It was one of the most dramatic campaigns in American history. On one side were Britain's finest troops—superbly trained, well commanded and battle-hardened in the Napoleonic Wars.
On the other was a motley collection of such fighting men as a young newly united nation could gather together—troops in every kind of uniform, buckskinned frontiersmen, untried boys from the surrounding countryside, Indians in war paint, and even a crew of pirates under the notorious Jean Lafitte. In command was the frontier warrior Andrew Jackson, tough as hickory but untested in the battlefield tactics of his adversaries.
At stake was the city of New Orleans, and with it the control of the Mississippi.
Four times the armies met, and in the final crescendo the stubborn British advance was broken and New Orleans was saved for America.
Though scrupulously accurate, this stirring account maintains a high pitch of excitement throughout. Surely this is military history as it should be written.
—from the dust jacket
Perhaps Americans fight best when they are outnumbered and have their backs to the wall. That was certainly true on the frosty morning of January 8th, 1815, when a motley crew of 4350 badly armed Americans under Andrew Jackson faced 8000 magnificently trained British troops, veteran seamen, and marines led by the fearless General Pakenham.
Our buckskin-clad frontiersmen, pirates under Jean Lafitte and a conglomeration of other citizen soldiers were defending a muddy ditch crossing a plantation south of New Orleans. If that scarlet-and-white army rolling toward them through the fog could drive them from their swampy entrenchment, New Orleans would fall and the whole Mississippi Valley would be endangered.
F. van Wyck Mason, who has served with distinction in two American wars and written about most of the others, can make the reader vividly aware of the flash and roar, the courage and desperation of armies locked in battle. And through the gunsmoke we can sometimes glimpse the reasons why men fight and for a cause larger than themselves.
Sterling North
General Editor
—from the book
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