HOW JACKSON LOST HIS ARMY.
We now return to General Jackson's camp at Fort Strother, near the Ten
Islands. The situation there was bad from the time of the Talladega
expedition, and it grew steadily worse. The army was nearly starved, and
Jackson was sharing their hunger with them. When a few lean kine were
secured, seeing that the supply was sufficient only to give to each man
a very scant portion, Jackson declined to take any part of the beef for
his own table, and took some of the entrails instead, saying with
cheerfulness that he had always heard that tripe was nutritious and
savory food. He lost no opportunity to secure such provisions as could
be had from the surrounding country, but these were barely sufficient to
keep famine at bay from day to day, and Jackson busied himself with the
writing of letters to everybody who could in any way contribute to
hasten forward adequate supplies. He wrote to one contractor, saying:
"I have been compelled to return here for the want of supplies when I
could have completed the destruction of the enemy in ten days; and on my
arrival I find those I had left behind in the same starving condition
with those who accompanied me. For God's sake send me with all despatch
plentiful supplies of bread and meat. We have been starving for several
days, and it will not do to continue so much longer. Hire wagons and
purchase supplies at any price rather than defeat the expedition.
General White, instead of forming a junction with me, as he assured me
he would, has taken the retrograde motion, after having amused himself
with consuming provisions for three weeks in the Cherokee Nation, and
left me to rely on my own strength."[5]
[Footnote 5: Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson.]
Nothing that the perplexed commander could do or say or write, however,
could help him. Day by day food became scarcer, poorer, and more
difficult to get, and the men were becoming mutinous, as volunteers are
sure to do when left to starve in inaction. If the enemy had appeared in
his immediate neighborhood, Jackson would certainly have cured all the
disorders of the camp and removed its discontent by giving the men
constant occupation for their minds in conflicts with the foe. As it
was, there was neither food nor fighting to be had at Fort Strother, and
General Jackson did not dare to attempt a march upon the nearest Indian
stronghold, about sixty miles away, without supplies.
Not many days had passed after the return to the Ten Islands when
information reached Jackson that the men of the militia regiment
intended to return to their homes with or without permission, and that
they had appointed the next day as the time of starting. Luckily he
believed that he could still depend upon the volunteers. He knew, too,
that in this matter he had to deal with bodies of men, not with
individuals. The power of public sentiment, which in this case was corps
sentiment, was the power arrayed against him. He knew that the men would
not desert singly, that their pride would restrain them from desertion
unless they could act together, each being sustained by the opinion and
the common action of all his fellows. The militia had determined to
march home in a body; Jackson determined to restrain them in a body.
On the appointed day he called the volunteers to arms, and at their head
placed himself in the way of the mutinous militiamen. He plainly
informed the men that they could march homeward only by cutting their
way through his lines, and this was an undertaking which they were not
prepared for. Being unable to overcome Jackson, they had no choice but
to yield to him and return to their tents, which they did at once, with
what cheerfulness they could command.
The volunteers whose power Jackson was thus able to use in arresting the
departure of the militia were scarcely less discontented than they. On
the very day on which they stopped the march of the militia they
resolved themselves to go home, and prepared to depart on the following
morning. Jackson had information of what was going on, and he prepared
to reverse the order of things by using the militia in their turn to
oppose the volunteers. The militia having returned to their duty obeyed
the commands of their general, and opposed a firm front to the mutinous
volunteers. The affair wore so much of the appearance of a practical
joke that it put the whole force into momentary good-humor.
With his men in this mood, however, Jackson knew that he had merely
gained a very brief time by his firmness, and that the discontent of
which the mutiny was born existed still in undiminished force. He
therefore sent the cavalry to Huntsville to recruit their horses, first
exacting a promise that they would return as soon as that end could be
accomplished--a promise which the men afterward violated shamelessly. He
then called all the officers of the army together, and, after giving
them all the facts in his possession upon which he founded the confident
hope that provisions in plenty would soon arrive, he made a speech to
them, trying to win them back to something of their old devotion to
duty. He had good reason to believe that supplies both of meat and of
breadstuffs were now actually on their way to him, and his chief present
purpose was to gain time, to persuade his followers to patience and
obedience for the two or three days which he thought would end the
period of short rations. According to Eaton's report of the speech,
Jackson said to his officers:
"What is the present situation of our camp? A number of our
fellow-soldiers are wounded and unable to help themselves. Shall it be
said that we are so lost to humanity as to leave them in this condition?
Can any one, under these circumstances and under these prospects,
consent to an abandonment of the camp; of all that we have acquired in
the midst of so many difficulties, privations, and dangers; of what it
will cost us so much to regain; of what we never can regain--our brave
wounded companions, who will be murdered by our unthinking, unfeeling
inhumanity? Surely there can be none such! No, we will take with us when
we go our wounded and sick. They must not, shall not perish by our
cold-blooded indifference. But why should you despond? I do not; and yet
your wants are not greater than mine. To be sure we do not live
sumptuously; but no one has died of hunger or is likely to die. And then
how animating are our prospects! Large supplies are at Deposit, and
already are officers despatched to hasten them on. Wagons are on the
way; a large number of beeves are in the neighborhood, and detachments
are out to bring them in. All these resources cannot fail. I have no
wish to starve you, none to deceive you. Stay contentedly, and if
supplies do not arrive in two days we will all march back together, and
throw the blame of our failure where it should properly lie; until then
we certainly have the means of subsisting, and if we are compelled to
bear privations, let us remember that they are borne for our country,
and are not greater than many, perhaps most, armies have been compelled
to endure. I have called you together to tell you my feelings and
wishes. This evening think on them seriously, and let me know yours in
the morning."
To this appeal the response was not satisfactory. The militia indeed
agreed to remain during the stipulated two days, and promised that if
the expected provisions should come within that time they would cease to
murmur, and go on with the campaign; but the volunteers were now wholly
given over to mutiny. They insolently informed General Jackson that they
were going to march back to the borders of Tennessee, and that if he
refused to yield immediately to their will in the matter, without
waiting for the allotted two days to expire, they would go without
permission and would use force if necessary to accomplish that end.
There can be no doubt whatever about the nature of the reply which
Jackson would have made to this message if he had had even a small force
upon which he could rely at his back. In that case the volunteers must
have chosen between submission to his will and a battle with him. As it
was, he was one man against the whole force. He could not oppose the
mutinous volunteers with arms, and he felt that he must in some way
prevent the abandonment of all that had been gained in the campaign. He
therefore resorted to a compromise, which he hoped would solve the
perplexing problem. He commanded the militia and one regiment of the
volunteers to remain in the fort as a garrison, and ordered the other
volunteer regiment to march toward Fort Deposit until it should meet the
provision train, and then to countermarch and return with it. In this
way he lost immediately only one half of the volunteers, winning the
rest of them to his proposition for a delay of two days; and even the
regiment which had been sent away might yet return with the provisions,
as the lack of food was the only plea that had been urged in defence of
the mutiny.
The discontent really lay much deeper than that: it had come as much
from idleness in camp and from home-sickness as from hunger, and it had
eaten into the soldierly characters of the men, honeycombing them with
sedition and insubordination; but while the plea of starvation remained
to them the men urged no other, and Jackson's memory of their courage
and good conduct on former occasions, led him to hope that with this
cause of trouble removed the trouble itself would disappear.
When the two days of waiting had passed, and no supplies had come, a new
difficulty lay in Jackson's path, namely, his own voluntary promise. He
had asked for two days' delay, promising to permit the men to march away
if food did not arrive within that time. The promise now fell due and
the men exacted its fulfilment. In his sore distress he could do nothing
further to compel obedience. He had even relinquished his right to
command the men to remain and his privilege to bargain for further
delay. He must let them go now, but there was no reason why any of them
who chose to do so might not voluntarily remain to defend the fort. It
was a slender hope, but Jackson was grasping at straws now. He set out
to seek volunteers, declaring that if even two men should consent to
stay with him he would not abandon Fort Strother and the campaign, but
would stay there and wait for the coming of reinforcements. One of his
captains at once offered himself as one of this army of two, and by an
earnest effort they succeeded in swelling the number of volunteers to
one hundred and nine men.
This was all that was left of Jackson's army, and the campaign lay
mostly before him. A man of less stubborn resolution would have
despaired; but Jackson held on in the hope of gaining strength after
awhile and gathering men enough around him to make a resumption of
operations possible.
He permitted the rest of his troops to leave the post, first exacting a
promise that they would return if they should meet the supply train, and
in order the more effectually to enforce this demand Jackson accompanied
the column, leaving his army, one hundred and nine strong, to hold the
fort until his return.
Twelve miles from the fort the column met the provision train. Jackson
called a halt and ordered rations to be distributed to the men. It was
now his turn to insist upon the faithful fulfilment of a promise. He had
kept his word in permitting his men to abandon Fort Strother at the time
appointed; he could now, with especially good grace, insist that the men
should keep their promise and return with the provision train.
Now for the first time the mutiny began to assume its true colors. With
stomachs filled with good beef and bread--for a large drove of beef
cattle was with the provision train, and Jackson had given the men beef
rations--it was no longer possible to urge hunger in excuse for
abandonment of duty; but the men had set out intending to go home, and
they had no thought of relinquishing that intention merely because the
excuse by which they had justified their conduct would no longer serve
their purpose.
When ordered to take up the line of march toward the fort the men
rebelled and started homeward instead.
Then ensued one of the most impressive scenes in Jackson's career.
Raving with rage, his thin lips set and his frame quivering with anger,
the commander's face and mien were terrible. His left arm was still
carried in a sling, and the hardships, hunger, fatigue, and ceaseless
anxiety to which he had been subject ever since he quitted his sick-bed
to come upon this campaign had not made his wasted frame less emaciated;
he was a sick man who ought to have been in bed: but the illness was of
the body, not of the soul. The spirit of the man was now intensely
stirred, and when Jackson was in this mood there were few men who had
the courage to brave him.
Riding after the head of the column, he placed himself with a few
followers in front of it, and drove the men back like sheep. Then
leaving the officers who were with him he rode alone down the road,
until he encountered a brigade which was drawn up in column, resolved to
conquer its way by a regular advance against any body of men who might
oppose its homeward march. If a company or a battalion had undertaken to
arrest the march of these men there would have been a battle there in
the road without question. They were prepared to fight their comrades to
the death; they were ready to meet a force equal to their own. They met
Andrew Jackson instead--Andrew Jackson in a rage, Andrew Jackson with
all the blood in his frail body boiling; and that was a force greatly
superior to their own.
Snatching a musket from one of the men Jackson commanded the mutineers
to halt. He broke forth in a torrent of vituperation, and declared that
they could march toward home only over his dead body; he declared, too,
with an emphasis which carried conviction with it, that while he could
not, single-handed, overcome a brigade of armed men, he at least could
and would shoot down the first man who should dare to make the least
motion toward advancing.
The men were overawed, terrified, demoralized by the force of this one
resolute man's fierce determination. They stood like petrified men, not
knowing what to do. It was now evident that no man there would dare to
make himself Jackson's target by being the first to advance. Jackson had
beaten a brigade, literally single-handed, for he had but one hand that
he could use.
By this time General Coffee and some staff officers had joined Jackson,
and now a few of the better disposed men, seeing their general opposing
a brigade of mutineers, ranged themselves by his side, prepared to
assist him in any encounter that might come, however badly overmatched
they might be. The mutineers were already conquered, however, and
sullenly yielding they were sent back to the fort.
[Illustration: JACKSON CONFRONTING THE MUTINEERS.]