USA > Tennessee > Old times in Tennessee, with historical, personal, and political scraps and sketches > Part 19
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longed shouts of the Americans over this spectacle. Still the remorseless artillerists would not cease their fire. The British infantry would now and then raise their heads and peep forth from the ditches in which they were so ingloriously ensconsed. The level plain presented but a few knolls or elevations to shelter them, and the American artillerists were as skillful as riflemen in picking off those who exposed ever so small a portion of their bodies." Nothing remained for the discomfited army but to make the best of their way to their old position ; and so incessant was the American fire during the afternoon, that it was only when night spread her mantle over the plain that all the army succeeded in withdrawing.
Four or five days ensued during which the enemy made no demonstration on the American lines, and nothing occurred which gave the Americans a clue as to what would be the next move. Meantime Gen. Jackson had the cotton bales removed from his works, and their place supplied by the black and spongy soil of the delta, which was a perfect protection against the enemy's largest guns, the balls sinking into it out of sight without shaking the embankment, while the shells thus buried would not explode. The lines were strengthened in every part, and new cannon mounted upon them, and Jackson felt reasonably sure that his works were impregnable to the forces then menacing the empo- rium of the Southwest.
" On Wednesday morning, January 4th, the long-looked-for Kentuckians, two thousand two hundred and fifty in number, reached New Orleans. Seldom has a reinforcemet been so anx- iously expected ; never did the arrival of one create keener dis- appointment. They were so ragged that the men, as they marched shivering along the streets, were observed to hold together their garments with their hands to cover their nakedness; and, what was far worse, because beyond remedy, not one man in ten was well armed, and only one man in three had any arms at all. It was a bitter moment for Gen. Jackson when he heard this; and it was a bitter thing for those brave and devoted men, who had fondly hoped to find in the abundance of New Orleans an end of their exposure and destitution, to learn that the General had not a musket, a blanket, a tent, a garment, a rag, to give them. A body of Louisiana militia, too, who had arrived a day or two be-
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fore front Baton Rouge, were in a condition only less deplorable. Here was a force of nearly three thousand men, every man of whom was pressingly wanted, paralyzed and useless from want of those arms that had been sent on their way down the river sixty days before. It would have fared ill, I fear, with the captain of that loitering boat, if he had chanced to arrive just then, for the General was wroth exceedingly. Up the river go new expresses to bring him down in irons. They bring him, at last, the aston- ished man, but days and days too late. The old soldiers of this campaign mention that the General's observations upon the char- acter of the hapless captain, his parentage, and upon various portions of his mortal and immortal frame, was much too forcible for repetition in these piping times of peace."
Gen. Lambart had arrived from England with reinforcements and supplies for the British army, and being thus better pre- pared for an assault upon the American lines, Gen. Packenham determined to attack Gen. Jackson in the early morning of the 8th of January. He had the utmost confidence in his ability to carry Jackson's works. He believed that nothing could resist the calm and determined onset of the troops he led. The humor of his soldiers was somewhat after the same fashion, though some of his officers were not so sanguine. A little before dawn, Pack- enham commanded a rocket to be discharged as a signal to begin the assault on the left, and a few minutes later a second rocket whizzed alo't-the signal of attack on the right. About six o'clock both columns were marching at the steady, solid British pace to the attack. The American outposts ran in bearing their great news, and putting every man in the works intensely on the alert; each commander was anxious for the honor of first getting a glimpse of the foe, and opening fire upon him. One account says : "Lieut. Spotts, of battery number six, was the first man in the American lines who descried through the fog of that chill and misty morning the dim red lines of Gen. Gibbs' advancing column. The thunder of his great gun broke the dread stillness. Then there was silence again; for the shifted fog, or the altered position of the enemy, concealed him from view once more. The fog lifted again, and soon revealed both divisions, which seemed to cover two-thirds of the plain, and gave the Americans a repetition of the splendid military spectacle which they had witnessed on the 28th of De-
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cember. Steadily and fast the column of Gen. Gibbs marched toward the batteries numbered six, seven, and eight, which played upon it, at first with but occasional effect, often missing, sometimes throwing a ball right into its midst, and causing it to reel and pause for a moment. Promptly were the gaps filled up; bravely the column came on. As they neared the lines the well- aimed shot made dreadful havoc, 'cutting great lanes in the column from front to rear,' tossing men and parts of men aloft, or hurling them far on one side. At length, still steady and un- broken, they came within range of the small arms, the rifles of Carroll's Tennesseeans, the muskets of Adair's Kentuckians, four lines of sharp-shooters, one behind the other. Gen. Carroll, coolly waiting for the right moment, held his fire till the enemy were within two hundred yards, and then gave the word 'Fire!' At first with a certain deliberation, afterwards, in hottest haste, always with deadly effect, the riflemen plied their terrible weapon. The summit of the embankment was a line of spurting fire, ex- cept where the great guns showed their liquid, belching flash. The column of Gen. Gibbs, mowed by the fire of the riflemen, still ad- vanced in the face of that murderous, slaughtering fire. But this could not last, with half its number fallen, and all its commanding officers disabled except the General, its pathway strewed with dead and wounded, and the men falling ever faster and faster, the column wavered and reeled like a red ship on a tempestuous sea .. At about a hundred yards from the American lines the front ranks halted, and so threw the column into disorder, Gibbs shout- ing in the madness of vexation for them to re-form and advance, but there was no re-forming under such a fire. Once checked, could not but break and retreat in confusion. Just as the troops began to falter, Gen. Packenham rode up from his post in the rear, and strove to restore them to order, and to urge them to a renewal of the attack. 'For shame,' said he, 'recollect that you are British soldiers. This is the road you ought to take!' point- ing to the American lines. Riding on he was soon met by Gen. Gibbs, who reported that his troops would neither obey nor fol- low him. Taking off his hat, Gen. Packenham spurred his horse to the very front of the wavering column, amid a perfect torrent of riffe-balls, cheering on the troops by voice, by gesture, by ex- ample. At that moment a ball shattered his right arm, and it
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fell powerless to his side. The next, his horse fell dead. His aid, Capt. MeDougal, dismounted from his black Creole pony, and Packenham, apparently unconscious of his dangling arm, mounted again, and followed the retreating column, still calling upon them to halt and re-form. Once out of the reach of those terrible riflemen, the column halted and regained its self-posses- sion, and prepared for a second and more resolute advance. They were encouraged, too, by seeing the Scotch Highlanders marching up in solid phalanx to their support with a front of a hundred men, their bayonets glittering in the sun, which had then begun to pierce the morning mist. Now for an irresistable onset ! At a quicker step, with Gen. Gibbs on its right, Gen. Packenham on the left, the Highlanders, in clear and imposing view, the column again advanced into the fire. Oh ! the slaughter that then ensued. There was one moment when that thirty-two pounder, loaded to the muzzle with musket balls, poured its charge directly, at point- blank range, right into the head of the column, literally leveling it with the plain; laying low, as was afterwards computed, two hundred men." A British officer said that at this time the American lines presented the appearance of a row of fiery fur- naces, so terribly hot was the fire that was being poured into the British columu. Gen. Packenham was within three hundred yards of the American lines when he ordered up his reserve, and seeing the Highlanders advancing to the support of Gen. Gibbs, he cried out, "Hurrah! brave Highlanders!" A few moments afterwards he was killed by a grape-shot. Then quickly follow- ing Gen. Gibbs received his death-wound, while Col. Dale, of the Highlanders, fell at the head of his regiment. Maj. Creagh then took command of the Highlanders, who wavered not, but ad- vanced steadily into the very tempest of leaden hail which Gen. Carroll's Tennessee riflemen were pouring into them, until they were within one hundred yards of the lines. There they halted and stood, a large and glittering target, until five hundred and for- ty-four of their number had fallen victims to the unerring aim of those terrible riflemen, when they broke and fled in horror and amazement to the rear. The column of Gen. Gibbs, after the fall of its gallant leader, made no further advance. Leaving heaps of slain behind them, they, too, forsook the bloody field, rushed in utter confusion out of the decimating fire, and took refuge at
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the bottom of wet ditches and behind trees and bushes on the borders of the swamp. Thus it fared with the attack on the weakest part of the American lines. "Let us see what success rewarded the enemy's efforts against the strongest. Col. Rennie, when he saw the signal rocket ascend, pressed on to the attack with such rapidity that the American outposts along the river had to run for it-Rennie's vanguard close upon their heels. Indeed, so mingled seemed the pursuers and the pursued, that Capt. Humphrey had to withhold his fire for a few minutes for fear of sweeping down friend and foe. As the last of the Amer- cans leaped down into the isolated redoubt, British soldiers began to mount its sides. A brief hand-to-hand conflict ensued within the redoubt between the party defending it and the British advance. In a surprisingly short time, the Americans, overpow- ered by numbers, fied across the plank, and climbed over into; safety behind the lines. Then was poured into the redoubt a deadly and incessant fire, which cleared it of the foe in less time than it had taken them to capture it; while Capt. Humphrey, with his great guns, mowed down the still advancing column. Brief was the unequal contest. Flight, tumultuous flight-some running on the top of the levee, some under it, others down the road ; while Patterson's guns on the other side of the river, played upon then with terrible effect." All now gave up the contest as hopeless, and rushed pell-mell out of the terrible storm of leaden hail that was decimating their ranks with fearful rapid- ity, leaving great heaps of dead and wounded behind them. All this occurred in the inconceivable short period of twenty-five minutes. But the firing did not cease for two or three hours af- terwards. When the firing finally ceased, and the dense smoke rolled off, the whole army crowded to the parapet, and looked over into the field. "What a scene was gradually disclosed to them! That gorgeous and imposing military array, the two columns of attack, the Highland phalanx, the distant reserve, all had vanished like an apparition." Far away down the plain, the glass revealed a faint red line still receding. Nearer to the lines, says Nolte, "we could see the British troops concealing themselves behind the shrubbery, or throwing themselves into the ditches and gullies. In some of the latter, indeed, they lay so thickly that they were only distinguishable in the distance by
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the white shoulder-belts, which formed a line along the top of their hiding place." Still nearer, the plain was covered and heaped with dead and wounded, as well as with those who had fallen paralyzed by fear alone. "I never had," said Gen. Jack- son, "so grand and awful an idea of the resurrection as on that day. After the smoke of the battle had cleared off somewhat, I saw in the distance more than five hundred Britons emerging from the heaps of their dead comrades, all over the plain, rising up, and still more distinctly visible as the field became clearer, coming forward and surrendering as prisoners of war to our sol- diers. They had fallen at our first fire upon them, without hav- ing received as much as a scratch, and lay prostrate, as if dead, until the close of the action." "The field," says Mr. Walker, " was so thickly strewn with the dead, that from the American ditch you could have walked a quarter of a mile to the front on the bodies of the killed and disabled. The space in front of Car- roll's position, for an extent of two hundred yards, was literally covered with the slain. The course of the column could be dis- tinctly traced in the broad red line of the victims of the terrible batteries and unerring guns of the Americans. They fell in their track : in some places whole platoons lay together, as if killed by the same discharge." The carnage was simply awful, the British loss amounting to seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred prisoners; while that of Gen. Jack- son amounted to only eight killed and thirteen wounded. Col. James Lauderdale, of Sumner county, and Col. Henderson, of Rutherford, were among the slain.
The victory was won and Gen. Jackson was master of the situation-he had done what he came to New Orleans to do. Silence reigned over the bloody field where but a few hours be- fore death had held high carnival, broken only by the moans of the wounded who had been left to their fate by their comrades when they sought safety in precipitate flight. It was a great vic- tory-great in its results and great in the halo of glory with which it encircled the heroes of New Orleans and illustrated American valor. It has rendered the Eighth of January and the pames of Gen. Jackson and his comrades in arms memorable forever.
Early in the defense of New Orleans, Gen. Jackson had put that city under martial law, nor did he revoke this order after the
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great victory of the eighth of January. Martial law was contin- ued until the official news of peace was received in New Orleans about the middle of March. Early in that month Gen. Jackson had Louis Louaillier, a citizen, arrested on the charge of "excit- ing to mutiny ; general misconduct ; being a spy ; illegal and im- proper conduct; disobedience to orders; writing a willful and corrupt libel against the General ; unsoldierly conduct ; violation of a general order." Application was made to Judge Hall, of the United States District Court for a writ of habeas corpus to secure the release of Louaillier, and it was granted, but Gen. Jackson refused to obey it, and had Hall arrested and imprisoned with Louaillier in the same apartment in the barracks. Hall was sub- sequently sent beyond Jackson's military lines. Brief was the exile of the banished Judge, for the very next day (March 13) a courier arrived from Washington with a dispatch from the Government announcing the ratification of the treaty of peace. Martial law was abrogated, "and in order," concluded Gen. Jackson's proclamation, "that the general joy attending this event may extend to all manner of persons, the commanding General proclaims and orders a pardon for all military offenses heretofore committed in this district, and orders that all persons in confinement, under such charges, be immediately discharged." Judge Hall returned to his home, and a few days afterwards Gen. Jackson was cited to appear before the Judge and show cause "why an attachment should not be awarded against him for contempt of this court, in having disrespectfully wrested from the clerk aforesaid an original order of the honorable the Judge of this court, for the issuing of a writ of habeas corpus in the case of a certain Louis Lonaillier, then imprisoned by Major- General Andrew Jackson, and for detaining the same; also for disregarding the said writ of habeas corpus, when issued and served; in having imprisoned the honorable the Judge of this court; and for other contempts, as stated by the witnesses." On the 31st of March the Judge pronounced the judgment of the court, which was, "that Major-General Andrew Jackson do pay a fine of one thousand dollars to the United States." Gen. Jack- son promptly paid the fine, refusing the proffer of a number of patriotic citizens to pay it, and thus the offended majesty of the law was supposed to be avenged.
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Here I close my rapid sketch of Gen. Jackson's campaigns, which added so much to the glory of our arms, and gave us a proud place among the nations of the earth. For the facts, the foundation of this sketch, I am indebted to Gen. Jackson himself, to many of those who fought under his standard, and to our best historians.
GEN. JACKSON'S DUEL WITH SAMUEL DICKINSON.
The following account of the duel between Gen. Jackson and Samuel Dickinson in 1806, appeared in the St. Louis Republican more than seven years ago, and substantially agrees in its details with the accounts of that affair current here in Tennessee more than fifty years ago :
"The love of Andrew Jackson for Rachel Robards cost Charles Dickinson his life. This love was not the least remark- able feature of one of the most remarkable characters that has ever figured in American annals ; and it lent a hue of almost ro- mantic tenderness, and more than chivalric devotion, to the career of a man whose impress upon the nation is yet broad and deep, and who, perhaps, as much as any other, has infused his own in- dividuality into its politics, and by the force of his single will consolidated the power and influence of the republic, and shaped its destinies. A strange, wonderful love, which began in early manhood, and continued unchanged and unchangeable through joy and sorrow, sickness and health, adversity and prosperity, trial and triumph, obscurity and fame, until death. Never for a single moment, or in the smallest possible degree, did Jackson swerve in his allegiance to the bride of his youth; and whether in the humble log cabin on the banks of Bayou Pierre, where the honey-moon was passed, or in those gilded saloons where the most brilliant beanties of the land thronged around the hero of New Orleans, and vied with each other for the honor of a presi- dential smile, he was the same ardent, enthusiastic admirer, the same fond, idolatrous husband. To him this woman in girlhood and in ald age, was the queen of his soul, the only one human being on the face of the earth whose faintest wish was to him su- preme law. A look from her would check the fiercest torrent of passion; a smile was his richest reward. Life lost all its charms when she had vanished from the scene, and he said upon
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his death bed to a friend, who leaned over to catch the gasping whisper, 'Heaven will be no Heaven to me unless I meet my . wife there.' From the day of his great bereavement he wore next to his heart a large miniature of the departed one, and a companion who traveled with him during his presidency, relates that on a certain occasion, when he was obliged to visit the Gen- eral's room late at night, he found him sitting at the table with this miniature lying before him, reading his wife's Bible with streaming eyes. He sleeps to-day beside her at the Hermitage, amid those scenes consecrated by their mutual love, and where the hours seemed ages when death had stolen her away. Ben- ton's tribute to Mrs. Jackson must be reproduced here :
""'The Roman General won immortality by one act of conti- nence. What praise is due to Jackson, whose whole life was continent ? Nothing could exceed his kindness and affection to his wife, always increasing in proportion as his elevation and culminating influence drew cruel attacks upon her. I knew her well, and that a more exemplary woman in all the relations of life, wife, friend, neighbor, relation, mistress of slaves, never lived, and never presented a more quiet, cheerful, and admirable management of her household. She had not education, but she had a heart, and a good one, and that was always leading her to do kind things in the kindest manner. She had the General's own warm heart, frank manners, and hospitable temper; and no two persons could have been better suited to each other, lived more happily together, or made home more attractive to visitors. She had the faculty-a rare one-of retaining names and titles in a throng of visitors, addressing each one appropiately, and dispensing hospitality to all with a cordiality which enhanced its value. No bashful youth or plain old man, whose modesty sat them down at the lower end of the table, could escape her cor- dial attention any more than the titled gentlemen to her right and left. Young persons were her delight, and she always had her house filled with them-clever young women and clever young men-all calling her affectionately, "Aunt Rachel." I was young then, and was one of that number. I owe it to early recollections and to cherished convictions, in this last notice of the Hermitage, to bear this faithful testimony to the memory of its long mistress, the loved and honored wife of a great man.
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Her greatest eulogy is the affection which he bore her living, and in the sorrow with which he mourned her dead.'
"Col. Benton alludes to the attacks made upon Mrs. Jackson's character, and as these attacks were the primal cause of the trag- edy we are about to relate, it is necessary to give the origin of them brief notice. Mrs. Jackson was a Miss Donelson, and her first husband was one Lewis Robards. They did not live hap- pily together, and the fault is ascribed by those who knew them intimately at the time, to the ungovernable temper of Robards. The couple separated some time in the year 1788, but through the interposition of friends were temporarily reunited a few months later. Jackson and his life-time associate, Judge John Overton, were boarders in the family, and the former manifested great sympathy for a woman whom he deemed sadly misused ; but this sympathy never carried him beyond the bounds of the strictest decorum. In the winter or spring of 1791, Mrs. Ro- bards finally resolved to leave her husband entirely, and take up her residence with some relatives then living in the vicinity of Natchez. The voyage had to be made in a flatboat, and Col. Stark, a venerable and highly esteemed old gentleman, who was to accompany the lady on the journey, was unwilling to risk alone the perils of hostile Indians who infested the banks of the river, and after much persuasion induced Jackson to join the party. He went to Natchez accordingly, returning immediately, and re- sumed his law practice at Nashville. Meanwhile Robards, aux- ious to rid himself of an uncongenial companion, procured a di- vorce from the Virginia Legislature; but this divorce was, by a provision of the statute, left inoperative and void until such time as the courts should examine into the matter and render a decree. This provision, it seems, was known to but very few, so scanty was the stock of legal knowledge in those days; and Jackson and Mrs. Robards, believing that the legislative enactment had consummated the divorce, were married in the fall of 1791. Two years afterward, Robards commenced a suit for divorce in Mercer county, Kentucky, court, and alleged as a cause the fact that his wife was then, and had been for some time previous, liv- ing with Jackson. The announcement of this suit and its termi- nation, was the first intimation which the pair received that their union was illegal. Nothing could then be done except to put an
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end to any future doubts by repeating the marriage ceremony, which was performed for the second time in January, 1794. This innocent error would have been forgotten entirely had An- drew Jackson remained a poor, unknown backwoods politician ; but as he advanced from one position to another, became the military idol of the country, the chosen chief of a great and vic- torious party, his enemies seized upon the story, manufactured from it a tissue of vilest falsehood, and used it to blacken the name of a spotless woman, and injure the character of a man who, in this respect at least, was the incarnation of virtue.
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