Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama.

"I can only deplore the situation of those officers who have undertaken to persuade their men that their term of service will expire on the 10th. In giving their opinions to this effect they have acted indiscreetly and without sufficient authority. It would be the most pleasing act of my life to restore them with honor to their families. Nothing could pain me more than that any other sentiments should be felt toward them than those of gratitude and esteem. On all occasions it has been my highest happiness to promote their interest, and even to gratify their wishes, where with propriety it could be done. When in the lower country, believing that in the order for their dismissal they had been improperly treated, I even solicited the government to discharge them finally from the obligations into which they had entered. You know the answer of the Secretary of War: that neither he nor the President, as he believed, had the power to discharge them. How then can it be required of me to do so?

"The moment it is signified to me by any competent authority, even by the Governor of Tennessee, to whom I have written on the subject, or by General Pinckney, who is now appointed to the command, that the volunteers may be exonerated from further service, that moment I will pronounce it with the greatest satisfaction. I have only the power of pronouncing a discharge, not of giving it, in any case – a distinction which I would wish should be borne in mind. Already have I sent to raise volunteers on my own responsibility, to complete a campaign which has been so happily begun, and thus far so fortunately prosecuted. The moment they arrive, and I am assured that, fired by our exploits, they will hasten in crowds on the first intimation that we need their services, they will be substituted in the place of those who are discontented here. The latter will then be permitted to return to their homes with all the honor which, under such circumstances they can carry along with them. But I still cherish the hope that their dissatisfaction and complaints have been greatly exaggerated. I cannot, must not, believe that the 'volunteers of Tennessee,' a name ever dear to fame, will disgrace themselves and a country which they have honored, by abandoning her standard as mutineers and deserters; but should I be disappointed and compelled to resign this pleasing hope, one thing I will not resign – my duty. Mutiny and sedition, so long as I possess the power of quelling them, shall be put down; and even when left destitute of this, I will still be found in the last extremity endeavoring to discharge the duty I owe my country and myself."

CHAPTER XXIV.

JACKSON'S SECOND BATTLE WITH HIS OWN MEN

When troops unused as these men were to systematic obedience make up their minds to abandon the service they are of very little account thereafter, as soldiers. If one pretext for mutiny and desertion fails them, they quickly find another, as the men had done in this case. While famine lasted, famine was the best possible excuse for wishing to go home, and the men thought of no other. They even protested their devotion to the cause and their willingness to remain in service if food could be found for them; but no sooner were their mouths stopped with abundant supplies of beef and bread than they tried to leave, as has been described, without any pretext whatever. Failing in that, they picked this flaw, or this pretended flaw, in their contract of enlistment, and Jackson probably knew that so far as their restoration to the condition of good soldiers was concerned, he was wasting words in arguing the case; but it was necessary to detain these men until the others for whom he had sent to Tennessee should arrive to take their places. They were useless for any thing like offensive operations, else he would have marched with them at once toward the Creek strongholds; but while they should remain at Fort Strother he could depend upon them to defend that post against any assault that might be made upon it, simply because in the event of an attack they must defend themselves, and to do that would have been to defend the fort.

Jackson had ordered the enlistment of a new force to take the place of these discontented men, but until the new army should come he was bent upon keeping the old one.

Precisely what arrangements he had made to meet trouble on the 10th of December we have no means of knowing. He was not permitted to wait for the coming of that day. On the evening of the 9th, word was brought to him that the men were already strapping their knapsacks on their backs and getting ready to march immediately.

It was time to act. Jackson issued one of the shortest of all his proclamations, ordering all good soldiers to assist in putting down the mutiny. Then he ordered the militia to parade at once under arms. Placing his cannon in a commanding position, he drew up the militia in line of battle and confronted the mutinous volunteers.

Riding to the front he made a speech to the volunteers, beginning by assuring them that they could march only over his dead body; that he had done with entreaty, and meant now to use force; that they must now make their choice between returning to their tents and remaining quietly upon duty, and fighting him and his troops right where he stood; the point, he said, could be decided very quickly by arms if they chose to submit the question to that kind of argument. He told them, too, that he was expecting new troops to take their places, and that until these new troops should arrive not a man present should quit the post except by force.

He was now terribly in earnest, and bent upon no half-way measures. He had drawn his men up in line of battle, not as a threat, but for purposes of battle. He was ready to fight, and meant to fight, not defensively, but offensively. He wanted no negotiation, asked no man upon what terms he would submit. He had dictated the terms himself and meant now to enforce them. He had given the volunteers a choice – either to remain peaceably until he should send them home, or to fight a battle with him right there in the road and right then on the 9th of December; he had offered them this choice, and they must choose and say what their choice was. When he ended his speech the volunteers stood grimly, sullenly silent. They did not offer to advance, but that was not enough. They must say whether they would remain and obey, or accept battle. If they would promise to remain without further attempts of this kind, he was content; if not, the battle would begin.

"I demand an explicit answer," he said; and no reply coming, he turned to his artillerymen and ordered them to stand to their guns with lighted matches.

It was now a question merely of seconds. Jackson gave the men time to answer, but not many moments would pass before he would speak the only words which were left to him to speak – the words "commence firing," those words which in every battle are the signal for the transformation of iron or brazen guns from harmless cylinders of metal into bellowing monsters, belching fiery death from their throats.

There was silence for a moment – that awful silence which always precedes the turmoil of battle, doing more to appall men than all the demoniac noises of the contest do; then a murmur was heard as of men hastily consulting; then the officers of the volunteer brigade stepped a pace to the front and delivered the answer which Jackson had demanded.

They had made their choice, and the answer was that they would return to duty, and remain at the fort until the new men should come, or until their commander should receive authority to discharge them.

This affair of the 9th of December, 1813, is nowhere set down in the list of Jackson's battles; but nowhere did he win a more decided victory or display his qualities as a great commander to better advantage.

CHAPTER XXV.

JACKSON DISMISSES HIS VOLUNTEERS WITHOUT A BENEDICTION

Jackson had not deceived himself with respect to these mutinous men. He knew very well that their usefulness as soldiers was hopelessly gone, and he had no thought of undertaking a campaign with them. Even before this last trouble came he had abandoned all hope of this, and had ceased to regard the army he had with him as worth keeping, except as a garrison for Fort Strother, during the period of waiting for a new army to be raised to take its place. It was his purpose to send this army back to Tennessee as soon as he could replace the men with others fit to fight with, and to get those others he was working in every possible way. He had sent to Tennessee for the enlistment of a new force, and had written to everybody he knew there who had aught of influence – preachers, doctors, lawyers, and men of affairs – urging them to stir the enthusiasm of the young men and persuade them to volunteer. He had already ordered General Cocke to join him with his force, and that officer had promised to do so immediately. As this would give him a sufficient garrison for the fort almost immediately, Jackson determined to send home at once every man who could not be stirred to a proper sense of his duty, every man who could not be induced, by a fair and earnest statement of the case, to remain voluntarily and finish the campaign. In order to separate any such sheep, if there were any, from the homesick goats, the commander on the 13th of December issued a final appeal, which was read to the troops. It was as follows:

"On the 12th day of December, 1812, you assembled at the call of your country. Your professions of patriotism and ability to endure fatigue were at once tested by the inclemency of the weather. Breaking your way through sheets of ice you descended the Mississippi and reached the point at which you were ordered to be halted and dismissed. All this you bore without murmuring. Finding that your services were not needed, the means for marching you back were procured; every difficulty was surmounted, and as soon as the point from which you embarked was regained, the order for your dismissal was carried into effect. The promptness with which you assembled, the regularity of your conduct, your attention to your own duties, the determination manifested on every occasion to carry into effect the wishes and will of your government, placed you on elevated ground. You not only distinguished yourselves, but gave to your state a distinguished rank with her sisters, and led your government to believe that the honor of the nation would never be tarnished when entrusted to the holy keeping of the volunteers of Tennessee.

"In the progress of a war which the implacable and eternal enemy of our independence induced to be waged, we found that without cause on our part a portion of the Creek Nation was added to the number of our foes. To put it down, the first glance of the administration fell on you, and you were again summoned to the field of honor. In full possession of your former feelings, that summons was cheerfully obeyed. Before your enemy thought you in motion you were at Tallushatchee and Talladega. The thunder of your arms was a signal to them that the slaughter of your countrymen was about to be avenged. You fought, you conquered! Barely enough of the foe escaped to recount to their savage associates your deeds of valor. You returned to this place loaded with laurels and the applause of your country.

"Can it be that these brave men are about to become the tarnishers of their own reputation, the destroyers of a name which does them so much honor? Yes, it is a truth too well disclosed that cheerfulness has been exchanged for complaints. Murmurings and discontents alone prevail. Men who a little while since were offering up prayers for permission to chastise the merciless savage, who burned with impatience to teach them how much they had hitherto been indebted to our forbearance, are now, when they could so easily attain their wishes, seeking to be discharged. The heart of your general has been pierced. The first object of his military affections and the first glory of his life were the volunteers of Tennessee. The very name recalls to him a thousand endearing recollections. But these brave men, these volunteers, have become mutineers. The feelings he would have indulged, your general has been compelled to suppress; he has been compelled, by a regard to that subordination so necessary to the support of every army, and which he is bound to have observed, to check the disorder which would have destroyed you. He has interposed his authority for your safety – to prevent you from disgracing yourselves and your country. Tranquillity has been restored in our camp; contentment shall also be restored. This can be done only by permitting those to retire whose dissatisfaction proceeds from causes that cannot be controlled.

"This permission will now be given. Your country will dispense with your services if you no longer have a regard for that fame which you have so nobly earned for yourselves and her. Yes, soldiers! You who were once so brave, and to whom honor was so dear, shall be permitted to return to your homes, if you still desire it. But in what language, when you arrive, will you address your families and friends? Will you tell them that you abandoned your general and your late associates in arms within fifty miles of a savage enemy, who equally delights in shedding the blood of the innocent female and her sleeping babe as that of the warrior contending in battle? Lamentable, disgraceful tale! If your dispositions are really changed, if you fear an enemy you so lately conquered, this day will prove it. I now put it to yourselves; determine upon the part you will act, influenced only by the suggestions of your own hearts and your own understandings. All who prefer an inglorious retirement shall be ordered to Nashville, to be discharged as the President or the Governor may direct. Those who choose to remain and unite with their general in the further prosecution of the campaign can do so, and will thereby furnish a proof that they have been greatly traduced, and that although disaffection and cowardice have reached the hearts of some, it has not reached theirs. To such my assurance is given that former irregularities will not be attributed to them. They shall be immediately organized into a separate corps, under officers of their own choice; and in a little while it is confidently believed an opportunity will be afforded of adding to the laurels you have already won."

If these men had had a single spark of soldierly spirit left in them – if the manhood itself had not all gone out of them – such an appeal as this would have shamed them into their duty. It is incredible that men who had once had spirit enough to volunteer in the service of their country should have lost it so utterly that they could resist this plea to their pride, their duty, and their regard for their own good name; but such was the fact. Out of the whole brigade, officers and men, only one was found with manliness enough to stay. That one man was a Captain Wilkinson, the mention of whose name is only a just tribute to his soldierly manhood. The rest were no longer men in spirit, but homesick wretches, lusting for the flesh-pots of Tennessee, the ease, the indolence, the comfort of home.

Public opinion is particularly strong in a new country, where every man's history is known to all his neighbors, and few men in such a case can successfully brave it. Public opinion in Tennessee sharply condemned these volunteers for their abandonment of the service upon a mere technicality, at a time when the enemy was in their front. How sorely they smarted under the taunts of their neighbors we may easily imagine; and when they could silently endure the censure no longer, they prepared a plea in their own justification, which was published in March of the following year. This plea was offered in the form of a statement, signed by the brigadier-general who commanded the disaffected brigade, one colonel, two lieutenant-colonels, two majors, an aide-de-camp, and the brigade-quartermaster. These officers in their statement recount the history of their service, and rest their case upon the dates used in their muster-rolls, and the technicality that in dismissing them after their Natchez expedition Jackson had used the word "discharge" instead of "dismiss." They assert that they and their men were fully and finally discharged at the end of that expedition, and explain their readiness to answer the call to march against the Creeks, when Jackson assembled them a second time, by a confession that they thought they saw a chance to secure pay for service not rendered. They declare that they returned to the service, believing that their term could only last till the 10th of December in any case, and that by doing so they could compel the government to give them soldiers' pay for all the time which they had passed at home.

Read carelessly, their plea seems to palliate their misconduct; read at all carefully, it adds to their shame.

CHAPTER XXVI.

HOW JACKSON LOST THE REST OF HIS ARMY

Having begun the work of getting rid of men upon whom he could not depend for active service, Jackson was disposed to complete it as speedily as possible, in order that he might resume the active operations of the campaign, knowing precisely what he could count upon in the way of an army and governing his measures accordingly.

He had counted upon General Cocke's force for at least half his strength, but here again he was doomed to disappointment. General Cocke came, it is true, according to the appointment, and brought an army of two thousand men with him; but they were three-months' men, and they had already served more than two months! General Cocke has declared in a printed letter that he had asked these men to give up the thought of going home at the expiration of their term of service, and voluntarily remain until the end of the campaign, and that the men had promised him to do so. He expressed in that letter surprise, not unmixed with indignation, that Jackson did not take them at their word; but when we remember what Jackson had just gone through, and reflect that these men would have ceased to be soldiers and become citizens when their time should expire; that their promise to remain till the end of the campaign would have had no binding force whatever; that they would have had the fullest right, individually or in bodies, to abandon the army at any moment, however critical the situation might be; and that Jackson would have had absolutely no authority over them, even to command obedience to orders in camp or battle, we cannot wonder that he declined to begin a campaign in the wilderness against a savage and wily foe, with an army which might dissolve at any moment and go home, and which, even while it should remain with him, would be free to disobey orders at its own sweet will. Campaigns are not successfully carried on, battles are not won, with mobs. Jackson meant to have an army before setting out again to crush the Creeks, and accordingly he sent Cocke's men home, retaining only Colonel Lillard's regiment as a temporary garrison for the fort.

He then ordered General Cocke to return to East Tennessee and enlist a new force, and urged the returning men to volunteer again as soon as they should have provided themselves at home with suitable clothing for a winter campaign.

It was his hope that two thousand men or more would be secured in East Tennessee and a like number in West Tennessee, and with such a force he could march into the Creek Nation and crush the savages, he believed, within a very brief time.

General Cocke obeyed the order very reluctantly, as he has himself told the public. His confidence in his men was so great, that he thought it unnecessary and unwise to dismiss them and search for others to take their place. He did as he was bidden, however, returning to East Tennessee and speedily securing a new force two thousand strong. These men volunteered for six months, and were mustered into service in time to march on the 17th of January.

On the march, however, these six-months' men learned that the new levies from the western part of the State – men between whom and the East Tennesseeans a wretched jealousy prevailed – were to be enlisted for only three months, and this bred sore discontent in General Cocke's camp. General Cocke met this difficulty resolutely, and in a published letter he has given an account of what he did.

"I overtook the troops," he says, "at the Lookout Mountain, when I found a dissatisfaction among the troops amounting almost to mutiny. They declared their determination to return home at the end of three months. I made them a speech, in which I told them that if they left the army without any honorable discharge, they would disgrace themselves and families; that much of their time had already expired, and for all the good they could do, if they intended to leave at the end of three months they had better go home then, but appealed to their magnanimity and patriotism to go on like brave men and good soldiers, and serve until the expiration of the term for which they were ordered into service."

These troops were certainly not in a mood to become soldiers fit for the work they had to do. Meantime the work of enlistment in West Tennessee had gone on very slowly and unsatisfactorily, and even Coffee's troopers, whom Jackson had sent to Huntsville to recruit their horses, exacting a promise from them that they would return as soon as they should accomplish that object, had broken faith and deserted in a body in spite of all that their gallant leader could do to restrain them.

Even this was not the end of Jackson's troubles. The men whom he had retained from Cocke's command were ready to leave as soon as their term of service should expire, and the date of its expiration was near at hand. This would diminish the force in Fort Strother from fourteen hundred to six hundred men. These six hundred were militiamen, and now, as if to break down what remained of Jackson's hopes, these troops managed to find an excuse for quitting the service and going home presently. The act of the legislature by which they had been called into service was bunglingly drawn, and upon examining it the militia officers discovered that nothing whatever had been said in the law with respect to the length of time for which they should serve. Then the question arose, How long have these men engaged to serve? The men held that as no term was set by the law the lawgivers must be held to have meant the shortest time for which it was customary to call out the militia, namely, three months, and that time would end on the 4th of January. Jackson, on the other hand, held that the law set no other limit to the term of service, because it meant that the service should continue as long as the war did. The men had been called out, he said, to suppress the Creeks, and their term of service would end when they had done that, and not before – whether that should be three months or three years after their enlistment. Jackson had fourteen hundred men, of whom eight hundred had an unquestioned right to quit in the middle of January, while the remaining six hundred asserted their right to retire at the beginning of that month. The new East Tennessee troops who were on their way to him had enlisted for six months, but, as we know, were determined to serve only half of that term, a considerable part of which had already expired. Never was a commander in a sorer strait. Sent to fight a campaign and held responsible for its success, he was denied an army with which to fight at all. His commanding general urged him to activity, on the ground that the British must at any cost be shorn of the strength they had sought to secure by stimulating Indian hostilities; the British were already in Florida, threatening Mobile and New Orleans; the Seminoles in the Spanish province and the runaway negroes there were ready to take up arms and assail the Georgia borders; while in the North and West the war was prosecuted by the enemy with untiring perseverance.

But what was Jackson to do? The troops he had were about to leave him, and it began to appear that no others were likely to come to him. Even Governor Blount advised him to yield to the demands both of the six-months' volunteers who wanted to quit the service at the end of three months, and of the militia who wanted to quit almost immediately. Governor Blount sent Jackson a letter in which he urged this course upon him, advising him to regard the campaign as at an end, retire to the borders of Tennessee and protect that state as well as he could, abandon the attempt to raise a new force by enlisting volunteers, and quietly wait until the National Government should provide him with an army by ordering a draft or by some other means. Governor Blount believed that he had no authority to raise further forces, and that any attempt which he might make to do so must injure rather than help the service.