is point was Fort Bowyer, in a state of
dilapidation, mounting but a few pieces of cannon. Into this fort
Jackson at once threw a garrison of one hundred and sixty regular
infantry under Major Lawrence, a most gallant officer. These troops were
of course unacquainted with the use of artillery, but they put the fort
in the best condition they could, and on the 12th of September the enemy
appeared, the fleet under Captain Percy, and a body of marines and
Indians under Colonel Nichols. Jackson, then at Mobile, apprised of the
appearance of the British, hastily reinforced the fort, about to be
attacked by a large force confident of success. On the 15th of September
the attack began; the English battered down the ramparts of the
fortifications, and anchored their ships within gun-shot of the fort;
but so gallant was the defence that the ships were disabled, and the
enemy retreated, with a loss of about one hundred men. This victory
saved Mobile; and more, it gave confidence to the small army on whom
the defence of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico depended.

Jackson forthwith issued his bulletins or proclamations in a truly
Napoleonic style to the inhabitants of Louisiana, to rally to the
defence of New Orleans, which he saw would probably be the next object
of attack on the part of the British. On the 2d of December he
personally reached that city and made preparations for the expected
assault, and, ably assisted by Edward Livingston, the most prominent
lawyer of the city, enlisted for the defence the French creoles, the
American residents, and a few Spaniards.

New Orleans was a prize which the English coveted, and to possess it
that government had willingly expended a million of pounds sterling. The
city not only controlled the commerce of the Mississippi, but in it were
stored one hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton, and eight hundred
and ten thousand hogsheads of sugar, all of which the English government
expected to seize. It contained at that time about twenty thousand
people,--less than half of whom were whites, and these chiefly French
creoles,--besides a floating population of sailors and traders.

New Orleans is built on a bend in the Mississippi, in the shape of a
horse-shoe, about one hundred miles from where by a sinuous
southeasterly course the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. At the
city the river was about a mile wide, with a current of four miles an
hour, and back of the town was a swamp, drain