Andrew Jackson leads his troops against British Redcoats at the Battle of New Orleans

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On the misty morning of Jan. 8, 1815, soldiers of the U.S. 7th Infantry Regiment—a motley band of laborers, farmers, artisans and frontiersmen—faced off against orderly ranks of veteran British Redcoats at the Battle of New Orleans. Just hours later, with gunpowder-streaked faces, smoking muzzles and muddy coats, the Americans surveyed an awful scene of slaughter on the fields beyond their ramparts.

“The whole plain on the left, as also the side of the river, from the road to the edge of the water, was covered with British soldiers who had fallen,” one soldier recalled. “What might perhaps appear incredible…is that a space of ground, extending from the ditch of our lines to that on which the enemy drew up his troops, 250 yards in length by about 200 in breadth, was literally covered with men, either dead or severely wounded. The artillery of our lines kept up a fire against the enemy’s batteries and troops until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. The enemy’s loss…was immense, considering the short duration of the contest, the ground and the respective number of the contending forces.”

The men of the 7th, together with an assortment of militiamen from Kentucky and Tennessee, Louisiana locals and even pirates, all under the leadership of Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, had won a great victory, securing the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, solidifying American independence and awakening a strong sense of national identity in the young country. For Jackson personally, the victory was the first step along a path that eventually led to the White House.

In 1814, after two years of inconclusive fighting, Great Britain aimed to score a knockout blow against the upstart United States. By now, the British were on the verge of defeating Napoléon Bonaparte’s France. Caught up in the death struggle between these two powerful empires, the United States had, in 1812, come to blows with Britain over neutrality rights on the high seas. Preoccupied with the war in Europe throughout 1812 and 1813, Britain mounted a halfhearted campaign in America.

But now, in 1814, imminent victory in Europe allowed Britain to send a vast naval armada and army westward to deal with the contentious, outgunned Americans. The British planned a three-pronged offensive: one out of Canada aimed at Lake Champlain and the Hudson Valley, one in the Chesapeake states aimed at Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and the third aimed at the coastal South.

The northern prong failed in the face of American naval strength on the waters of upstate New York. The Chesapeake prong initially succeeded, the British defeating a force of pitifully led and trained American militia forces at the Aug. 24, 1814, Battle of Bladensburg. Unopposed, the Redcoats strolled into Washington and burned the tiny capital city to the ground.

The southern prong targeted New Orleans, the greatest seaport on the American continent in the early 19th century. With New Orleans in their pocket, the British would control the entire Southern coast, along with much of the Mississippi River. In early December 1814, Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson, commander of American forces along the Southern coast, was frantically cobbling together an army to stop the mighty British invasion force of 8,000 troops.

Jackson’s army mainly consisted of local militiamen, pirates, African-American freemen, Marines, sailors and Choctaw tribesmen, all formed around a core of Army regulars. Many of those regulars were members of the U.S. 7th Infantry Regiment, a hard-fighting outfit of a few hundred men that had been formed in 1808, mainly due to the recruiting efforts of a young officer and future president named Zachary Taylor. At New Orleans, when the time came for a decisive showdown with the British invaders, Jackson would wisely assign them to cover his most important positions.

The 7th was stationed in New Orleans throughout most of 1814 as Jackson assembled his army. For these regulars, disease was rife, life stark and discipline harsh. Many soldiers could not resist the temptations of liquor, women and trouble in the notoriously boisterous town. This led to a sharp rise in courts-martial. One anecdote describes a guardhouse commander named Corporal Hall, who had grown fond of one of New Orleans’ many whores, “an Indian squaw known by the name of ‘Toky.’” One night he brought Toky with him into the guardhouse, “remaining or lying apart from the members of the guard with the said prostitute and not suffering any candle or other light in the guardhouse during the time in the evening.” Charged with shameful conduct, Hall was court-martialed and found guilty. His night of carnal fun cost him his stripes. Regular privates found guilty in such proceedings fared much worse. In one instance, a private charged with neglect of duty was given 12 slaps with a paddle. Apparently he had left a water-collection detail and wandered off into the city.

Most of the men came from rural roots and had a hard time meshing with the population of New Orleans, who found the soldiers’ rough-hewn habits to extend well beyond the boundaries of “acceptable society.” Particularly distasteful was their tendency to urinate in public—anywhere and everywhere. The typical 7th infantryman saw no reason not to relieve himself whenever the need arose, no matter who happened to be around. When it came to bathing, soldiers often stripped naked and washed themselves in the Mississippi River. New Orleans belles who witnessed this soldierly brand of hygiene complained loudly to the regimental officers, who dutifully issued an order to stop bathing naked in the river—though one suspects the practices of public bathing and urination did not end completely.

The men who populated the regiment on the eve of the Battle of New Orleans were mostly Southerners and frontiersmen with little patience for social niceties or high society. One company was almost entirely composed of shoemakers and farmers from Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Other companies comprised mostly farmers, laborers, artisans and seamen, whose backgrounds skirted the margins of respectability. While not quite poor and destitute, neither were they educated nor financially comfortable.

Taylor had recruited some of these men a few years before the war. Others were drawn from the New Orleans area just months before the battle. Some signed up during the war for patriotic reasons or because their lives were disrupted by the war. A few were immigrants from Ireland, England or Sweden. Most likely, all the soldiers of the 7th were white, as the U.S. Army did not permit blacks in regular units. The lone exception to this color line was Jordan Noble, a musician from Georgia who was apparently held in fairly high esteem. Collectively, the men of the 7th got into plenty of mischief. If they wanted something (usually liquor), they went after it, regardless of the consequences. They could be a handful to discipline and train in a garrison setting, but they were tough fighters when battle called.

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