General Carroll's division of Tennessee troops arrived about this time; also the Louisiana militia were reinforced by several companies from the more distant parishes. On the fourth of January the entire body of Kentucky militia reached New Orleans, twenty-two hundred in number, and went into camp on Prevost's plantation. The day following, seven hundred and fifty of these repaired to the lines, and went into camp in the rear, arms being furnished to but five hundred of the number. There were, at this time, nearly two thousand brave and willing men within Jackson's lines, whose services were lost to the army and to the country for the want of arms. The dangerous delay of the arrival of the troops, and with this, the failure of the arrival of the arms and munitions necessary to equip the men for service, had their beginning in the culpable negligence of the War Department at Washington, of which history has had occasion to complain. But a more immediate cause for the irreparable delay in the arrival of the stores for arming and equipping the troops is found in the conduct of the quartermaster who superintended the shipment of the same from Pittsburgh. Though he was offered a contract to ship these supplies by a steamboat, and to deliver them at New Orleans in ample time for use, for some reason he declined the offer. He then had them loaded on a flatboat and slowly floated to their destination, when there was little or no hope of their arrival in time for use. At the date of the final battle at New Orleans they were afloat somewhere near the mouth of the Ohio River, and of course did not arrive until many days after all need of them was over. On the twenty-ninth of December, General Jackson wrote to the Secretary of War these words of protest against this failure to make provision for his army in such a crisis as the present: I lament that I have not the means of carrying on more offensive operations. The Kentucky troops have not arrived, and my effective force at this point does not exceed three thousand men. That of the enemy must be at least double; both prisoners and deserters agreeing in the statement that seven thousand landed from their boats.