John Barth - Letters

Old Hickory grimaces. “Politics!”

“John Barlow” shrugs. What is a general of the army but a sort of chief executive? he asks. And what is the President of the United States but a sort of general, strategically marshaling and deploying the forces at his disposal to carry out as it were the orders of the Constitution? Jackson’s frown turns pensive.

Two days later Dominique You and the others are free, Jean Lafitte is reviewing his own maps with the general, Renato Beluche is organizing artillery companies, and the vessels that in September had fired Barataria are now manned by the Baratarians! “John Barlow” discreetly retires.

The British land their advance parties and assemble below the city. A sustained drive against them is out of the question: even with Jackson’s reinforcements, it is some 3,000 American militia against three times that many seasoned British regulars. Nevertheless, the first action between them — a bold and successful night raid by Jackson to induce the British to delay their own attack until their whole army is assembled (thus giving him more time to complete his defenses) — convinces “André Castine” that with the help of the Baratarians New Orleans can be defended. Word has come through Jean Lafitte’s spies that the British service commanders are at odds with each other. Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, Wellington’s brother-in-law, does not like the terrain: his army has the Mississippi on one flank, a swamp full of alligators and Indians on the other, the Americans before (who barbarously harass them all night long), and behind them a fleet that can evacuate only one third of the troops at a time. Admiral Cochrane is complaining that he has another General Ross on his hands; that if the army “shrinks from New Orleans as it shrank from Baltimore,” he will land his sailors and marines, storm the city himself, and let Pakenham’s soldiers bring up the baggage.

All familiar as a re-play’d play, writes Andrew Cook: the Chesapeake moved to the Mississippi! On the day after Jackson’s night raid — i.e., December 24, as Henry Clay and his colleagues in Ghent sign a treaty agreeing to the status quo ante bellum (which the British privately mean to interpret as invalidating Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase) — he puts by his French alias and under his proper name gets himself “rescued” by the British.

More specifically, he devises with Lafitte and Beluche the following strategy: their agents among the Spanish bayou fishermen, who are cooperating with the British, will identify him as a friend of Lafitte’s with whom Jean has broken over the question of the Baratarians’ allegiance to the U.S. However much Cochrane distrusts him after the Chesapeake episode, the admiral will most certainly question him about the strength and disposition of Jackson’s forces. Cook will improvise as best he can to stall and divert a major British offensive at least until Jackson’s defense line is complete.

The crucial thing is that his “rescue” seem authentic. Unfortunate coincidence comes to his aid: Lafitte arranges for a party of Baratarian scouts to bring Andrew in from the marsh as a captured British scout; he is then quickly transferred under Baratarian guard, with other captured British scouts, through a stretch of bayou known to be patrolled by Cochrane’s marines. At the first evidence of British troops nearby, the Baratarians pretend to take fright and flee to save themselves, abandoning their prisoners. As the British congratulate themselves on their unexpected good fortune, Andrew experiences the first of those post-McHenry blackouts aforementioned: he wakes to find himself under a stand of loblolly pines on Bloodsworth Island, 36 years old, the war not yet begun…

Or so for a dizzy moment he imagines, till he learns from a redcoated officer that it is Bayou Bienvenue whose muddy bank he sits on, not the Chesapeake: those are cypresses, not pines, and it is Christmas Day, 1814. The sailors who row him down to Cochrane’s headquarters are jeering openly at the soldiers encamped along the way; morale does not seem high. At the Villeré plantation, British GHQ, word has it that Cochrane and Pakenham are still arguing strategy. An army aide comes out to interrogate the rescued scouts: Andrew declares to him that the key to Jackson’s defense is two armed schooners anchored in English Turn, a bend of the Mississippi below the city. So long as they lie there, he swears, no approach by road to the American main line is feasible; but to destroy them will involve the construction of artillery batteries on the levee above.

Such exactly (Cook already knows) is General Pakenham’s plan. Gratified by this confirmation of its wisdom, the general proceeds to devote the next two days to the laborious construction of those batteries, while his army twiddles its thumbs and Admiral Cochrane sends crossly for the bearer of that information. Fickle strategist that he is, unused (as a navy man) to thinking of terrain, it nonetheless seems to him clear folly to delay the whole army’s advance in order to lay siege to a minor nuisance that can as easily be attended to when Jackson’s main line has been breached. When he discovers who it is who has confirmed Pakenham in this folly, he is ready to muster a firing squad at once — but the “Spanish fishermen,” on cue, swear that Cook is a defected Baratarian, erstwhile friend and now rival of Jean Lafitte; and Cook himself confesses at once to Cochrane that his information is fraudulent; that the admiral’s own assessment of the situation is entirely correct.

Shoot him, Cochrane orders. But Andrew then hands him a confidential letter purportedly from Jean Lafitte to General Jackson, affirming that if the British can only be led to attack those schooners first, the defense barricade will be impregnable to anything short of a full-scale artillery barrage. Shoot him! Cochrane commands, even more outraged. Andrew then asks, as his final request, a private word with the admiral and his closest aides, and as soon as the army men step outside, he draws the moral that Cochrane has not yet grasped. Let the army waste its time on the schooners (one will be abandoned and destroyed; the Baratarians will tow the other upriver to safety, from where it can strengthen the main line) and on a follow-up infantry assault, which American artillery will easily repulse, one hopes without too great loss of life. Pakenham then twice defeated, Cochrane can mount an artillery line of his own with the only heavy guns available — those from his fleet, superior in size and number to the Americans’—and make good his boast. Navy cannon will destroy the defense and most of the defenders; the marines can do the rest, with as much or little army assistance as they may require!

It is Andrew’s private hope that Pakenham’s assault will be just costly enough to persuade both commanders to await reinforcement. In fact, the Baratarians prove such excellent cannoneers that when Pakenham attacks on the 28th, his force is pinned to the mud for seven hours and obliged to a humiliating night retreat with 200 casualties, most of them dead, as against 17 on the American side. Mortified, the general accedes to “Cochrane’s” plan for an artillery duel. But it will require three days more to construct even rudimentary emplacements, while Jackson’s ditches and embankments grow daily deeper, higher, stronger, and the Americans’ morale improves with every new success…

In those three days, Andrew writes, given fair freedom of the British camp by Admiral Cochrane, I cast about for my next expedient. For tho I was assured that the Admiral’s guns, however superior, could not breach Jackson’s earthworks (in the event, all those tons of British cannonballs plough’d into the mud & but strengthen’d the walls!), and that the famous marksmanship of the Baratarians would carry the day, I was not confident that a peace would be sign’d, or we have news of it, before Army & Navy mended their differences, fetcht up their reserves, and made a mighty attempt to add Louisiana to the status quo ante bellum.