him, for temporary use,
several hundred stand of arms stored in the city armory and held for the
defense of the city in emergency, and to put a check to any possible
insurrectionary disturbance. To this the Mayor and committee finally
consented, on the condition that the removal of the arms out of the city
should be kept secret from the public. To this end, instead of General
Adair marching in and arming his men, the city authorities had the
arms, concealed in boxes, hauled out to the camp and delivered there.
This was done late in the dusk of the evening, and on the night of the
seventh four hundred more of the Kentuckians were thus armed and marched
forward to take a position with their comrades just in the rear of the
entrenchment, making one thousand Kentuckians under arms and ready for
to-morrow's battle.

In council with General Jackson, General Adair had suggested that the
British would most probably endeavor to break our line by throwing heavy
columns against it at some chosen point; and that such was the
discipline of their veterans, they might succeed in the effort without
very great resistance was made. To be prepared for such a contingency,
it would be well to place a strong reserve of troops centrally in the
rear of the line, ready at a moment's notice to reinforce the line at
the point of assault. Jackson approved this suggestion, and gave orders
to General Adair to hold the Kentucky troops of his command in position
for such contingency. With Colonel Slaughter's regiment of seven hundred
men, and Major Reuben Harrison's battalion, three hundred and five men
(the Kentuckians under arms), Adair took position just in the rear of
Carroll's Tennesseans, occupying the center of the breastwork line.

By the statements of their commanders, the joint forces of the
Tennesseans and Kentuckians defending the left center were about two
thousand men. General Coffee's Tennesseans, five hundred in number,
occupied the remainder of the line on the left, which made an
elbow-curve into the wood, terminating in the swamp. Ogden's squad of
cavalry and a detachment of Attakapas dragoons, about fifty men in all,
were posted near the headquarters of the commander-in-chief, and these
were later joined by Captain Chauvau, with thirty mounted men from the
city. The Mississippi cavalry, Major Hinds in command, were held in
reserve, one hundred and fifty strong, posted on Delery's plantation.
Detachments of Colonel Young's Louisian