Jean Baptiste Plauché: The Cotton Merchant Who Became a General at the Battle of New Orleans

The Cotton Merchant Who Led the Battalion at the Battle of New Orleans

Jean Baptiste Plauché was a cotton merchant. He sold cotton for a living, ran a business in the French Quarter, and did the things that cotton merchants do. And then Andrew Jackson needed an army, and the cotton merchant became a general.

Plauché was born in New Orleans on January 28, 1785, the son of a French immigrant father from Marseille and a mother educated at the Ursuline Academy. He grew up in the city during the Spanish period, came of age during the American takeover, and built a comfortable life as a businessman. He was the kind of person who, in most cities, would have lived and died without anyone outside his family remembering his name.

But this was New Orleans, and in December 1814, the British were coming.

When word reached the city that a massive British force was advancing up from the Gulf, Andrew Jackson put out the call for every able-bodied man to defend the city. Plauché answered by assembling the Battalion d'Orléans — and the composition of that unit tells you everything about what New Orleans was in 1814. His battalion included local businessmen and shopkeepers, veterans of Napoleon's armies who had washed up in Louisiana after Waterloo, Native Americans, and members of Jean Lafitte's pirate crews. It was the most New Orleans fighting force imaginable — a polyglot collection of merchants, pirates, French veterans, and indigenous warriors, all commanded by a cotton dealer.

At twenty-nine years old, Plauché held the rank of brigadier general of the Louisiana militia. When the British advance was reported, his troops were initially stationed at Fort Bayou St. John. They rushed five miles to the Vieux Carré to join the defense. On the night of December 23, 1814, Jackson launched his surprise attack on the British camp, and Plauché's battalion was in the thick of it. His 289 men fought alongside regulars, Tennessee and Kentucky volunteers, free men of color, and the Baratarian pirates in the chaotic night battle that stalled the British advance and bought time for Jackson to build his famous defensive line.

At the decisive Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, Plauché's battalion held their position on the American line and helped deliver the devastating volley fire that shredded the British assault. Jackson praised Plauché personally, writing that he had "the best founded claims to its gratitude" from the city. Coming from Andrew Jackson, who was not generous with compliments, that meant something.

After the war, Plauché returned to civilian life but never fully left public service. He served on the New Orleans City Council, won election to the Louisiana state legislature, and in 1850 became Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana under Governor Joseph Marshall Walker. He was the first lieutenant governor sworn in at Baton Rouge after it became the new state capital, a detail that puts him at one of those quiet turning points in Louisiana history.

He also maintained a lifelong friendship with Andrew Jackson. In 1841, when the former president was in financial trouble, Plauché loaned him seven thousand dollars — a substantial sum at the time. The cotton merchant from New Orleans bailing out the Hero of New Orleans. The relationship between the two men embodied what the battle itself had created: a bond between the roughneck American frontier and the sophisticated Creole city that would define Louisiana for the next two centuries.

Jean Baptiste Plauché died on January 2, 1860, at seventy-four years old, and was buried in New Orleans. During World War II, a military camp near Harahan was named Camp Plauché in his honor — a fitting tribute to a man who proved that you don't have to be a professional soldier to defend your city. Sometimes you just need a cotton merchant who knows how to organize people and isn't afraid of a fight.