s commanded at once the road and the river back to the swamp.

The Tennesseans, placed on the left, and operating in the undergrowth of
the woods of the swamp, were a continual terror to the British sentinels
and outposts. Clad in their brown hunting-dress, they were
indistinguishable in the bush, while with their long rifles they picked
off some of the British daily. The entrenchment line was being daily
strengthened.

A SECOND ATTEMPT TO BREACH THE AMERICAN WORKS, ON THE FIRST OF
JANUARY--GREAT ARTILLERY DUEL.

On the evening of the twenty-fifth, Sir Edward Pakenham arrived at the
British headquarters, and at once assumed chief command of the army in
person. He was a favorite of Lord Wellington in the Peninsular
campaigns, and held in high esteem by the English Government and people.
His presence imparted great enthusiasm to the officers and men of the
army, a majority of whom had served under him in other wars. The
invading British forces were now swelled to over ten thousand men for
present service. On the thirtieth and thirty-first, the enemy was
ominously busy in throwing up redoubts and in pushing his offensive
works in threatening nearness to our lines. In front of Bienvenue's
house he constructed a battery, of hogsheads of sugar taken from the
near plantations, the season for grinding the cane and converting the
product into sugar having just closed. A redoubt was also begun at a
point nearer the wood, fronting the American left, and some guns mounted
by the thirty-first. A heavy cannonading was opened on this day, from
this and other batteries along the British front, to which our own guns
responded, including those of the marine battery across the river, until
two in the afternoon.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS, JANUARY 8, 1815.]

These demonstrative movements of the enemy, with his busy
reconnoitering, foreboded an attack in force.

In the night of the thirty-first he erected, under cover of darkness,
two other batteries of heavy guns at a distance of six hundred yards
from the front of Jackson's entrenchments, on a ditch running along the
side of Chalmette's plantation, at distances of three and six hundred
yards from the river. During the night the men working on the platforms
and mounting the ordnance could be distinctly heard.

On the morning of the 1st of January, 1815, the earth was veiled by a
dense fog until eight o'clock. As the misty cloud lifted above the
horizon, the enemy opene