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

by Brian Kilmeade

“Citizens!” he wrote in a broadside. “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.”4

Above all, Andrew Jackson demonstrated he was a man to be reckoned with. In just five hours he had formulated a combined land-and-sea assault plan, assembled a dispersed and diverse force, marched it undetected to the enemy camp, and reduced the king’s attackers to near total confusion. Then he and his men had slipped away just as they had come.

When he discovered that promised shipments of ammunition had not arrived from the city, he summoned Governor Claiborne, the man charged with providing munitions. Jackson warned the intimidated Claiborne, “By the Almighty God, if you do not send me balls and powder instantly, I shall chop off your head, and have it rammed into one of those fieldpieces.”

Jackson was...colorful.