Jackson Wins Battle of New Orleans After War Signed

The battle was fought two weeks after the peace treaty was signed, but the news had not yet crossed the Atlantic. On January 8, 1815, British Major General Sir Edward Pakenham ordered a frontal assault across open ground against Andrew Jackson''s fortified position along the Rodriguez Canal, south of New Orleans. The attack was a catastrophe. American riflemen, artillerymen, and pirates cut down over 2,000 British soldiers in less than thirty minutes. Pakenham himself was killed by grapeshot while trying to rally his retreating troops. American casualties totaled roughly 70. The Treaty of Ghent, formally ending the War of 1812, had been signed on December 24, 1814, in a Belgian city thousands of miles from the fighting. Ships carrying the news would not reach American shores until February. Jackson and Pakenham fought and died without knowing the war was already over. The irony has defined how Americans remember the battle ever since, but calling it meaningless ignores its actual consequences. Jackson had assembled one of the most diverse fighting forces in American military history. Behind the cotton-bale and earthwork fortifications stood U.S. Army regulars, Tennessee and Kentucky militia, free Black soldiers from New Orleans, Choctaw warriors, Baratarian pirates led by Jean Lafitte whose local knowledge of the bayous proved invaluable, and Creole volunteers. The British force, fresh from victories against Napoleon in the Peninsular War, expected to sweep aside colonial militia. They were wrong. The lopsided victory transformed American politics. Jackson became the most famous man in the country overnight. The Federalist Party, which had opposed the war and even flirted with secession at the Hartford Convention, was destroyed by the wave of nationalist fervor that followed. Jackson rode the fame to the presidency in 1828, inaugurating the era of populist democracy that bears his name. The battle also killed any remaining British ambitions to reclaim influence in the Mississippi valley, securing American control of the continent''s interior.