The days went by slowly under the dreadful suspense. On New Year's day, General Packenham cannonaded the Americans and was driven back. On January 8, the final battle began. Early in the morning, the British moved against the Americans. Jackson walked along the lines, cheering the men, "Stand to your guns. Don't waste your ammunition. See that every shot tells. Give it to them, boys! Let us finish the business to-day." And every shot did tell. The sharpshooters aimed at the officers, and the batteries mowed down the British regulars. Seeing them falter, Packenham rushed among the men, shouting, "For shame! recollect that you are British soldiers!" Taking off his hat, he spurred his horse to the head of the wavering column. A ball splintered his right arm. Then the Highlanders came to the support of their comrades. "Hurrah! brave Highlanders!" he said, as a mass of grape-shot tore open his thigh and killed his horse. Another shot struck him, and he was borne under a live-oak to die. The great tree is still standing. At nine o'clock in the morning the battle was virtually over. The English lost seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred taken prisoners; while the Americans lost but eight killed and thirteen wounded. "The field was so thickly strewn with the dead that, from the American ditch, you could have walked a quarter of a mile to the front on the bodies of the killed and disabled.... The course of the column could be distinctly traced in the broad red line of the victims of the terrible batteries and unerring guns of the Americans. They fell in their tracks; in some places, whole platoons lay together, as if killed by the same discharge." The news of this great victory at New Orleans astonished the North, and made Jackson the hero of his time. The whole country was proud of a man who could win such a battle, losing the lives of so few of his men. Nearly every State passed resolutions in his praise. The Senate and House of Representatives ordered a gold medal to be struck in his honor. Philadelphia enjoyed a general illumination; one of the transparencies representing the general on horseback in pursuit of the enemy, with the words, "This day shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but He in it shall be remembered." Henry Clay said, "Now I can go to England without mortification." When Jackson and his army returned to New Orleans, men, women, and children came out to meet them. Young ladies strewed flowers along the way; children crowned the general with laurel, and an impressive service was held in his honor in the Cathedral. He replied, "For myself, to have been instrumental in the deliverance of such a country is the greatest blessing that Heaven could confer. That it has been effected with so little loss--that so few tears should cloud the smiles of our triumph, and not a cypress leaf be interwoven in the wreath which you present, is a source of the most exquisite enjoyment."