Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans: The Battle That Shaped America's Destiny

by Brian Kilmeade

“Your government has at last yielded to the impulse of a nation. . . . Are we the titled slaves of George the Third? The military conscripts of Napoleon the great? Or the frozen peasants of the Russian czar? No—we are the free-born sons of America; the citizens of the only republic now existing in the world.”

Americans had fought hard, despite being outnumbered almost seven to one. The British casualties numbered at least 17 killed, 77 wounded. On the American side, 10 men died and 35 were reported wounded.

Against the advice of some Louisianans, Jackson accepted into his army two battalions of freemen of color.

Though he required that officers of the two corps be white men, he also ordered that black soldiers be treated the same way as white volunteers, a shocking attitude in a society that doubted the humanity and trustworthiness of nonwhites.

“Be pleased to keep to yourself your opinions . . . without inquiring whether the troops are white, black or tea.”

24 Americans were dead, 115 wounded, and 74 missing and presumed captured. But enemy casualties were much greater: according to one British source, the toll was more than 500 men.

Unable or unwilling to believe that fewer than two thousand Americans could have done such damage to his force of roughly the same size, Keane exaggerated the size of the American force in his report of the battle, more than doubling the actual count.

Commodore Patterson’s crew was a motley one—there were Yankees, Portuguese, Norwegians, Spanish, Greeks, Italians, Germans, Arabs, Hindus, and Swedes aboard. As Patterson advised the secretary of the navy, “the crew of the Louisiana is composed of men of all nations, (English excepted) taken from the streets of New Orleans.”2 In other words, this force was diverse enough to be pure American.

What Andrew Jackson had was a collection of Americans of all colors, creeds, and ethnic groups, melted into one fighting force, coming together to make military history.

General Jackson and his multiethnic, multigenerational army made up of people from every American social class and occupation had come together to do what Napoleon had failed to do: destroy the finest fighting force in the world. Thanks to Jackson’s military instincts, his impeccable planning, and his ferocious leadership, America had prevailed in the most important fight of its young life.