s Day with
reinforcements which made the British army about 8000 strong. Jackson had
planted heavy guns along his line of defence, and had about 4000 men to
receive Pakenham. Among the most efficient of these were the 500 riflemen
who fought with Jackson against the Creeks, and who were known as
Coffee's brigade, from their commander's name. Trained in repeated
encounters with the savages they knew little of military organization,
but were inaccessible to fear, perfectly cool in danger, of great
presence of mind and personal resource, and above all unerring marksmen.
Among the New Orleans militia were several officers who had served under
Napoleon, and had met on the battlefields of Europe the British veterans
they were now about to confront in America. The Baratarians, too, should
not be forgotten, and these, with the regular troops, the militia and the
citizens, and many negroes, free and slave, composed about as mixed an
array as ever fought a battle on American soil.[2]

[2] More than half of Jackson's command was composed of negroes, who
were principally employed with the spade, but several battalions of
them were armed, and in the presence of the whole army received the
thanks of General Jackson for their gallantry. On each anniversary
the negro survivors of the battle always turned out in large
numbers--so large, indeed, as to excite the suspicion that they were
not all genuine.--_Albert D. Richardson._

The British made an assault on the twenty-eighth, and were repulsed with
loss. On the night of December 31, they prepared for the closing struggle
by erecting batteries upon which they mounted heavy ordnance within six
hundred yards of the American breastworks. On the morning of January 1,
1815, the British opened fire, Jackson replying with his heavy guns. The
British batteries were demolished, an attempt to turn the American flank
was repulsed by Coffee and his riflemen, and the day ended in gloom and
disaster for the invaders. The American forces, strengthened by the
arrival of one thousand Kentuckians, awaited the renewal of the attack.
Pakenham determined to carry Jackson's lines by storm. At dawn on January
8, the British advanced in solid column under a most destructive fire
from the American batteries. On marched the men before whom the best
troops of Napoleon had been unable to stand--on they marched as steadily
as if on parade, the living closing in as the dead