Chalmette Battlefield

The Battle of New Orleans, fought on January 8, 1815, was the climactic land engagement of the War of 1812. American forces under Major General Andrew Jackson — a mix of regular army troops, Tennessee and Kentucky militia, free men of color, Choctaw warriors, and Baratarian privateers led by Jean Lafitte — repelled a much larger British assault commanded by Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, who was killed in the fighting. The lopsided American victory, won behind an earthen rampart on the Chalmette plain, became a defining moment of national pride, even though the Treaty of Ghent ending the war had technically been signed weeks earlier.

The Malus-Beauregard House on the battlefield is frequently misidentified as a wartime structure, but it was built in 1832-1833 by Alexandre Baron — nearly two decades after the battle — in the French Creole style, and was remodeled in the 1850s into its current Greek Revival form. It later belonged to Rene Toutant Beauregard, eldest son of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, which gave the house its popular name. It never served as a battlefield hospital, contrary to local legend.

The National Park Service acquired the Malus-Beauregard House in 1949 and restored it in 1965, using it for years as the Chalmette Battlefield visitor center until Hurricane Katrina damaged it severely in 2005. Today the battlefield is preserved as one of six sites within Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, located on the east bank of the Mississippi River about six miles downriver from the French Quarter.

Adjacent to the battlefield, Chalmette National Cemetery was established in 1864 and holds the remains of more than 15,000 soldiers, primarily Union dead from the Civil War, along with veterans of later conflicts. The combined site is one of the most-visited historic landscapes in the New Orleans region.