Which War?

Why the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans should matter to you

by

Very few people remember the details of the War of 1812. Even my more learned friends didn’t know the premise. Asked what he knew, one bemused friend shook his head, “Not much.” Another called the topic “old news.”

Perhaps invested and interested tourists would know more. I went to Jackson Square, where a man in tight coattails rides a massive steed with flaring nostrils, to find out. Of the individuals busily photographing themselves in front of the statue of war hero Andrew Jackson, almost none knew who he was much less his role in the War of 1812’s final battle, the Battle of New Orleans.

“We don’t know nothing,” said one daughter of a family visiting from California.

A woman from Houston winced before she said, “He was ... a president?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Of ... the Confederacy?” she guessed.

Not exactly.

Then down the path between the rose bushes came an exceptionally genteel, grandmotherly character wearing a fur hat. She paused for a second before answering my now-practiced question: “He was a great Southern gentleman. And he was a fighter. And brave.”

She smiled, satisfied, and eased her walker toward the river.  
 
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The Golden Lantern is a tiny, dim watering hole at the edge of the French Quarter. Busts adorned with colorful hats and feathers look down on the patrons, who obliged my questions about the Battle of New Orleans. One patron suggested I see a 1958 film called The Buccaneer, in which the illustrious bayou privateer, Jean Lafitte, in a loose parody of history, saves New Orleans from the British while juggling romantic affairs with a Barataria wench and the territorial governor’s daughter.

The trailer was helpful:

The Buccaneer is more than a pirate story! For Lafitte and his little island played a vital part in American history. The young republic of the United States was fighting for survival in the War of 1812. All that stood between the invading armies and the City of New Orleans was a handful of squirrel hunters and raw recruits! Commanding them was a backwoods general named Andrew Jackson, played by Charlton Heston ... Lafitte was caught between two fires: the British and the American. Both knew that Barataria was the backdoor of New Orleans, and Lafitte was the king!

In its colloquial way, the description sums up the high points of the culminating battle of the War of 1812, a relatively small war and a late outcropping of the much bloodier Napoleonic wars. The Americans had been dragged into the conflict because of their friendliness with the French, who under Napoleon were trying to kill just about everyone else in Europe—especially the British.

Pictured left: This pen-and-ink and watercolor map was drawn by Maunsel White, an Irish immigrant who participated in the defense of New Orleans. The map was drawn a few weeks after the Battle of New Orleans and shows both British and American encampments along the Mississippi River. Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

The war was fought in three geographically disparate theatres: at sea, especially along the Atlantic seaboard where the British infamously captured and burned Washington, D.C.; in and around the Great Lakes on the American-Canadian frontier; and in the American South. The final battle of the war, the Battle of New Orleans, was technically fought after the peace treaty was signed in Ghent, a fact that has cast a pall over Andrew Jackson’s victory from the outset and tempers the battle’s significance in many historical circles to this day.

“That’s the one they fought twenty-four days after the treaty was signed to end the war,” a Golden Lantern denizen named Mike remembered. He set the stage:

“They’re down in Chalmette, which is a really good place to go fishing but a really bad place to pull a cannon through. The snakes and the mosquitos did more physical damage than anything”—both sides were dramatically digging canals and embankments through the swamp—“and slaves got their freedom for building berms to defend the Americans."

The British, attempting to capture New Orleans, which would have enabled dominion over the entire Louisiana Purchase, were trying to find a way from Lake Borgne, through the swamp and up to the Mississippi River, where the big battle would happen.

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Glenn DeVillier authoritatively breathes New Orleans. The Frommer’s travel guidebook says this “tall, chapeaued bon vivant is worth following around the French Quarter for his laissez-faire saunter and breezy repartee.” Breezy it was on the roof of the Royal Orleans Hotel, the first stop on DeVillier’s “Creoles, Americans, Pirates, and the War of 1812” tour. We looked out over the curves of the Mississippi River towards St. Bernard Parish, where the British had been camped in anticipation of their clash with Jackson’s troops two hundred years ago. That land, it turned out, belonged in part to Jumonville de Villiers, a Creole plantation owner on whose property the battle hospital was located; Glenn DeVillier is his direct descendant. (Further back, an ancestor of Jumonville de Villiers, Louis Coulon de Villiers of Nouvelle France, ranks as the only military opponent to whom George Washington ever surrendered.)

In December of 1814, New Orleans knew that British warships were circling near the mouth of the river, and people were in a panic. It had been two years since the British decided to redouble on their old American colony and burn the White House, and all of Washington, D.C., to the ground. But New Orleans, DeVillier made clear, was, and still is, unlike the rest of the United States. It was multilingual—predominantly francophone—but also full of Native Americans, slaves, free people of color, and, most dangerous for Jackson, Spanish holdouts. The city had switched flags four separate times in its young colonial life and already burned to the ground twice. C.C. Claiborne, the governor of Louisiana at the time, warned General Jackson before his arrival: “There is in this city a much greater spirit of disaffection than I had anticipated.”

The local population also had personal issues with the General. “The people of New Orleans considered themselves genteel,” DeVillier said, “and they thought Jackson was a country bumpkin. They called him Old Hickory.”

When one disaffected member of the upper crust watched the General and his wife dance a pas de deux, he was moved to write, “To see these two figures, The General, a long haggard man, with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame le Generale, a short fat dumpling, bobbing opposite each other ... was very remarkable, and far more edifying a spectacle than any European ballet could possibly have furnished.”

The haggard general inspired little faith among the beleaguered city. “He had been down in Alabama killing Indians,” DeVillier said, with a lift of the eyebrows. “That was his favorite thing to do.”

Pictured left: The authoritative Glenn DeVillier offers answers on-the-go with his “Creoles, Americans, Pirates, and the War of 1812” tour of New Orleans. Photo by Chris Staudinger.

When Jackson first arrived in New Orleans in December of 1814, DeVillier said, “He had malaria. He was tired. He [knew] nothing of the area.” And his troops, everyone knew, were vastly outnumbered.  

The legislature of Louisiana was in no mood for another fire in the city and debated a preemptive surrender to the British. In response, Jackson wrote to Governor Claiborne: “If they [the legislature] persist, blow them up.”

So on December 16, hoping to whip the ethnically divided city into military shape, Jackson imposed martial law on the area. He suspended habeas corpus, arrested prominent citizens, and imposed a curfew on the city. On December 28, he had the doors to the legislature locked and guarded by a soldier wielding a bayonet. This did not please the population, and it led to a showdown between the General and a local federal judge, Dominick Augustin Hall. Jackson arrested Judge Hall and accused him of conspiring with the enemy. Judge Hall, in turn, found Jackson in contempt of court and fined him $1,000.

Then there were the very real threats that loomed downriver. The task of defending the city was complicated by the thousands of miles of bayous and canals that wound their way up to the city. That’s where the pirates come in. Jean Lafitte had already made a famous and lucrative name for himself on those waterways, ambushing ships and selling the loot at rogue auctions. He led a band of ravishing, regal pirates (also in coattails, at least in The Buccaneer) in a community they operated south of New Orleans around Barataria Bay.

In mid December of 1814, Jackson met with the pirate. He offered clemency for Lafitte’s bandatti in exchange for their defense of the territory for the Americans. Lafitte and his men assisted in several skirmishes throughout the war, enough for Jackson to officially recognize their support and for DeVillier to say, “[Lafitte] was the real hero of the Battle of New Orleans. But you can’t give a statue to a pirate.”

Nobody is quite sure if the Lafitte brothers were present at the particular Battle of New Orleans that made Andrew Jackson famous. The British did eventually find their way up toward New Orleans through the very important outlet of Bayou Bienvenue. Despite the General’s orders to clog all waterways, the bayou was left open. It flowed through Conseil, the plantation of one Jacques de Villeré, and the stage for the biggest battle was set on his land in St. Bernard Parish.  

“The field was red,” DeVillier said. “Not just from the blood, but from all the British uniforms.” The red coats made easy targets out of the British through the dense fog that hung late over the chopped cotton that morning. Jackson’s squirrel-hunting frontiersmen from Tennessee were all too happy to “shoot the pretty ones,” which is what they called the generals on the horses. All told, there were over two thousand British casualties; the Americans had about seventy.

DeVillier made plain that he does not like to “glorify” war. “It’s all fine to put all the little soldiers into their places, but if you don’t know why they’re there, there’s no point,” he said.

After the battle two hundred years ago, when news of the already-signed treaty reached the city, worn-out soldiers were asking themselves the exact same question, and they defected in droves. No territory changed hands, no boundaries shifted. But the pirates were free, and they sailed on to Galveston to continue their plunder. The victory gave the city a reason to celebrate; it was carnival season, and they did, cackling at the haggard General. Two hundred years later, we’ll celebrate again, and hopefully a few more among us will know why.

Details. Details. Details.

For more information on activities surrounding the bicentennial, visit this calendar entry and this overnight piece from St. Bernard Parish.