Andrew Jackson wins the Battle of New Orleans
On this day · 8 January 1815
A ragtag American force routed a seasoned British army in barely half an hour—two weeks after the war had officially ended.
On January 8, 1815, Major General Andrew Jackson led a patchwork army of regulars, militia, free Black soldiers, Choctaw allies, and pirates against a far larger British force near Chalmette, just downriver from New Orleans. Sheltered behind an earthen rampart, Jackson’s marksmen tore the advancing columns apart.
The arithmetic was brutal. The British lost roughly 2,000 men killed, wounded, or captured, including their commander, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham. American casualties came to about 62.
News traveled slower than armies.
Negotiators had already signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but word had not yet crossed the Atlantic. The fight was, in a sense, unnecessary—yet its consequences were not. The lopsided victory made Jackson a national hero and carried him, fourteen years later, into the White House.
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