an official defense committee two days later, which secured commitments for up to $10,000 to mobilize militia, all but one of the pledges coming from creoles . 84 Villeré and Claiborne called for increased surveillance of strangers and slaves and any signs of enemy incitement to rebellion, especially where Spaniards lived in numbers. 85 In some districts men organized informal nightly patrols to discourage slaves from being about after dark, while militiamen kept watch on waterways. 86 Slave owners themselves applied constant pressure for protection, one suggesting that slaves should not be allowed to practice trades, especially blacksmithing, by which weapons could be made. “Until such a measure be taken,” he told Livingston, “we shall never be perfectly secure from the Slaves.” 87
In New Orleans itself, the captains of eleven companies of the state militia pledged to forgo pay and even rations to defend the city in an emergency. 88 This was the spirit the governor had longed to see from his people. He wrote to Madison to inform him that they were “beginning to manifest the most patriotic disposition,” although many of the creoles were still slow to come forward. 89 Now he reorganized the state militia into two divisions, one under Villeré and the other for Brigadier General Stephen Hopkins at Donaldsonville, sixty miles upriver. 90 The governor also made Captain Bartholomew Shaumburg his aide-de-camp, unaware that he was inviting a crony of Wilkinson’s into his administrative family.
Jackson tried to help solve the manpower problem on September 21 by sending Claiborne a proclamation calling on free blacks to volunteer for separate militia companies, promising the same pay and land bonuses offered to white men. Claiborne hesitated. For years whites had resisted the existing free black militia. Now his own defense committee said it could only support the measure if any such companies were banned from the city after the war, fearing that, having acquired skill with arms and a soldier’s pride, “they would prove dangerous.” 91
Clearly the sudden and tangible British threat made the difference, as a new militia requisition filled quickly and people found confidence in signs of preparedness. 92 Unfortunately, when the legislature reassembled on October 5, the old factionalism erupted to threaten the veneer of unity. The Americans suspected the creoles , the creoles distrusted the Americans, elements of both championed or loathed Claiborne, and no one trusted the Irish or Spaniards or other foreign émigrés . 93 Preoccupied by petty disputes and quarrels, all sides at Government House lost their focus on defense. 94
At least there was urgency in Washington. Vincent Gray’s August 13 warning finally reached Monroe, and early in October Jackson received a copy. It told Old Hickory nothing he had not known since late August, but now the situation had Monroe’s attention, and in late September he superseded the ineffectual John Armstrong as interim secretary of war. He told Old Hickory to go to New Orleans. It was a conditional order with no hint of urgency, but it was Washington’s first instruction to elevate the city’s defense in his priorities. 95
Even as Monroe’s letter arrived, the general was still telling his wife that he hoped to visit New Orleans once the Mobile district was secure, but he saw no need for haste despite multiple hints that the city might be at hazard. 96 He felt Louisiana best protected by a resolute defense of Mobile and Pensacola. In mid-October, even after receiving ten letters warning of British movements, his focus remained unchanged. 97 Part of that may have been perverse stubbornness, for he was sick of Claiborne’s appeals for him to come to the city, and complained to Monroe that his entire force would not satisfy the panicked governor’s demands. 98
Happily, New Orleans’s mercurial spirits revived somewhat when more companies of the 7th Infantry led by Major John Nicks arrived on October 17. 99 With them came Orderly Sergeant Isham Lewis, with three years’ good service and a recent recommendation for promotion. He would have told few that he was Jefferson’s nephew. Three years earlier, in Kentucky, he and his brother Lilburn got drunk on the evening of December 15, 1811. Enraged when a slave named George accidentally broke a pitcher, the brothers forced Lilburn’s other slaves to watch as they nearly severed George’s head with an axe, then made the blacks dismember and burn the body, their grisly work interrupted shortly after two a.m. by the first of the New Madrid earthquakes. Arrested pending trial in April 1812, Lilburn killed himself, while Isham escaped and fled to Natchez, where he enlisted in the 7th when war came. 100 His uncle had once recommended Louisiana to him as a land of opportunity. It might also be a place for redemption. 101
By now the city’s defenses tallied thirty-seven cannon with more than thirty tons of powder, several thousand muskets, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. 102 It made for an impressive arsenal, but half of the cannon were mounted in forts and too heavy to be much use if the British bypassed them, and some of their wooden carriages were riddled with rot and might collapse when fired. 103 Still, optimism returned by mid-month. An afternoon banquet at the Conde Ballroom on Chartres Street on October 15 saw factional jealousies relaxed as merchants and civic leaders toasted Madison and recent victories at Niagara and Lake Champlain, sang patriotic songs in English and French, and drank to their state and to Jackson, who would surely come to protect it. 104
Two days later Claiborne released a September 21 proclamation sent by Jackson, a masterpiece of inflammatory adjectives that had just reached him. 105 It raised the specter of Indian uprising and servile insurrection fomented by the enemy, and revealed the British approach to the “hellish banditti” of Barataria. 106 In a well-timed effort to strengthen popular resolve, Claiborne had the documents provided by Laffite published two days later. 107 Coincidentally, a week later Livingston would approach Madison over the “hellish banditti.” They needed the Baratarians. In his committee’s meetings he frequently advocated giving them pardon or immunity in return for their services, not mentioning that Jean Laffite had written to him to ask that Livingston broker a deal for the brothers and their followers. 108 Assuring Madison of the Laffites’ powerful influence, Livingston suggested that an amnesty to all who enlisted would ease the public mind and could add at least five hundred experienced sailors and artillerymen to the city’s defense. 109
More and more men took heart. 110 “The horror has dissipated,” Villeré wrote Senator Fromentin. 111 Overly optimistic, he even assured Congressman Robertson that “the actual crisis has passed,” the greatest concern now being spies in their midst. 112 The number of men in Louisiana actually collaborating with the British can never be known, but there were a few, including Workman and other British natives, and some Spaniards, and the atmosphere of fear created an opportunity for some to settle old scores by creating rumors about innocent men. 113 It did not help that business was at a standstill, all the more reason for vigilance on the streets and banquettes . 114 Light being the enemy of clandestine mischief, the city bought half a dozen new ladders for the evening lantern lighters. 115
Claiborne’s confidence continued to grow, and by October 24 he believed the population was firm for defense and loyalty to the Union. He would soon have 2,000 militia under arms and advised Monroe the following day that unless attacked by overwhelming numbers, “you may fear nothing for our safety.” 116 That moved him to take a chance by publishing Old Hickory’s other September 21 proclamation calling for free black enlistments. 117 With no apparent sense of irony, Jackson addressed them as “sons of freedom,” the republic’s “adopted children,” and promised them the same $124 bounty and 160-acre land grants given to white volunteers, with equal pay and rations. He even engaged to prevent their being hazed or taunted by white soldiers, and promised that any glory achieved would be their own. 118 It remained to be seen how many would step forward, but Old Hickory felt it had a good effect in winning support from that community. 119
Meanwhile the white Battalion d’Orleans mustered its five companies, two hundred strong, mostly middle-class city men in their thirties, including artisans, bankers, merchants, and civil servants. Their officers came from the wealthy elite, and all but their commander, Major Jean Baptiste Plauché, were émigrés from France and Saint-Domingue. They had stood by the government during the Burr scare and they did not waver now. 120 Captain Joseph Dubuclet’s mounted troop from the Attakapas country west of the Mississippi arrived now, distinguished by one-tenth of their forty-one-man complement being the four sons of Madame Félicité Louise Henriette Latil Devince Bienvenu.
Claiborne once more begged Jackson on October 28 to come, but by the time his letter reached Mobile, Old Hickory was not there. 121 Five days earlier he learned that Madison had ordered another 7,500 volunteers for his support, and received Monroe’s letter in which he did not order the taking of Pensacola but did not forbid it, either, maintaining an official pose of neutrality toward Spain should Jackson decide on his own to do so. By now all of America knew Old Hickory well enough to know that he would not hesitate once he decided to act. 122
Nor did he. The day he received Monroe’s letter, Old Hickory left to meet Coffee. Acknowledging that he did so without orders or permission to attack a Spanish outpost, he sanctimoniously declared that even if it cost him his commission, “the salvation of my country will be a sufficient reward.” 123 He had to expel the British from Pensacola before the reinforcements he had been warned of arrived. 124 A week after he left, another letter from Monroe came confirming that redcoats would be sailing from Ireland. 125
A new urgency seized Old Hickory as he called out every resource, writing more letters on October 31 than on any other day of the campaign to come. 126 He ordered General William Carroll, who had succeeded him in command of West Tennessee militia, to get volunteers he was raising on the road even though not yet armed. 127 He wrote Governor Isaac Shelby in Kentucky to dispatch volunteers immediately and asked Governor David Holmes of the Mississippi Territory to mobilize. More orders went to friendly Choctaw and Creeks, and he notified Claiborne that thousands of volunteers would be on their way to the city. 128
The governor needed that encouragement. Press coverage of affairs at Ghent disheartened him, and Britain’s unacceptable demands for Louisiana meant the looming invasion would become reality. 129 On November 4, not yet aware that Jackson was moving on Pensacola, he told one of Old Hickory’s officers in New Orleans that he saw no hope of peace and “every reason to believe that Louisiana will soon be attacked.” His optimism for the growing unity of his people was still strong. There were still disaffected elements, and he worried what posture the legislature would take when it convened again in a few days, but several members gave him positive predictions. 130 A few days would tell him which way that breeze blew.
Happily, volunteers began appearing without waiting for a militia call. Captain John-Claude Hudry spent $9,705 from his own pocket to arm and equip sixty French veterans and native Louisianans, most of them from the poorer classes, to form the Compagnie des Francs, which attached itself to Plauché’s battalion. 131 Three creoles offered to raise companies of free blacks in response to Jackson’s call. 132 Exaggerated rumors of volunteers coming from Tennessee and Kentucky soon had New Orleans expecting an army of 15,000. 133 Patterson had Carolina back and Louisiana sufficiently repaired for service, and there were those six gunboats on Lake Borgne protecting communications with Mobile. 134
The city council made its own preparations. Expecting that any enemy bombardment would set buildings ablaze, the mayor had eighty of the city fire brigade’s water buckets repaired. 135 People felt comfortable that Fort St. Philip, some eighty miles downstream, should be able to stop enemy warships trying to come past it, while Claiborne personally browbeat local militia into erecting earthworks to defend the tightest turn in the river at Détour des Anglais, better known as English Turn, seventeen miles downstream from New Orleans, meanwhile ordering roads and bayous west of the river to be blocked. 136 The situation looked stable, even promising.
Then came November 10 and the legislature’s gathering. For a week it did nothing, and Claiborne feared it would be too slow to act and would cripple his ability to defend the state. 137 One week turned into two, with no appropriations, no militia call, and no laws addressing the emergency. Not a dollar’s appropriation was forthcoming. 138 Louis Louaillier of the ways and means committee accused his fellow delegates of culpable negligence whose reward would be surrender. 139 Adding to the problem was the fact that almost no money circulated in the city. The banks hoarded specie and people cut coins into fractional currency for small purchases. 140 Slave sales all but stopped, those sold at sheriff’s sales going for as little as $350, and cotton plummeted to ten cents a pound if a buyer could be found, and half of that was on credit. 141
Unaware of all that, Jackson expected Claiborne to have militia ready to move on command. 142 Once Coffee’s mounted Tennesseans joined his force from Mobile, Jackson occupied Pensacola without a fight on November 7. 143 He remained only a couple of days and had no plans to go to New Orleans until late November, and no expectation of meeting the enemy there. 144 Discounting reports of enemy plans for Louisiana, or dismissing them as panicked rumors, especially when they came from Claiborne, he still thought Mobile would be Cochrane’s objective. 145 Now, however, with Pensacola in hand and Mobile secure, he could comfortably leave them in subordinates’ hands while he went to see to New Orleans’s defenses, and along the way he could identify likely spots that the British might choose for a coastal landing. 146 Writing to his wife on November 21, he did grant the possibility of the British getting there before he did, but told her there was really “no danger.” 147
Jackson rode out of Mobile at five o’clock in the afternoon on November 22, his staff and Major Henry Peire of the 44th Infantry accompanying, and expected to arrive by December 1. 148 He left Brigadier General James Winchester in command behind him and sent Colonel Arthur P. Hayne ahead to survey the city’s defenses. He also dispatched to Georgia his trusted scout Major Sam Dale, yet another of the living frontier legends of the campaign. Sometimes called “the Daniel Boone of Alabama,” the raw-boned Virginian leapt into folklore the year before when he and three companions stood in canoes on the Alabama River using muskets as clubs to kill eight of nine attacking warriors. “The Canoe Fight” instantly entered frontier lore and was the first “victory” of the Creek War in months. 149 When he needed hard riding, Jackson turned to Dale, and now he carried an alert that volunteers from all parts of the district were converging on New Orleans, and Georgians would be needed, too. 150
Indeed, the volunteers were coming. Jackson himself directed Coffee and a company of Mississippi dragoons toward New Orleans. Governor Shelby had raised three Kentucky regiments with 2,250 men brigaded under Major General John Thomas from Louisville. Accompanied by former senator John Adair, who had paced uncontrollably for almost two years after the murder of captured Kentuckians in the Michigan territory, they embarked on November 21 without blankets, tents, or pay, a motley assemblage in homemade jeans and buckskins. 151 Three days later General Carroll had 2,000 volunteers embarked on flatboats at Nashville for the trip down the Cumberland to the Ohio and thence for the Mississippi. 152 Jackson had assumed the volunteers would come armed, but most had no weapons. Thousands of muskets, bayonets, gunflints, and cartridges were en route from Pittsburgh aboard two keelboats, expected to reach Baton Rouge by December 15, but the captain of one was unwisely authorized to make stops along the way to take on other paying cargo. Special riders were bringing Old Hickory $25,000 in cash for expenses. 153
Colonel Hayne’s arrival a few days ahead of the general confirmed that Old Hickory was really coming, news that boosted confidence. Citizens felt themselves perfectly secure now and, though still expecting the enemy approach, regarded themselves united and beyond enemy reach. 154 Even the legislature took heart, enacting taxes to fund defensive works. 155 The only discouraging words came in the eastern newspapers arriving in late November, for they told of Federalist New England states refusing to answer militia calls and Massachusetts calling for a convention of the New England states to meet on December 15 in Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss their mutual concerns and remedies, including the possibility that the dissident states might secede from the Union. Republicans in New Orleans viewed it as a triumph of Federalist disloyalty, while Louisiana’s developing unity was a victory for Republicanism, but underlying all was a concern that disunity anywhere weakened their capacity to resist threats on the Gulf. 156 Then, in mid-October, came a false report that the Ghent meeting had failed and the Americans were coming home. 157 A month passed before more reliable intelligence arrived, by which time an American victory on Lake Champlain had disrupted British strategy for the North and shifted any hope of progress southward. 158 However much a month’s delay getting information frustrated the Americans, it was worse for the British now in the Caribbean, for whom the delay in communication with London was double. Moreover, they knew virtually nothing of Jackson’s movements and thought him still at Mobile.
But Jackson was on the road, and on November 24 his mounted party fell in with Coffee. They reached the Pearl River by forced marches in three days, from there on carefully noting any geography that might host an enemy landing. Two more days brought them to Madisonville on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, just thirty miles from New Orleans. 159 On the last day of the month, a packet boat took them across the lake to Bayou St. John. They mounted and rode six miles down the bayou road, crossed a bridge, rode another two miles, and reached the city shortly after ten o’clock. Almost no one noticed. 160