as unprejudiced against Adair as the author against Jackson, there would have been nothing like a stain left upon the escutcheon of the Kentuckians who abandoned the fight on the west bank of the Mississippi because it was their duty to get out of it rather than be slaughtered like dumb brutes who neither see impending danger nor reason about the mistakes of superiors and the consequences. He who reads the account of the battle of New Orleans which follows this introduction will know more about that battle than he knew before, or could have learned from any other source in so small a compass.

R.T. Durrett,

President of The Filson Club.

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Author,

Seat of War in Louisiana and Florida,

Position of the American and British Armies near New Orleans on the 8th of January, 1815,

Battle of New Orleans, on the 8th of January, 1815,

General Andrew Jackson,

General John Adair,

Governor Isaac Shelby,

Colonel Gabriel Slaughter,

The Battle of New Orleans

Gulf Coast Campaign, Preceding the Final Struggle.

On the 26th of November, 1814, a fleet of sixty great ships weighed anchor, unfurled their sails, and put to sea, as the smoke lifted and floated away from a signal gun aboard the Tonnant, the flagship of Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, from Negril Bay, on the coast of Jamaica. Nearly one half of these vessels were formidable warships, the best of the English navy, well divided between line-of-battle ships of sixty-four, seventy-four, and eighty guns, frigates of forty to fifty guns, and sloops and brigs of twenty to thirty guns each. In all, one thousand pieces of artillery mounted upon the decks of these frowned grimly through as many port-holes, bidding defiance to the navies of the world and safely convoying over thirty transports and provisioning ships, bearing every equipment for siege or battle by sea and for a formidable invasion of an enemy's country by land. Admiral Cochrane, in chief command, and Admiral Malcombe, second in command, were veteran officers whose services and fame are a part of English history.

On board of this fleet was an army and its retinue, computed by good authorities to number fourteen thousand men, made up mainly of the veteran troops of the British military forces recently operating in Spain and France, trained in the campaigns and battles against Napoleon through years of war, and victors in the end in these contests. Major Latour, Chief Engineer of General Jackson's army, in his "Memoirs of the War in Florida and Louisiana in 1814-15," has carefully compiled from British official sources a detailed statement of the regiments, corps, and companies which constituted the army of invasion under Pakenham, at New Orleans, as follows:

Fourth Regiment—
King's Own, Lieutenant-colonel Brooks 750

Seventh Regiment—
Royal Fusileers, Lieutenant-colonel Blakency 850

Fourteenth Regiment—
Duchess of York's Own, Lieutenant-colonel Baker 350

Twenty-first Regiment—
Royal Fusileers, Lieutenant-colonel Patterson 900

Fortieth Regiment—
Somersetshire, Lieutenant-colonel H. Thornton 1,000

Forty-third Regiment—
Monmouth Light Infantry, Lieutenant-colonel Patrickson850

Forty-fourth Regiment—
East Essex, Lieutenant-colonel Mullen 750

Eighty-fifth Regiment—
Buck Volunteers, Lieutenant-colonel Wm. Thornton 650

Ninety-third Regiment—
Highlanders, Lieutenant-colonel Dale 1,100

Ninety-fifth Regiment—
Rifle Corps, Major Mitchell 500

First Regiment—
West India (colored), Lieutenant-colonel Whitby 700

Fifth Regiment—
West India (colored), Lieutenant-colonel Hamilton 700

A detachment from the Sixty-second Regiment 350

Rocket Brigade, Artillery, Engineers, Sappers and Miners 1,500

Royal Marines and sailors from the fleet 3,500
—————
Total 14,450

Including artillerists, marines, and others, seamen of the ships' crews afloat, there were not fewer than eighteen thousand men, veterans in the service of their country in the lines of their respective callings, to complete the equipment of this powerful armada.

At the head of this formidable army of invasion were Lord Edward Pakenham, commander-in-chief; Major-general Samuel Gibbs, commanding the first, Major-general John Lambert, the second, and Major-general John Keene, the third divisions, supported by subordinate officers, than whom none living were braver or more skilled in the science and practice of war. Nearly all had learned their lessons under the great Wellington, the conqueror of Napoleon. Since 1588, when the combined naval and military forces of England were summoned to repel the attempted invasion and conquest of that country by the Spanish Armada, the British Government had not often fitted out and sent against an enemy a combined armament so powerful and so costly as that which rendezvoused in the tropical waters of Negril Bay in the latter autumn days of 1814. Even the fleet of Nelson at the Battle of the Nile, sixteen years before, where he won victory and immortal honors by the destruction of the formidable French fleet, was far inferior in number of vessels, in ordnance, and in men to that of Admiral Cochrane on this expedition. The combined equipment cost England forty millions of dollars.

In October and November of this year, the marshaling of belligerent forces by sea and land from the shores of Europe and America, with orders to rendezvous at a favorable maneuvering point in the West