For Honour's Sake (59 page)

Late on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, the Americans crowded into a carriage, spread blankets over their knees against the bitter chill,
and were carried to the monastery. The British greeted them in the grand refectory, where the documents were laid out on the long table over which they had so often haggled. For two hours the men and their secretaries meticulously compared the drafts. Some commas were inserted, but everyone decided to turn a blind eye to a discrepancy in how the secretaries had spelled out the dates in order to avoid having to redo the whole. Then came the signing, an event that took thirty minutes. The British inscribed their signatures first, then the Americans. Gambier then handed the British copies to Adams in exchange for the American ones. The old naval officer proclaimed a fervent wish that the peace be permanent, to which Adams expressed his hope that it be the last treaty of peace Great Britain and the United States should make.

Outside a carriage waited to speed Anthony St. John Baker and the treaties to London. In the late afternoon, giving the commissioners time to write covering letters, Christopher Hughes would depart for Bordeaux, where the U.S. ship
Transit
waited to carry him to Washington. As Baker's carriage clattered down the darkened streets, the Americans boarded their own and clip-clopped home. It was 6:30, and throughout the city pealing church bells signalled the commencement of the celebration of Christ's birth.

That night, by candlelight, Adams closed his journal entry for the day with “a humble offering to God for the conclusion to which it has pleased him to bring the negotiation for peace at this place, and a fervent prayer that its result may be propitious to the welfare, the best interests, and the union of my country.”
²⁴

In a private letter to James Monroe written on Christmas Day, Gallatin stated with reserve that the treaty was “as favourable as could be expected under existing circumstances, so far as they were known to us.” The European powers, he believed, desired the war to continue in order to weaken Britain. But none would assist America in it. With peace those same powers could be expected to desire more formal relations with the United States, due to its having not been beaten. As for the treaty itself, he believed they had surrendered nothing of consequence, but claimed no significant gain besides peace. To Gallatin that was sufficient.
²⁵

Surprisingly, the man who had threatened to break the negotiation at the last moment put the most favourable interpretation on the treaty's signing. While the terms were not what he and America had expected to gain, Clay wrote, “they cannot be pronounced unfavorable. We lose no territory, I think no honor. If we lost a particular liberty in the Fisheries, on the one hand … we gain, on the other the exemption of the Navigation of the Mississippi from British claims. We gain also the right of exemption from the practice of trading with the Indians.

“Judged by another standard, the pretensions of the enemy at the opening of the negotiation, the conditions of the peace certainly reflect no dishonour on us.”
²⁶
In this way the man who had led a nation and its president to war explained away the fact that none of the war's goals, officially stated or not, had been won. Honour had been preserved. That sufficed.

A
s the American commissioners wrote to James Monroe, Anthony St. John Baker's carriage rumbled toward Ostend, where a ship waited. Sweat steamed off the hides of the straining, tiring horses, but the secretary allowed few pauses for rest, food, or water. He slept as possible in the rocking, swaying carriage. Then, in the early morning of Christmas Day, came the sharp, splintering crack of a wheel spoke breaking. For hours the secretary paced impatiently by the roadside in the damp cold while repairs were made. Even with this delay, he delivered the treaties to Lord Liverpool forty-three hours after their signing.

Within hours Liverpool presented the treaty to the Prince Regent, who ratified it after the most cursory glance. Baker, accompanied by Clay's secretary, Henry Carroll, quickly boarded HMS
Favourite
and sailed for America. Christopher Hughes was already at sea aboard
Transit,
each man serving as insurance in case the other and his precious documents were lost to storm or brigands.
¹
Originally, Carroll was to have provided a third assurance that the treaty reached America by travelling on another ship from Amsterdam, but that vessel was already locked in ice as winter crushed down upon Europe.
²

Until the United States ratified the treaty, peace was not final, and the treaty set a deadline of four months from December 24, 1814, for that to occur or it was nullified. Even after ratification, there was the complicated problem of getting the word out to ships at sea. Both nations had naval forces scattered far across the world's oceans, many of them hunting each other. It would take weeks for messenger ships to bear the
news to the many ports where they must eventually call for supplies. Realizing the time required to get word to the Indian Ocean must be longer than to a port close to North America, such as the Bahamas, a schedule was drafted that allotted twelve days for the news to be spread to ships closest to the North American coast and up to 120 days for those in the southern Pacific or Indian oceans. Prizes taken in this time would be returned.

But not only ships would receive the news belatedly. Across the ocean, in the malarial bayous, swamps, and waterways surrounding New Orleans, two armies gathered for battle. A peace was signed, but the killing not yet done.

The British intention to attack New Orleans was one of the war's worst-kept secrets. Gallatin had warned Monroe of the operation months before, and British newspapers had reported the departure of the troops to West India and later Maj. Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham's sailing to join them. Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson—given command over Gulf Coast operations in May 1814—had dismissed all this forewarning. Pensacola, with its better harbour, seemed a more logical target to the Tennessean. A Spanish possession garrisoned by only 500 troops, it was ripe for conquest. On November 7, 1814, Jackson had drawn up 4,100 men before it only to find the Spanish flown, the city gates open. Unbeknown to Jackson, however, a small force of British marines had occupied the vital forts that guarded the harbour's mouth. Outnumbered, they set off huge explosive charges that destroyed the forts, rendering the harbour indefensible from seaborne assault, and then withdrew to waiting ships. Pensacola was neutralized.
³

Unsure which way to turn to meet the forthcoming British assault, Jackson marched to Mobile, where no sign of a British fleet was to be seen. Belatedly, Jackson adhered to frantic signals from Washington urging that he establish a defence around New Orleans. Jackson entered the city on December 1—beating the British by just a week.

New Orleans was, however, more easily defended than attacked. Lying 100 miles up the Mississippi, it was surrounded by water. Lake Pontchartrain stood to the north, Lake Borgne to the east, and the ground west and south was webbed with bayous, creeks, and festering
swamps. Marching on the city from the coast with a European-trained army posed a formidable challenge. About sixty-five miles down the Mississippi from the city, the twenty-eight guns of Fort St. Philip effectively blocked the river. Although those guns were probably sufficient, Jackson put 200 slaves to work digging a battery on the adjacent riverbank.

Having denied the British use of the river, Jackson examined likely overland approaches from the east. Five small gunboats under Lt. Thomas Ap Catesby Jones were deployed on Lake Borgne, truly a bay that opened into Mississippi Sound but barred to deep-draft ocean ships by a shoal across its mouth. Anchored behind this protective shoal, Jones kept a wary eye seaward. On December 8, Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane's ships dropped anchor off Ship Island at the eastern entrance to Mississippi Sound. The ship bearing Pakenham having not yet caught up, general command rested with Maj. Gen. John Keane, but it fell to Cochrane to devise a means to put 6,000 men in a position to carry New Orleans.

As he examined the thorny problem, Cochrane's earlier boasts that he could take the city with just 2,000 troops haunted the admiral. Closing on it with warships was impossible, so all their great guns were rendered useless. After studying the terrain for several days, Cochrane and Keane decided the troops must move by shallow-draft craft to the western shore of Lake Borgne. Here, they would land at the mouth of Bayou des Pêcheurs and follow an 8-mile winding course of bayous and canals through swaths of cypress swamps to gain a road 7 miles south of New Orleans that bordered the Mississippi. This would place them well above the American forts guarding the river.
⁴

First the gunboats had to be eliminated. On the night of December 12, a flotilla of forty-five launches, barges, and pinnaces under oars entered the lake. Aboard were 1,000 seamen and marines. Soon after daybreak, Jones spotted the British and attempted to escape under sail. But the winds were fickle and scant, so he could put little distance between his boats and the patient, seemingly tireless oarsmen. For thirty-six hours the British rowed and the Americans tried to fill sails. Then, at mid-morning on December 14, the British dropped anchor just out of gunshot range and took breakfast.

The American gunboats were spread out in a line. Barely a breeze lifted the sails, so each ship would fight where it stood. After an hour anchors were weighed and the oarsmen pulled hard as they came into range. The American guns opened with a fierce fire, Jones's only hope being to smash the British craft before they got alongside. Despite the heavy rain of round and grapeshot, the British oarsmen prevailed.
⁵
About 11:30 several craft swarmed around his flagship and marines clambered over the gunwales to fight his crew hand-to-hand. Jones and the British flotilla commander, Capt. Nicholas Lockyer, were severely wounded. After a twenty-minute melee the boat was in British hands, its guns turned against the others. Thirty-minutes later the battle was over, all the American vessels captured.
⁶
The British dash through cannon fire had been costly, most of their casualties resulting from it. Nineteen men were dead, 75 wounded, while the Americans had 6 killed and 35 wounded.
⁷

With Lake Borgne in British hands, Cochrane shuttled the redcoats and supplies across the lake's 60-mile span in open boats—an operation that took six days to complete. Rather than landing the troops directly at Bayou des Pêcheurs, a staging ground was established on a swampy, uninhabited islet called Isle aux Poix, near the mouth of the Pearl River and about halfway to the final landing point. While this movement was under way, an advance guard of 1,600 men moved into the bayou on December 23. They slipped undiscovered about 5 miles up the waterways in boats before having to disembark. From there, the force cut a crude road through a cypress swamp that followed a canal supplying water to a plantation. Astride the road bordering the Mississippi River, Keane allowed the exhausted troops to camp rather than exploiting the complete surprise to be gained by pressing on to New Orleans.
⁸

Jackson learned of the British whereabouts late in the day, yet had no idea if this was the main attack.
⁹
But always aggressive, Jackson was not going to let the British presence go unchallenged. That night, 900 regulars, 550 Tennessee riflemen, and 650 Louisiana and Mississippi militiamen—200 of whom were freed slaves—attacked the British troops. Although many redcoats were already asleep when the attack came in, they quickly rallied. A fierce, confused night-time brawl ensued, with men discharging muskets at point-blank range, stabbing
with bayonets, and using empty muskets as clubs. After four hours the Americans were driven off at about midnight, when British reinforcements appeared. British losses numbered 46 dead, 167 wounded, and 64 missing. The Americans reported 24 killed, 115 wounded, and 74 missing.

Retreating two miles, Jackson placed his men behind Rodriguez Canal on the southern boundary of Chalmette Plantation, where a three-quarter-mile wide swath of dry ground was flanked by the river on one side and impenetrable cypress swamp on the other. Across the canal lay a recently harvested sugar-beet field. Now convinced he faced the main British force, Jackson decided to make this his last stand.

The British proceeded with deliberation rather than haste. While they slowly advanced the rest of the army into place, Jackson's men breached nearby levees and flooded the previously dry canal with muddy water. Behind its northern bank they erected a shoulder-high rampart thick enough to withstand cannon shot by packing mud around sugar barrels. On the opposite bank of the Mississippi a battery of naval guns guarded by 800 Kentucky militiamen protected his flank.