plans. He at once put himself in alliance with the British, and in the
summer of 1813 the Creek Red Sticks heard that they could get arms and
ammunition at Pensacola, the capital of Spanish Florida. Spain was at
peace with the United States, but Red Sticks were seen thronging to
Pensacola and returning with arms and ammunition. The whites of the
Mobile and Tombigbee country, then part of Mississippi Territory,
organized for defence, waylaid a party returning from Pensacola, and
were at first victorious, then defeated, in the so-called Battle of
Burnt Corn. Thoroughly alarmed, the settlers now took refuge in
stockades and forts. The military authorities of the United States made
ready to defend Mobile, but recently seized from the Spaniards. At Fort
Mims, near the point where the Alabama and Tombigbee form the Mobile,
five hundred and fifty-three men, women, and children were pent up in an
ill-planned inclosure, defended by a small force under an incompetent
though courageous officer named Beasley. On the morning of August 30,
1813, Beasley was writing to his superior, General Claiborne, that he
could hold the fort against any number of the enemy. At that very moment
a thousand warriors lay hidden in a ravine but a few hundred yards from
the open gate of the stockade. Their principal leader was William
Weatherford, "the Red Eagle," a half-breed of much intelligence and
dauntless courage. At noon, when the drums beat the garrison to dinner,
the Indians rushed to the attack. At the end of the hot August day there
remained of the fort but a smouldering heap of ruins, ghastly with human
bodies. Only a handful of the inmates escaped to spread the horrible
news among the terrified settlers. Swift runners set off eastward,
westward, and northward for help. A shudder ran over the whole country.
The Southwest turned from the remoter events of the war in Canada to the
disaster at home. "The Creeks!" "Weatherford!" "Fort Mims!" were the
words on everybody's lips, while the major-general of the Tennessee
militia still lay helpless from his shameful wound.
From Mississippi on the west, from Georgia on the east, and from
Tennessee on the north, volunteer armies were soon on the march for the
Creek country. Tennessee, indeed, sent two different bodies of men. One
came from East Tennessee, commanded by General John Cocke; the other
came from West Tennessee, and at its head, pale and weak, his arm in a
sling, his shoulder too sore to bear the weight of an epaulette, was
Andrew Jackson. He had issued his orders from his bed. When a member of
the legislature, come to discuss the expedition with him, expressed
regret that he would not be able to lead it, the sick man muttered, with
the inevitable oath, that he _would_ lead it. But from the beginning to
the end of his military service he was paying the penalty, not merely of
the quarreling which had brought him wounds, but of intemperate eating
and drinking, which had ruined his digestion. Sometimes he was tortured
for hours with pains that could be relieved only by hanging his body,
like a garment hung to dry, face downward, over the back of a chair, or,
if he were on the march, over a sapling stripped and bent for the
purpose.
By the second week in October, Jackson was at Huntsville, on the
Tennessee River. The entire command numbered about 2700. Its supplies
were to come by water from Knoxville, in East Tennessee, but the upper
part of the river was not navigable by reason of the dryness of the
season. Jackson stormed at the delay, but used the time in drilling his
men and scouring the country with Coffee's cavalry. Then he cut his way
over the mountains to a higher point on the river, hoping to find the
supplies. His energy was great, but without food he could not, as he
desired, dash at once into the enemy's country. He moved southward when
he had food, halted when it gave out, and finally reached the Coosa.
From his camp there, which he named Fort Strother, he dispatched Coffee
to strike a first blow against the Creek town of Tallusahatchee. Coffee
destroyed the town, and not a warrior escaped, for the whites were
bitterly revengeful. A slain mother embracing a living infant was found
among the dead. Jackson himself took care of the child, sent it to The
Hermitage, and he and his wife reared it to manhood.
The next blow was struck at Talladega, thirty miles below Fort Strother,
where a body of friendly Indians were besieged by a larger body of Red
Sticks. Relying on General White, who was in the neighborhood with a
force of Cocke's East Tennesseans, to protect Fort Strother, Jackson
marched by night to Talladega. There, however, a dispatch reached him
from White, who announced that he must return to Cocke. So at sunrise
Jackson threw himself on the enemy, routed him with great loss, relieved
the friendly Indians, and then marched back to camp, to find no
provisions, and the sick and wounded as hungry as the rest. From that
time the struggle with famine was for weeks his principal business. Ill
as he was, he and his officers would have nothing the men could not
have. A soldier coming to him to beg for food, he thrust his hand into
his pocket, drew out some acorns, and courteously invited the man to
share his dinner.
Jackson was disposed to blame General Cocke for the trouble about
supplies, because Cocke had undertaken to obtain supplies in Knoxville
for both commands; but it seems clear now that Cocke was not to blame.
Soon after the battle of Talladega Jackson's feeling against Cocke was
strengthened. The warriors of the Hillabee towns, a part of the Creek
Confederacy, sent a messenger to Jackson to sue for peace. He gave them
his terms, and the messenger was returning to the Hillabees when General
White, of Cocke's command, ignorant of what was going on, marched upon a
Hillabee town, killed many of the warriors, and captured the women and
children. Jackson, grieved and enraged at a blunder which probably
prolonged the war and certainly made it fiercer, was easily persuaded
that Cocke, his inferior officer, was trying to win laurels for
himself, and in the end his anger led him to do grave injustice to a man
who appears to have been faithful and honorable.
And now for ten weeks the will of Andrew Jackson was tried to the
uttermost. His starving troops were constantly on the verge of mutiny.
The command was made up of two classes,--the militia, called into
service against the Indians, and the volunteers, who had first enlisted
for the expedition down the Mississippi. The militia, disheartened,
started for Tennessee. Jackson drew up the volunteers across their
pathway, and drove them back to camp. Then the volunteers, in their
turn, prepared to move northward, and he stopped them with the militia.
The mounted men were permitted to go to Huntsville to get food for their
horses, and most of them went on to their homes. The infantry, sullen
and distrustful, were kept in camp only by the promise that in two days
supplies would come from Nashville, whither Jackson was sending letter
after letter to stir up the authorities. At the end of two days nothing
had come. A few brave men volunteered to defend the camp while with the
rest the general marched northward in search of food. The supplies soon
came in sight, and the men were fed; but now they refused to go back to
camp, and again turned northward. Jackson, with Coffee and a handful of
others, threw himself in front of them, and with blazing eyes and
dreadful oaths cowed them into obedience. Again they threatened mutiny,
and once more, alone, on horseback, a musket in his hand, his disabled
arm in its sling, he faced them, and swore he would shoot the first man
who stirred. They hesitated, wavered, yielded.
Seeing, however, that nothing could be done with the volunteers, Jackson
finally permitted them to go, keeping with him the militia and a small
body of Cocke's men. The militia claimed that their term would expire
January 4, 1814; the term of Cocke's men would expire a week later.
Anxiously awaiting reinforcements, Jackson got, instead, a letter from
Governor Blount advising him to give up the struggle. But he would not
give up; his magnificent spirit rose higher with every blow. He wrote
the governor a letter that taught him his duty. Through the governor, in
fact, that letter roused the whole State, and soon a new army was on the
way from West Tennessee, while Cocke was marching another force
southward from East Tennessee. With some five hundred raw recruits that
reached him before Cocke's first command left, Jackson held Fort
Strother. He even ventured to make a raid into the enemy's country,
aiming at the town of Emuckfau. The Indians attacked him. He repulsed
them, but soon made up his mind to return. On his way back, he was again
attacked while crossing a creek, his rear guard was driven in, and for a
moment a panic and rout was imminent. But the valor of a few men saved
the army, and he got safely back to Fort Strother.
He did not move again until the middle of March, and then he had five
thousand men. Cocke, for a speech addressed to his troops when they
threatened mutiny, was sent to Nashville under arrest. To stamp out
insubordination among the men from West Tennessee, a youth named Woods,
who had been found guilty of mutiny, was shot before the whole army. The
thirty-ninth regiment of regulars was now a part of the command, and the
general proposed to use them, whenever occasion offered, to suppress
insubordination among the volunteers. But from this time he had little
of that to deal with, and was free to grapple with the Creeks, who had
so far held their own against the Georgians and Mississippians.
The centre of their resistance was the Hickory Ground, near the fork of
the Coosa and Tallapoosa; but the final blow was struck at a bend in the
Tallapoosa midway between its source and mouth. The spot was called by
the Indians Tohopeka; by the whites, The Horseshoe. Across the neck of a
small peninsula the hostiles had thrown up a rough line of breastworks.
On the banks of the river they had gathered a number of canoes. Within
the defences was a force of Red Sticks estimated at nine hundred, and
several hundred women and children.
Jackson moved down the Coosa to a point nearly even with Tohopeka,
established a new camp, and by the evening of March 28 he was in front
of the enemy with about three thousand men, including a considerable
body of friendly Indians. Resolving to make thorough work of it, he
dispatched Coffee, with the friendly Indians and the cavalry, to
surround the bend on the opposite bank. The next morning, with the
artillery, he opened fire on the breastworks. Coffee, meantime, threw a
force across the river and attacked the enemy from the rear. The line of
breastworks was carried by assault. The slaughter of Creeks was
dreadful. As usual, they fought to the last. Five hundred and
fifty-seven bodies were found in the bend, and many perished trying to
escape across the river. Jackson's loss was about two hundred killed and
wounded.
Tohopeka broke down the organized resistance of the Indians. When
Jackson, a few days later, turned southward, he was able to march on to
the Hickory Ground without fighting another battle. The Red Sticks for
the most part fled to their kindred, the Seminoles, in Florida; but some
came in and submitted to the iron hand which had crushed them. Jackson
had been at the Hickory Ground but a short time when Weatherford himself
came in and surrendered. Some of the men, remembering Fort Mims, would
have done violence to the fallen chief, but Jackson protected him. Soon
afterwards, General Pinckney, of the regular army, arrived at Fort
Jackson, which had been built in the river fork, and took command. When
he ordered the Tennesseans to return to their homes, Jackson went with
them, and his fellow citizens at Nashville gave him the first of many
triumphal receptions. His eight months' work in the wilderness had made
him easily the first man of Tennessee. Georgia had had a better chance
than Tennessee to crush the Indians, for the distance and the natural
obstacles were less; but Georgia had no such leader as Andrew Jackson.
Another reward soon reached him. In May, General William Henry Harrison
resigned his commission, and in his place Jackson was appointed
major-general in the army of the United States. He was put in command of
the southwestern district, including Mobile and New Orleans.
But on his way to his post he had to stop again at Fort Jackson and
complete his work among the Creeks. Acting under orders from the
government, he compelled the chiefs there assembled, practically all of
whom had been friendly to the United States during the war, to sign an
"agreement and capitulation" by which they ceded to the United States
all the land which they had claimed to the west of the Coosa. He carried
the matter through with a high hand, but the Creeks themselves admired
him and put into the agreement a cession of land to himself. It was, of
course, not permissible for a negotiator to accept such a gift from the
other party. However, the land was part of the region claimed by the
United States and surrendered by the Creeks, and as a matter of fact,
Jackson never got possession of it. This "treaty," as it was improperly
called, was signed August 9, 1814, and then Jackson was free to take up
his new duties as the defender of the Southwest against the British.
Up to this time, except for the war with the Creeks and the bloodless
capture of Mobile, the Southwest had taken little part in the contest.
On land, the war had been mainly an affair of the North, where the
Americans had been trying to wrest Canada from the mother country, and
of the Northwest, where the British and the Indians had taken the
offensive. The death of Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames, in
November, 1813, had made an end of that combination, and General William
Henry Harrison had won some honor by his management of the campaign. But
the several attempts at invading Canada were neither successful nor
glorious. On the whole, the land campaigns of the Americans had been
utterly disappointing. The little American navy had indeed covered
itself with glory, both on the high seas and on the Great Lakes; but
from the seas, where it was vastly overmatched by Great Britain's
immense naval resources, it had practically disappeared by the autumn of
1814. Only a few privateers still preyed on British commerce. And now,
by the overthrow of Napoleon, Great Britain was left free to employ
against America all those ships with which Nelson had won for her the
empire of the sea, and those superb soldiers who, under Wellington, had
driven the French out of Spain. Regiments of these veterans were sent to
Canada. In August, an expedition under General Ross landed on the coast
of Chesapeake Bay, defeated an American force at Bladensburg, took
Washington, and burned the capitol and the President's mansion. The
enemy was stronger than ever, and the United States were at the point of
exhaustion.
Moreover, the ruling class in one important section of the country was
rather inclined to weaken than to help the government. The Federalist
leaders in New England were against the French, against President
Madison, against the war. They had been in opposition ever since
President Jefferson went into office in 1801. Distrusting the Southwest,
and opposing the expansion of the country in that direction, they had
talked about a breaking up of the Union when Louisiana was purchased in
1803, and again when the State of Louisiana was admitted in 1811-12.
When the war began, the governors of several New England States refused
to turn their militia over to the Union generals. In 1814, several
legislatures, the Massachusetts legislature in the lead, were arranging
a convention to propose far-reaching changes in the Constitution of the
United States, and many feared that the outcome would be the disruption
of the Union and a separate New England confederation. True, New England
men were fighting bravely by land and sea for their country, but the
leading Federalists of New England were, as a rule, disaffected. A
notable exception was John Quincy Adams, who, distrusting the leaders of
his own party, had gone over to the party of Jefferson.
The time was now come for the Southwest, the region so long distrusted,
to show whether or not it was loyal to the Union. The British were
aiming at that quarter a powerful military and naval force. Evidently
believing the stories of disaffection in the Southwest, they had sent
ahead of their expedition printed invitations to the Southwestern people
to throw off the yoke of the Union. The Spaniards of the Gulf coast,
probably not ignorant of the American designs on both the Floridas, and
resenting the seizure of Mobile, were no better than passive allies of
the British, who were thus enabled to use Pensacola as a base for their
campaign against Mobile, New Orleans, and the great Mississippi Valley
beyond.
When Jackson reached Mobile, in the middle of August, he was already
thoroughly angered with the Spaniards for harboring refugee Creeks and
giving them arms. He had always been in favor of seizing the Floridas;
that had been the real object of the expedition down the Mississippi in
1813 which he had commanded. The true reason why he and his army were
dismissed at Natchez was that the authorities at Washington had changed
their mind about seizing West Florida. In July, 1814, he wrote to
Washington for permission to take Pensacola, but no reply came, for the
War Department was occupied with General Ross. The absurd conduct of a
British officer, Colonel Nichols, who was at Pensacola with a force of
British and Indians, occupying one of the two Spanish forts there, and
issuing fiery proclamations, was enough to make Jackson act at once,
even if he had hesitated before. He answered the colonel's proclamations
with others equally fiery. But he had to wait for troops, which were to
come from the neighboring States of Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and
Louisiana. Meantime, in September, a British squadron made a determined
attack on Fort Bowyer, at the entrance to Mobile Bay, and was repulsed,
with the loss of its flagship, by Major Lawrence and a small
garrison,--a gallant achievement, which made a good beginning of the
campaign. At the end of October, Coffee, now a general officer, with
nearly three thousand Tennesseans, reached the neighborhood of Mobile.
With these, and about a thousand of the regulars he had already, Jackson
promptly marched on Pensacola. One of the forts, and the city itself, he
took; the other fort, Barrancas, was blown up by the British before he
could reach it. The enterprise kept him but a week. It was all over
before he received, in reply to his own letter of July, a letter from
the Secretary of War forbidding him to attack Pensacola. Once again he
had taken the responsibility to do what he felt to be necessary.
By this time the government at Washington was alive to the great danger
of the Southwest. Hurried orders were sent to the governors of the
various States whose militia must be the main reliance for defence. It
was suspected that New Orleans would be the first objective of the
enemy, and a warning came to the city from Jean Lafitte, the leader of a
gang of smugglers, whom the British had tried to win over. But the
warning was not properly heeded, and Jackson himself was slow to make
up his mind where the enemy would strike. He lingered at Mobile until
November 22, and four days later Sir Edward Pakenham, with a large army
and a great fleet, sailed from Jamaica for New Orleans. It was not until
December 2 that a worn, thin man, tired and ill, whom nobody, failing to
observe the look in his eyes, would have taken for the conqueror of the
Creeks, rode into the curious little city that had been the French and
then the Spanish capital of Louisiana, and which was not yet half like
an American town. The bulk of its population was still French Creole and
African; but among the Americans there was at least one man who already
knew something of Andrew Jackson, and who was to know a great deal more.
The leader of the New Orleans bar, and the most active of all the
citizens in making ready for the enemy, was no other than that Edward
Livingston, who, with Duane and Burr, had been friendly to the Tennessee
Congressman eighteen years before at Philadelphia. He invited the new
commander to his house, where Mrs. Livingston, a social leader in the
town, soon discovered that the Indian fighter knew perfectly well how to
deport himself in a drawing-room.
IV
NEW ORLEANS
A glance at the map will give the reader some idea of the doubts that
must have beset Jackson concerning the point at which the enemy would
probably attack New Orleans. The island on which the city stands was
accessible from the sea by at least three general routes. The British
might approach by the Mississippi River, which flows by the city on the
west, or over Lake Pontchartrain, which stretches out to the north, or
over Lake Borgne, from the southeast. Jackson first inspected Fort St.
Philip, sixty miles below, on the river; besides the fort, there were,
for river defences, the schooner Carolina and the sloop Louisiana. His
next move was to Lake Pontchartrain, and he was still in that quarter
when news came that the enemy had chosen the third route and was
already on Lake Borgne. The British found there six American gun-boats,
which were all destroyed or taken after a brief but gallant struggle.
That was December 14, and New Orleans was not yet in any good posture of
defence. The most natural route from the lake to the immediate
neighborhood of the city was up the Bayou Bienvenu, which led to the
southern end of a level plain bounded on the west by the river and on
the east by a dense cypress swamp. At the northern end of the plain lay
New Orleans, and the distance was but six or seven miles; the plain was
in most places about a mile wide. Between the head of the bayou and the
city there was not a fort or even a line of intrenchments. For this
state of things Jackson has not escaped blame from military critics.
But if illness or any other cause had robbed him of his usual energy,
the news of the disaster on Lake Borgne was the signal for a change in
him and in the situation. Coffee, with part of the Tennessee volunteers,
was up the river at Baton Rouge. A hurried summons brought him a
hundred and twenty miles in two days, and on the 19th he was in camp a
few miles above the city with eight hundred men. Two days later came
General Carroll and a brigade of Tennessee militia, two thousand strong;
with them came also a squadron of mounted Mississippi volunteers.
Louisiana furnished a thousand militia; the city of New Orleans five or
six hundred volunteers, of whom about a third were mulattoes. Jackson
had also two incomplete regiments of regulars numbering together about
eight hundred rank and file. A Kentucky brigade of twenty-five hundred
men was on the way, but without arms. Of Carroll's men, only one in ten
had a musket. To provide arms for these new troops was a difficult
matter, and many of the Kentuckians were still unarmed when the final
struggle came. The city became panic-stricken and disorderly, and
Jackson promptly placed it under martial law.
Such was the situation when, on the morning of December 23, the British
advance party, numbering about seventeen hundred, conveyed in small
boats over the shallow Lake Borgne and up the Bienvenu, landed six miles
below the city and seized the mansion of Major Villere, a Creole
gentleman of the neighborhood. Villere was captured, but escaped, and at
half past one o'clock Jackson knew in New Orleans that the enemy was at
hand. By good luck, Major Latour, a French engineer, and the best
historian of the campaign, was among the first to view the invaders, and
he gave the general a correct idea of their position and numbers. As in
all other crises, Jackson's resolve was taken at once. "By the Eternal,"
he exclaimed, "they shall not sleep on our soil!" He set his troops in
motion for a night attack.