Left with few options and buoyed by the arrival of reinforcements, Pakenham decides to launch a major assault on the morning of January 8, 1815. Over the course of the next five days, Pakenham makes two attempts to breach Line Jackson. Annoyed by his subordinates' inability to defeat Jackson and capture New Orleans, Pakenham moves his army to the Chalmette Plantation, about five miles southeast of New Orleans, on December 27. Sir Edward Pakenham arrives and assumes command of the British expeditionary force. A marine battery is established on the right bank of the river. It runs perpendicular from the Mississippi River for three quarters of a mile to a cypress swamp. The Americans immediately begin construction on an earthwork, later known as Line Jackson. A sharp but inconclusive fight ensues and after several hours, Jackson disengages and withdraws two miles north to the Rodriguez Canal. In a daring nighttime assault, the Americans strike the British camp. When he receives word of the landing, Jackson boldly marches out to meet the enemy. The British land below New Orleans on the morning of December 23. John Keane, decide to ferry the British infantry through the nearby bayous and approach the city from the south. After disposing of an American flotilla on Lake Borgne, Cochrane and the temporary army commander, Maj. Alexander Cochrane's fleet arrives near Ship Island, some 60 miles east of New Orleans, on December 8.
The battle was the last major armed engagement between the United States and Britain.īritish Vice Adm. The resounding American victory at the Battle of New Orleans soon became a symbol of American democracy triumphing over the old European ideas of aristocracy and entitlement. Andrew Jackson's hastily assembled army won the day against a battle-hardened and numerically superior British force.
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Recently promoted to Major General in the Regular Army for his successful campaign against the Creek Indians, Jackson reached the city on December 1 and began the task of assembling an army, which eventually consisted of Tennessee and Kentucky frontiersmen, Louisiana militia, New Orleans businessmen, Free Men of Color, Choctaw Indians, smuggler Jean Lafitte and his privateers, sailors, marines, and United States troops. Seventh Military District, Andrew Jackson, left Mobile, Alabama, for New Orleans on November 22. Although unable to take Baltimore the following month, the British nonetheless moved ahead with a plan to attack New Orleans.Īpprised of a possible invasion on the Gulf Coast, the commander of the U.S. With a strategic focus on coastal regions and American trade and transportation, the British army attacked and burned Washington in August 1814. In contextĪfter Napoleon’s defeat in the spring of 1814, the British were free to concentrate on their war in America. Jackson's triumph set him on a road that ended in the White House thirteen years later. British casualties far outnumbered those of the Americans. The British gambled and lost on a forward attack against American forces, dug into a fortified mud and cotton bale earthworks on the east bank of the Mississippi at Chalmette Plantation.
The battle thwarted a British effort to gain control of a critical American port and elevated Maj. The United States achieved its greatest land victory of the War of 1812 at New Orleans.
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