📅 On This Day in Military History
1 event across history
In one of history's great historical ironies, the Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after the Treaty of Ghent had already ended the war on December 24, 1814 — but news traveled by ship and had not yet reached Louisiana. General Andrew Jackson had assembled a remarkable polyglot army of U.S. regulars, Kentucky and Tennessee militia, free Black soldiers, Choctaw warriors, and even Jean Lafitte's pirates. Behind earthwork defenses on the Rodriguez Canal, Jackson's men repulsed a frontal assault by Wellington's veterans with devastating fire. General Pakenham was killed leading the charge. The British suffered over 2,000 casualties in less than 30 minutes; American losses were negligible. Though the battle had no effect on the war's outcome, it made Andrew Jackson a national legend.
Though fought after peace was concluded, New Orleans was the most lopsided American battlefield victory of the entire war. It erased the memory of earlier humiliations and gave Americans a triumphant narrative to conclude the conflict. Jackson became the hero of a generation and rode his fame to the White House in 1828. The battle also secured American control of the Mississippi River and the Louisiana Territory.
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