That the “impossible” was now accomplished was due mainly to Jackson, although credit must not be withheld from a dozen energetic subordinate officers nor from the thousands of patriots who made up the rank and file of the hastily gathered forces of defense.  Men from Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee—­all contributed to one of the most remarkable military achievements in our history; although when the fight was over it was found that hundreds were still as unarmed as when they arrived upon the scene.

A preliminary clash, in a dense fog, on the second evening before Christmas served to inspire each army with a wholesome respect for the other.  The British decided to postpone further action until their entire force could be brought up, and this gave Jackson just the time he needed to assemble his own scattered divisions, select lines, of defense, and throw up breastworks.  By the end of the first week of January both sides were ready for the test.

The British army was a splendid body of seven thousand trained soldiers, seamen, and marines.

There were regiments which had helped Wellington to win Talavera, Salamanca, and Victoria, and within a few short months some of these same regiments were to stand in that thin red line which Ney and Napoleon’s guard could never break.  Their general, Pakenham, Wellington’s brother-in-law, was a distinguished pupil of his illustrious kinsman.  Could frontiersmen who had never fought together before, who had never seen the face of a civilized foe, withstand the conquerors of Napoleon?  But two branches of the same stubborn race were represented on that little watery plain.  The soldiers trained to serve the strongest will in the Old World were face to face with the rough and ready yeomanry embattled for defense by the one man of the new world whose soul had most iron in it.  It was Salamanca against Tohopeka, discipline against individual alertness, the Briton of the little Isle against the Briton of the wastes and wilds.  But there was one great difference.  Wellington, “the Iron Duke,” was not there; “Old Hickory” was everywhere along the American lines.[2]

Behind their battery-studded parapets the Americans waited for the British to make an assault.  This the invaders did, five thousand strong, on January 8, 1815.  The fighting was hard, but the main attack failed at every point.  Three British major generals, including Pakenham, were killed early in the action, and the total British loss exceeded two thousand.  The American loss was but seventy-one.  The shattered foe fell back, lay inactive for ten days, and then quietly withdrew as they had come.  Though Jackson was not noted for piety, he always believed that his success on this occasion was the work of Providence.  “Heaven, to be sure,” he wrote to Monroe, “has interposed most wonderfully in our behalf, and I am filled with gratitude when I look back to what we have escaped.”