Chalmette Battlefield and National Cemetery
Chalmette, LA, 5.12.’23

Site of the climactic Battle of New Orleans (1.8.1815) during the War of 1812. U.S. soldiers, sailors, marines; Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Kentucky militia; warriors of the Choctaw nation; local creole; and pirates, alike, stood with Gen. Andrew Jackson to make a defiant and desperate stand on these banks of the Mississippi River to deny the British New Orleans. Had the Big Easy fallen to the British, it would have been likely that so too would have most of the interior of the then-young United States, due to the economic control of the Mississippi River.

Deep bayous; thick, swampy terrain; hastily made fortifications; and engineering preparations to accentuate the Rodrigues Canal thwarted the British advance at Chalmette.