UPON every recurrence of January the eighth, the city of New Orleans dons gala attire and shouts herself hoarse with rejoicing. She chants the _Te Deum_ in her Cathedrals; and lays wreaths of immortelles and garlands of roses and sweet-smelling shrubs upon the monument of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square. "The Saviour of New Orleans," the inhabitants called Jackson in the exuberance of their gratitude for his defense of the city, and their deliverance from threatened peril, that fateful day of January, 1815. From capture and pillage and divers evil things he saved her, and the Crescent City has not forgotten. Neither indeed has the nation become unmindful of his great achievement, but upon each succeeding anniversary of the battle of New Orleans--that remarkable battle that gloriously ended the War of 1812, and restored the national pride and honor so sorely wounded by the fall of Washington--celebrates the event in the chief cities of the United States. During our second clash of arms with England, the Creek War, wherein the red man met his doom, brought Jackson's name into prominence. At one bound, as it were, he sprang from comparative obscurity into renown. In 1814 he was appointed a major general in the United States army, and established his headquarters at Mobile. He repulsed the English at Fort Bowyer, on Mobile Point, and awaited orders from Washington to attack them at Pensacola, where, through the sympathy of the Spaniards who were then in possession of the Florida peninsula, they had their base of operations. Receiving no orders from Washington, he became impatient of delay, and upon his own responsibility marched his troops against Pensacola and put the British to flight. "This," says Sumner, "was the second great step in the war in the Southwest." Washington had been captured and her principal public buildings burned, and New Orleans, the Crescent City, would now, it was thought, be the next point of attack by the British. To New Orleans, therefore, "to defend a defenseless city, which had neither fleets nor forts, means nor men," came Jackson. His entrance into the city was quiet and unostentatious and so devoid of the pomp and pageantry of a victorious general as to cause question in the minds of some as to whether or not this was the man expected. His dress was plain in the extreme, and bore upon it no insignia of rank; yet those there were, of insight, who saw in his every aspect the man of power. From eye and posture and gesture emanated a certain indefinable force that attracted men to him, and created in them an enthusiasm for his cause. Old and young who came under his influence were ready to do his bidding. To the terrified women and children of New Orleans who appealed to him for protection from the enemy, he replied:-- "The British shall not enter the city except over my dead body."