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Historical Background

The War of 1812: Military Stalemate and National Awakening (continued)

PEACE AND THE VICTORY AT NEW ORLEANS

Almost since the beginning of the war, elements in both countries had talked of peace. Both sides had entered and fought the war halfheartedly. In August 1814 a U.S. peace commission began negotiations with the British at Ghent, in Belgium. The U.S. commissioners, John Quincy Adams, Albert Gallatin, Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell, and J. A. Bayard, had specific instructions. They were to demand an end to impressment, British adherence to international law in the enforcement of blockades, and payment for illegal seizure of U.S. ships.

The British wanted territorial concessions from the United States, notably portions of New York and Maine, surrender of U.S. control of the Great Lakes, and an Indian-occupied buffer state in the West. They also demanded navigation rights on the Mississippi River and restrictions on American fishing rights in the Newfoundland Banks. Both sides predicated their demands on anticipated military successes that never materialized. The U.S. invasion of Canada had failed and so had the British invasion of the United States. Merchants in both countries were eager to resume trading. Under the circumstances negotiators of both sides abandoned their diplomatic instructions. The Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814, ended the war by simply ignoring its causes. The treaty restored the status quo ante bellum—the way things were before the war. Yet it offered the promise of future solution to U.S.-Canadian boundary and Atlantic fishing disputes by providing for the establishment of an Anglo-American commission to seek their settlement.

In a time of slow communications, a major battle occurred before the news of the signing of the treaty reached the United States. The U.S. victory at the Battle of New Orleans could have no effect on the peace terms but would facilitate U.S. ratification, in February 1815. The war in the South had generally gone well for the United States. In 1813 the "Red Sticks" faction of the Creek Indians had taken advantage of U.S. involvement in the War of 1812 and mounted an attack along the Southwestern frontier. Tennessee and Kentucky militiamen under Gen. Andrew Jackson responded. The climax of the Creek War came in March 1814, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where Jackson's army killed 900 braves and captured 500 women and children. The Treaty of Fort Jackson wrested from the Creeks most of what is today southeastern Alabama. In short order, Jackson moved on to invade Spanish Florida and seize the port of Pensacola, where the British, with Spanish acquiescence, had created a base from which to attack Mobile.

Upon his return to Mobile late in 1814, Jackson learned that a British amphibious force that had attacked Washington and Baltimore was at Jamaica, West Indies, refitting for another expedition, presumably against New Orleans. In December he hurried to New Orleans and, before the British arrived, managed to assemble a colorful, if motley, army. The army consisted mainly of militia that lacked the necessary training and discipline for face-to-face combat against Regulars in the open field but that might do well behind fortifications.

A panoramic version of the Battle of New Orleans (January 8, 1815), a major U.S. victory and last significant battle in the War of 1812. From a lithograph by P. S. Duval. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

After weak U.S. reconnaissance permitted the British to advance to within 7 miles of New Orleans from the east—attack had been expected from the west—Jackson reacted quickly. When a surprise attack on the British camp failed on December 23 and 24, 1814, his men threw up earthworks between a cypress swamp and the Mississippi, 5 miles from New Orleans, to block the British advance. As time passed and the defenders of Fort St. Philip on the Mississippi prevented the British fleet from moving into position to flank Jackson's earthworks, Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham, the British commander, decided to make a frontal assault against the entrenched forces. On the morning of January 8, 1815, thousands of British soldiers, tightly massed, marched across the plain toward Jackson's line. Twenty-five minutes later hundreds of them were dead, including Pakenham, and many hundreds more were wounded or prisoners. Jackson's forces suffered only light casualties. The British withdrew. New Orleans was safe. The Mississippi remained open.

Even though the U.S. victory at New Orleans was won after the signing of the peace treaty, it was important. Had the British won, they might have held New Orleans and with it control of the Mississippi, peace treaty or no. Coming as it did with the news of peace, the victory at New Orleans brought the inconclusive war to an end on a note of triumph. And Jackson, hero of New Orleans, took a long stride toward the White House.