Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans (12 page)

A baby was born to Mrs. Nicholas Roosevelt (daughter of architect Benjamin Latrobe) in Cincinnati during a month’s layover, while the passengers waited for the water to rise. The earthquake of 1811 occurred, frightening the Indians and causing them to attack the steamboat. (The Indians thought the smoke-burping ship had caused the earthquake.) In the midst of all this, the ship caught fire. And when the ship landed in New Orleans in January 1812, the captain wooed and married Mrs. Roosevelt’s maid.

Until this time, there were mostly flatboats and keelboats on the river. There were few boats coming up from the mouth of the river. Now that the steamboat had been invented, keelboatsmen who sold their boats with their merchandise in New Orleans could travel back upriver by steamboat if they could afford it or have their merchandise shipped by steamer. At last, traffic both ways on the same vessel was possible.

The Embargo Act of 1807

In 1807, war was being fought on the Atlantic Ocean between
England and France. Although the United States was a neutral power,
its ships had repeatedly been seized by both warring nations. Appeals by President Jefferson had been made and ignored. Therefore, Congress passed the Embargo Act of 1807, prohibiting the shipment of American goods to either England or France.

Port cities such as New Orleans suffered greatly because of the Embargo Act. Imports and exports dropped to one-third of their former volume. Businesses closed. Smuggling resulted. By 1812, the injustices of the British in impressing American seamen, blockading American ports, and encouraging Indian attacks on settlers moving westward led to American involvement in the European war. In
addition, War Hawks in Congress were convinced that victory over the
British would win Canada and Spanish Florida for the United States. New England states were opposed to the nation’s entry in a war for which it was ill-prepared. Nevertheless, within days after Louisiana became a state, the United States declared war against England.

The Battle of New Orleans

Early in the war, the British enjoyed far more successes than the Americans. The British continued to blockade American ports. They defeated the Americans at Dearborn and Detroit and captured and burned Washington, DC. In spite of Oliver Perry’s
victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, most Americans began to realize the state of unpreparedness of the new nation and to abandon hopes of owning Canada.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, Governor Claiborne prepared for a defensive war. Early in 1814, General Andrew Jackson was assigned to march south to calm the Creek Indians, who had been encouraged by the British to massacre white settlers on the Alabama River.

Word reached New Orleans in the spring of 1814 that the British would attack the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. In September 1814, the British ship
Sophia
sailed into Grand Terre, the stronghold of the privateer-smuggler Jean Lafitte. The Captain had been empowered to offer Lafitte the rank of Captain in the British military and other monetary rewards if he would fight with the British against the Americans. Lafitte refused and informed Claiborne of the offer.

Stories are confused at this point. Some historians claim that Claiborne believed the buccaneer and interceded with federal authorities on his behalf. Others say that it was Claiborne, with the Committee of Defense, that sent a force of United States soldiers to bombard Grand Terre and capture Lafitte. Whatever the case, most of the buildings of Lafitte’s compound and many of his ships were destroyed. Lafitte and his brother, Pierre
, disappeared into the swamps.

Jean Lafitte

Lafitte had been preying on Spanish shipping and other vessels in the Gulf since 1806 under a letter of marquee from Latin American countries, which somehow legalized his piracy. His base was at Barataria in the swamps to the south of New Orleans.

Jean Lafitte’s blacksmith shop.

A constitutional prohibition against the importation of slaves in 1808 played right into the Lafitte’s hands. At Barataria, he held slave auctions once a week, at which he sold hundreds of slaves that were then smuggled into the city. Cutting New Orleans merchants in on his profits from all merchandise made them reticent to prosecute him. At his peak, he had a mansion, a fleet of barges, and one thousand men at Grand Terre.

Hundreds of tales of Lafitte; his brother, Pierre; Dominique You, a former gunner for Napoleon Bonaparte; and Renato Beluche, a future Rear Admiral in Gran Colombia’s navy and now buried in Venezuela’s Pantheon of the Heroes of Independence, have been fictionalized beyond recognition, but no one doubts that the pirate was one of the most colorful characters in New Orleans history (Grummond 1983). From his blacksmith shop on Royal Street, he plotted his illegal seizures and the sale of contraband.

As early as 1813, Claiborne had issued a proclamation offering a $500 reward for Jean Lafitte’s capture. The brazen pirate issued his own proclamation offering $1,500 for the capture of Governor Claiborne. Pierre
Lafitte was imprisoned, but Jean organized a jailbreak to free his brother. Somewhere along the line, Jean Lafitte turned patriot. It was at this point that he passed the information on to Claiborne that the British had approached him.

General Jackson was incensed that Lafitte’s stronghold had been bombarded by the Americans. He was afraid that now, the pirate would turn against the United States.

In September 1814, General Jackson defeated the British in Mobile, and in October, he turned them back in Pensacola. He received letters from Claiborne explaining his poor defenses, the prevalence of spies, and other problems.

Colored lithograph of the Battle of New Orleans. By John Landis, 1840.
(Courtesy Leonard V. Huber Collection)

When Jackson received word in November 1814 that British troops were gathering in Jamaica for an invasion of Louisiana, he left for New Orleans on November 22, just days ahead of the British, arriving in the city on December 2. He began setting up his defenses at once. Batteries and earthworks were erected at the Rigolets Pass, Chef Menteur Road, and the other two forts below the city, one on each side of the river, thus protecting the approaches to the city by water. He then ordered his troops to stand by in Mobile, Natchez, and Baton Rouge in case the British attacked by land.

He recruited every man who could bear arms. He accepted the help of the “free black” military units, who were to distinguish themselves
in battle. Then, he invited Lafitte and his pirates to join him in fighting
the British, promising full pardons in return for service. Lafitte and his pirates arrived with flint, muskets, and other arms and ammunition.

On December 22, British forces began moving across Lake Borgne
to Bayou Bienvenu
and set up camp on the Villere Plantation
. On the night of December 23, Jackson
made a surprise attack on the weary British army. It was a brilliant strategy, and the Villere Plantation
was captured.

In the last week of December, the British brought in fresh troops and supplies. Jackson had recruited every available man and put them to work building a line across Chalmette between the river and the swamp, marked off by a wall of cotton bales. Everyone came to help: Choctaw Indians, pirates, free blacks, and Creoles. By the time the British under General Sir Edward Packenham had regrouped, Jackson’s line was finished. With a reinforcement of two thousand Kentuckians, Jackson had about six thousand men, three thousand of whom were at Chalmette.

Packenham’s first advance on December 28 was met with heavy artillery fire and stopped. Then, early on the morning of January 8, 1815, when the fog lifted, the Americans, crouched behind their
cotton bales, could see neat lines of brightly clad soldiers advancing in
their direction with drummers, bagpipes, weapons, and ladders with which to scale the earthworks.

Jackson gave the order to fire, and his Kentuckians with their long rifles fired, reloaded, and fired again. The British line crumbled; Packenham reassembled his men and charged again, but for the second time, the British troops were mowed down, and Packenham himself was killed. His Major General John Keane took up the leadership of the British and drove them back into battle. Once again, they were decimated, as was General Keane. The British broke and ran.

When the battle ended, two thousand British had been killed, and the American army had lost seven men. It was an unexpected and staggering victory. Shallow graves were dug for the British dead, and their wounded were treated in New Orleans hospitals and homes. On January 27, the British left New Orleans, never to return as enemies.

Statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square honors his heroism.
(Courtesy Kathy Chappetta Spiess)

The Battle of New Orleans was unique in American history. It brought together people of many ethnic backgrounds of every social stratum to fight for a common cause, the defeat of the British: Acadians from the bayous, Germans from the German Coast, slaves and free blacks, Creoles, Kentuckians, Tennesseans, and buccaneers from Barataria all manned guns under the oaks at Chalmette. It was there that they amalgamated to become the American Army in New Orleans and proved themselves a force to be reckoned with.

Andrew Jackson, hero of the Battle of New Orleans, later became president of the United States and led the nation into a new era called the Jacksonian democracy.

The British troops then fought against Napoleon, defeating him at Waterloo. Governor Claiborne died two years later at the age of forty-two. Lafitte then moved his privateering operations to Galveston Island from 1816 to 1820. In 1822, Lafitte learned that Simon Bolivar was commissioning private armed vessels into the Colombian state service though no longer granting letters of marquee. On August 19, he was
assigned the forty-ton schooner
General Santander.
On February 4, 1823,
Lafitte engaged Spanish ships off the coast of Honduras, and sometime after dawn on February 4, he died at age forty-one (Davis 2005).

When news reached New Orleans that Napoleon had escaped from the island of Elba, where he had been exiled, Mayor Nicholas Girod
offered sanctuary to the deposed ruler. Napoleon, however, regrouped
his army, was defeated again, and this time, was exiled to St. Helena. Once more it was announced that Napoleon would be made welcome in the city. The Napoleon House on Chartres and St. Louis Streets was supposed to have been prepared for his stay, while he recruited and planned his next move. The Baratarians, including Dominique You, his former gunner, were to rescue him in a ship purchased by a wealthy group of New Orleanians, but just days before their departure, Napoleon died.

We often read that the Battle of New Orleans was the battle that was fought after the war was over, since the Treaty of Ghent, Belgium, had been signed December 24, 1814, ending the war with England. A delay in communications prevented Packenham’s receiving the news, and so his army attacked at Chalmette. The treaty, however, specified that the fighting was to continue until the treaty had been ratified and exchanged, and it was not ratified until a month after the Battle of New Orleans. Jackson declared that he would remain in New Orleans, that martial law would continue, and that the militia would be kept on the alert until official word came from Washington. On March 13, 1815, word reached New Orleans. Jackson then returned home to Nashville and the British troops left the area.