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Andrew Jackson did it

City leaders in New Orleans are up in arms this week about the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest estimate of the storm-ravaged city’s population. The Census Bureau says New Orleans had fewer than 240,000 people in July 2007. That’s down from more than 450,000 before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, but up from around 210,000 in July 2006.

City leaders say the actual population is higher–and they need every person counted because such figures help determine grant dollar distribution. We can’t tell you how many people have gone back to New Orleans. But we can go back to New Orleans’s history–and tell you how a hard fight for the Big Easy helped establish the United States.

Big Easy History

Say “New Orleans” and most people think jazz, Mardi Gras, or the French Quarter. But the city once exercised Thomas Jefferson’s mind for more strategic reasons. “There is on the globe one single spot,” he said, “the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”

Jefferson knew that New Orleans commands the mouth of the mighty Mississippi River–which, through its many tributaries, drains much of North America. Before the invention of the railroad, many goods couldn’t make it to market except via the big river. So whoever held New Orleans had huge power over the newborn United States.

French Foundations

The French had founded the city in 1717, and called it Nouvelle-Orléans after Philippe II, duc d’Orléans, then regent of France. From the start, they envisioned New Orleans as a “port of deposit” for Mississippi trade. Back then, French territory stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada.

In 1803, Napoleon sold French Louisiana to the United States for less than three cents an acre. President Jefferson had actually been looking to buy just New Orleans and a bit of west Florida, but he took the rest of the 828,000-square-mile (2,144,520-square-km) territory into the bargain–and so nearly doubled the size of the United States.

Un-Impressed

Unfortunately, getting bigger and grabbing New Orleans didn’t make other security concerns disappear. Unresolved issues with the British had festered for years, including disputes over trade, incitement of Indian attacks, and the “impressment” of sailors on U.S. ships into British naval service. Tensions came to a head in 1812, and Congress voted to declare war on Britain–though only by margins of 79-49 in the House and 19-13 in the Senate.

The War of 1812 would see the destruction of York (now Toronto) in Canada, the burning of Washington, DC, and the penning of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It would also see an attack on New Orleans that came after a peace deal–the Treaty of Ghent–had already been signed.

Battle on the Bayou

In December 1814, 7,500 British forces under Sir Edward Pakenham landed in Louisiana, just miles from New Orleans. U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson went to meet them, slowing their advance toward the city. By January, Louisiana militiamen, batallions of free blacks, a band of Choctaw Indians, and a pack of pirates led by the swashbuckling Jean Lafitte had joined with U.S. regulars to defend New Orleans.

Meanwhile, British and U.S. representatives had signed their peace deal in Ghent (now in Belgium). But news of the deal didn’t make it to New Orleans in time. On January 8, 1815, the British began a full-scale attack on the American position under cover of dense fog.

By the time British troops reached Jackson’s well-fortified lines, the fog was long gone. U.S. artillery and riflemen opened up, destroying perhaps a third of the British ranks in less than an hour. Pakenham and two of his top officers were among the dead. The remaining British forces retreated, and major post-war hostilities came to an end.

Its Aftermath

Obviously, the bayou battle had no impact on the negotiations that ended the war. Yet the battle’s symbolic significance outstripped its actual military importance. News of the victory at New Orleans reached the nation nearly at the same time as news of the Treaty of Ghent. Soon, a war that had deeply divided the nation, and actually ended in stalemate, began to look like a victory.

While the Treaty of Ghent merely restored the pre-war status quo, the win at New Orleans helped inspire a renewed U.S. nationalism and sense of strength. In the words of Albert Gallatin, treasury secretary under Presidents Jefferson and Madison, the end of the war “reinstated the national feelings and character which the Revolution had given.” Now, people felt and acted “more American . . . more as a nation.”

For his part, Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero, and eventually rode his fame all the way to the White House. Meanwhile, Jean Lafitte and his pirates went on to establish their own short-lived “kingdom” on the island that’s now Galveston, Texas. But that’s a story for a different day.

–Steve Sampson