10 Things You Might Not Know About the Battle of New Orleans

The Battle of New Orleans was epic. Andrew Jackson's victory over 8000 British troops turned him into a folk hero, and paved his way to the White House. The campaign also helped modernize naval warfare and spelled doom for America’s oldest political party. Here's everything you need to know about the last major engagement in the War of 1812.

1. IT WAS FOUGHT AFTER THE AMERICANS AND THE BRITISH SIGNED A PEACE TREATY.

New Orleans was a major port and transportation hub that promised effective control of the lower Mississippi, which made it a prime target for Great Britain. So in late November 1814, Royal Navy Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane and a fleet of 50 ships set sail for Louisiana with the goal of capturing the city, along with the rest of the lower Mississippi Delta.

The fighting in Louisiana started on December 14, when a British naval squadron defeated an inferior American force in Lake Borgne. Nine days later, an encampment of around 1800 redcoats was ambushed by Jackson’s men at Villeré Plantation. Though the Americans soon pulled out, the skirmish bought Jackson, a.k.a. Old Hickory, some time to reinforce his defenses around New Orleans proper.

At the same time, an agreement to end the whole war was being negotiated. Representatives from both countries met in modern-day Belgium to hammer out the Treaty of Ghent, which was signed on December 24, 1814, 15 days before the Battle of New Orleans broke out on January 8, 1815. The treaty didn’t go into effect until it was ratified on February 16, 1815, though, so the U.S. and Great Britain were still technically at war during the battle.

2. JACKSON SHOWED UP WITH A BAD CASE OF DYSENTERY.

On November 7, 1814, with 3000 men, Jackson (then a Major General) took the city of Pensacola in Spanish Florida, where he learned about Britain’s planned invasion of New Orleans. He left for Louisiana in mid-November and—after stopping to build up Mobile, Alabama’s defenses—arrived in NOLA at the beginning of December with his personal staff.

Jackson also brought some dysentery. When he first reached New Orleans, he could barely stand. Digestion problems forced him to subsist on boiled rice for much of the campaign, and before the redcoats attacked, many of Jackson’s orders were given while the general languished miserably on a couch. Still, he wasted no time in organizing a survey of the many swamps, bays, roads, creeks, and rivers in southern Louisiana.

3. NOTORIOUS PIRATE JEAN LAFFITE DOUBLE-CROSSED THE BRITISH SO HE COULD HELP THE AMERICANS.

Jean Laffite claimed he was born in France in 1780 or so, but historians aren’t entirely sure if that's true. What they do know is that at some point in the early 19th century, he moved to Louisiana with a man named Pierre, who claimed to be his brother. The pair were smugglers, pirates, and privateers, and by the time the War of 1812 rolled around, they had established themselves in the New Orleans black market. Their base of operations was the remote Barataria Bay in southern Louisiana, where Jean made a port for his ships and set up dwellings for the ragtag collection of ne'er-do-wells involved with his criminal operation.

On September 3, 1814, a contingent of British officers arrived in Barataria Bay with an offer for Jean Laffite. The proposal went like this: If Laffite agreed to help the redcoats take control of New Orleans, he would be rewarded with a good, high-ranking job in the British navy—and he’d get to keep at least some of his ill-gotten gains. Plus, he would supposedly receive some free land along with a large sum of money.

Laffite accepted the deal—then double-crossed the British as soon as he could. No one knows why the pirate decided to help the Americans, but he might have been thinking of Pierre, who was imprisoned in New Orleans at the time. By assisting the U.S., Laffite probably figured he could get Pierre released (as it turned out, that wasn't necessary; Pierre escaped). He may have also believed that his business empire would crumble if the British took over Louisiana.

In any case, Laffite had a hard time getting the American authorities to accept his help. When he explained the situation in a letter to Louisiana’s governor, the U.S. Navy responded by laying siege to Barataria Bay. Jackson initially balked at the idea of working with Laffite, calling the smuggler’s men “hellish banditti.”

But Old Hickory eventually came around and agreed to join forces. Laffite couldn’t supply many troops; his men only represented about 2 percent of all the soldiers at Jackson’s disposal. He did, however, donate weapons to the cause, and advised the general on how to navigate the tricky rivers and bayous of Louisiana—expertise that helped turn the tide against Great Britain.

After the war, the Laffites and their men received full pardons for past crimes from the U.S. government. Jean and Pierre eventually left New Orleans, relocating to Galveston Island off the coast of present-day Texas.

4. THE FAMOUS KENTUCKY MILITIAMEN DIDN’T BRING ENOUGH GUNS—OR CLOTHES.

At his rallies during the presidential elections of 1824 and 1828, Jackson’s supporters would sing a little ditty called “The Hunters of Kentucky.” Written by Samuel Woodworth in 1821, the song pays tribute to the roughly 2500 Kentucky militiamen who fought under Old Hickory at the Battle of New Orleans. It turned into one of the most popular anthems of the 1820s and encouraged future politicians to choose campaign songs of their own.

But Woodworth’s lyrics don’t paint the whole picture. According to one verse, “Jackson he was wide awake, and was not scar’d at trifles, for well he knew what aim we take, with our Kentucky rifles.” But before taking aim, you need a gun—and most of those 2500-odd Kentuckians were unarmed when they reached New Orleans in early January 1815.

The militiamen had been led to believe that munitions would be handed out in New Orleans, so only around one-third of them came down with their own guns. But in New Orleans, there weren't enough arms to go around. “I don’t believe it,” Jackson supposedly said. “I have never seen a Kentuckian without a gun and a pack of cards and a bottle of whiskey in my life.”

Decent clothing was also in short supply among his visitors from the Bluegrass State, so the Louisiana citizenry and state legislature spent $16,000 to make new clothes and bedding for them.

5. STEAMBOAT WARFARE CAN TRACE ITS ROOTS TO THIS CAMPAIGN.

Jackson, who needed all the weapons he could get, must have been relieved to hear that Secretary of War James Monroe was sending over a veritable stockpile. One of the men who ferried the crucial firearms down the Mississippi was Henry Miller Shreve, captain of a large, flat-bottomed steamboat called the Enterprise. On January 3, 1815, Jackson asked Shreve to deliver some supplies to Americans holed up at Fort St. Philip, 80 miles downriver from New Orleans. Though the Enterprise had to bypass armed British forces en route, she completed the mission—a feat recognized as the first usage of a steam vessel in a military campaign. As for Shreve, he saw action at the Battle of New Orleans itself, where he commanded a 24-pound gun.

6. OLD HICKORY PLACED NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW.

During the conflict, Jackson took actions that no American general had ever taken before. The decisions would ultimately come back to haunt him.

On December 16, 1814, General Jackson subjected all of New Orleans to martial law and suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, a legal principle that acts as a safeguard against unlawful imprisonment. He kept a tight hold on the reins: Ship captains needed military-issued passports to take their vessels out of the city and all citizens had to abide by a 9 p.m. curfew or be threatened with immediate arrest.

It didn’t take long for Jackson’s men to start incarcerating locals: Mayor Nicolas Girod warned on Christmas Day that the Guard House would soon be overstuffed with prisoners. It was hoped that all was going to return to normal if and when the redcoats were driven out of Louisiana. Things didn’t work out that way. Fearing a second British attack against New Orleans, Jackson decided to keep it under martial law until March 13, when the state learned that the Treaty of Ghent had been ratified.

These were tough times for the Big Easy. During his tenure, Jackson censored local newspapers and banished French-American citizens suspected of disloyalty. Louisianans were further outraged when he had State Senator Louis Louaillier and U.S. District Court Judge Dominick Hall arrested. Once the latter was eventually set free, he put Jackson on trial and fined him $1000 for contempt of court. The general paid up, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. Old Hickory’s actions came back to bite him decades later, when anti-Jacksonians used his conduct in New Orleans to paint the man as a tyrant.

7. A 1500-YARD RAMPART WAS KEY TO THE AMERICAN VICTORY.

General Edward Pakenham came to the January 8 battle with around 8000 professionally trained British soldiers. By comparison, Jackson was at a distinct disadvantage: Many of his men—a hodgepodge coalition of forces from the Army/Navy/Marine Corps, militiamen, pirates, Choctaw recruits, and other fighters totalling 5700 people—had little experience fighting together. To give his troops an advantage, Old Hickory did some terraforming.

In late December, he visited the Rodriguez Canal, a shallow drainage ditch on the eastern bank of the Mississippi six miles south of New Orleans. Knowing that Pakenham would march his men up the river across some wide-open terrain, Jackson had his men build a 1500-yard rampart—made of wood, earth, and possibly cotton bales—in front of the canal. Dubbed Line Jackson, the wall began on the river bank and jetted deep into a nearby cypress swamp. For insurance, Old Hickory had the Rodriguez Canal widened so it could be used as a moat; the extra dirt that they dug up went into building the rampart.

The Battle of New Orleans began at 5 a.m. on January 8, 1815. Though there was an American contingent stationed across the river, most of the men were lying in wait for the British behind Line Jackson. The geography forced column after column of red-coated soldiers to pass through a narrow stretch of exposed countryside as they pushed towards the rampart. From the safety of their muddy wall, Jackson’s men mowed down over 2000 British troops in about two hours. It was a slaughter.

8. MISPLACED LADDERS HURT THE BRITISH.

Pakenham had a plan for dealing with Line Jackson, but one of his subordinates botched it. Before the battle, Pakenham had gathered some ladders, sugar cane bales, and other valuable supplies and entrusted them to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Mullins. With the ladders, Pakenham’s men could have climbed over Line Jackson while using sugar bales to fill the moat. But Mullins quickly lost track of the goods—and didn’t realize his mistake until his regiment was within 1000 yards of the American line.

At that point it was too late. Unable to cross the barricade or ford the moat, the British on the eastern bank turned into sitting ducks. Pakenham was killed and so was Major General Gibbs, who supposedly said, “If I live until tomorrow, I will hang Colonel Mullins from one of these trees.” Despite gaining lots of ground on the western bank, the surviving British officers chose to withdraw from both sides of the river.

By one estimate Jackson lost just 13 men (with an additional 49 missing, captured, or wounded), despite inflicting thousands of casualties. His job wasn’t over yet: Britain didn’t pull out of Louisiana until the end of January. Nevertheless, he’d scored an impressive, morale-boosting victory along the Rodriguez Canal. America would never forget it. “History records no example of so glorious a victory obtained with so little bloodshed on the part of the victorious,” wrote Secretary of War James Monroe.

9. NO, THE SCOTTISH TROOPS DIDN’T WEAR KILTS INTO BATTLE.

Great battles inspire great artwork, but artists don’t always pay heed to historical accuracy. Some of the paintings that were made to celebrate Jackson’s rout show the Scottish troops in Britain’s 93rd Highland Regiment wearing kilts in combat. The Scotsmen at best donned tartan trousers, although some historians doubt even that, saying they likely wore gray campaign overalls.

10. IT HELPED KILL THE FEDERALIST PARTY.

Established by Alexander Hamilton, the Federalist Party is recognized as the first political party in U.S. history. It enjoyed national dominance under the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams—but the Federalists lost that control in 1800 with the election of Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's tenure bred discontent across New England, a Federalist stronghold, and members of the party who lived there began to discuss seceding from the Union as early as 1804.

The War of 1812 intensified their resolve; New England Federalists were extremely suspicious of Democratic-Republican President Madison’s efforts, with prominent Federalist Rufus King proclaiming it “a war of party, and not of the Country.” To discuss their grievances against President Madison, his Jeffersonian agenda, and the war, Federalist representatives from all over New England quietly convened in Hartford, Connecticut on December 15, 1814. They put together a list of constitutional amendments for the U.S. federal government to consider that were designed to benefit northeastern states.

It was rumored that New England would secede if the Federalists’ suggestions were ignored. The Hartford Convention wrapped up on January 5, 1815, and its proposals were soon read aloud in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. At the same time, the country was just starting to celebrate Andrew Jackson’s big win in New Orleans. Most Americans were in a jubilant mood, and the griping Federalists now looked more out of touch than ever. “Hartford Convention Federalist” became a euphemism for “disloyal traitor,” and the party declined into oblivion.