On This Day: US Forces Defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans

On Dec. 24, 1814, the United States and Britain signed, but did not ratify, the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812 and restoring pre-war relations. However, because the treaty was signed in what is today Belgium, news of the peace agreement did not reach America for about two weeks.

Thus, when Gen. Andrew Jackson’s men confronted a force of about 10,000 British troops in the swampy lands surrounding New Orleans, La., no one knew that the War of 1812 had already ended.

In December 1814, British troops led by Gen. Edward Pakenham had arrived in Louisiana with the intention of seizing New Orleans. Jackson, who had arrived in New Orleans on Dec. 2, checked the British advances on Dec. 23 with a surprise attack.

Jackson’s men were outnumbered and outgunned by the British, who were poised to take control of the Mississippi and cut off America’s trade routes to the Gulf of Mexico.

The U.S. troops fell back and built mile-long defensive earthworks. In the dark and foggy morning hours of Jan. 8, the British began moving on the U.S. forces through swampy terrain. “Pakenham's assault was doomed from the beginning,” writes A. Wilson Green of the Chalmette National Historical Park. “His men made perfect targets as they marched precisely across a quarter mile of open ground. … Both of Pakenham's senior generals were shot early in the battle, and the commander himself suffered two wounds before a shell severed an artery in his leg, killing him in minutes.”

The British surrendered within an hour of the battle’s beginning, having suffered about 2,000 killed, captured or wounded. The Americans lost under a hundred men.

Though the Battle of New Orleans was fought after the peace treaty had been signed, it was a significant victory in that the U.S. maintained control of the Mississippi River. Jackson spoke of the battle’s possible consequences in an 1837 conversation with a congressman.

“If General Pakenham and his ten thousand matchless veterans could have annihilated my little army,” said Jackson, “he would have captured New Orleans and sentried all the contiguous territory, though technically the war was over … Great Britain would have immediately abrogated the Treaty of Ghent and would have ignored Jefferson’s transaction with Napoleon.”

The War itself lasted from 1812 to 1815, and sprung from Britain’s continuing military engagements with the French under Napoleon. The British, seeking more naval forces, began forcing American sailors to serve in the Royal Navy. They had also imposed restrictions on American trade with the French, which the United States considered illegal.

Americans also objected the British fight against U.S. expansion, especially in American efforts to take over areas of Canada. “The United States planned to take over Upper Canada (the basis of modern-day Ontario) and Lower Canada (the basis of modern-day Quebec) in a single mass attack,” writes the Royal Philatelic Society of Canada.

The American public so closely followed the victory at New Orleans that “the war as a whole was popularly regarded in the United States as a great victory,” according to the U.S. Army’s American Military History. “Yet at best it was a draw. American strategy had centered on the conquest of Canada and the harassment of British shipping; but the land campaign failed, and during most of the war the Navy was bottled up behind a tight British blockade of the North American coast.”

Andrew Jackson was a Revolutionary War veteran and former representative and senator from Tennessee. His actions at the Battle of New Orleans made him a national hero and help catapult him to the presidency in 1824.

 “He strengthened the power of the presidency, defended the Union, gained new respect for the United States in foreign affairs, and extended democracy to more citizens,” writes to the Hermitage Museum.