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.
Then Jackson rose to the occasion, and showed that he was no less able
as a debater than as a fighter. He wrote a letter to Governor Blount
which changed the whole face of affairs, converted that executive
officer to views the opposite of those that he had held, and led to the
creation of a new army, or rather of two new armies, one being a
temporary supply of short-term men, with whom Jackson did some work, and
the other coming immediately to take its place.
This letter, for the text of which we are indebted to Mr. Parton, is
called by that writer "the best letter he [Jackson] ever wrote in his
life--one of those historical epistles which do the work of a campaign."
Jackson wrote:
"Had your wish that I should discharge a part of my force and retire
with the residue into the settlements assumed the form of a positive
order, it might have furnished me some apology for pursuing such a
course, but by no means a full justification. As you would have no power
to give such an order, I could not be inculpable in obeying, with my
eyes open to the fatal consequences that would attend it. But a bare
recommendation--founded, as I am satisfied it must be, on the artful
suggestions of those fireside patriots who seek in a failure of the
expedition an excuse for their own supineness, and upon the
misrepresentations of the discontented from the army, who wish it to be
believed that the difficulties which overcame their patriotism are
wholly insurmountable--would afford me but a feeble shield against the
reproaches of my country or my conscience. Believe me, my respected
friend, the remarks I make proceed from the purest personal regard. If
you would preserve your reputation or that of the State over which you
preside, you must take a straightforward, determined course, regardless
of the applause or censure of the populace, and of the forebodings of
that dastardly and designing crew who at a time like this may be
expected to clamor continually in your ears. The very wretches who now
beset you with evil counsel will be the first, should the measures which
they recommend eventuate in disaster, to call down imprecations on your
head and load you with reproaches.
"Your country is in danger; apply its resources to its defence. Can any
course be more plain? Do you, my friend, at such a moment as the
present, sit with your arms folded and your heart at ease, waiting a
solution of your doubts and definitions of your powers? Do you wait for
special instructions from the Secretary of War, which it is impossible
for you to receive in time for the danger that threatens? How did the
venerable Shelby act under similar circumstances, or rather under
circumstances by no means so critical? Did he wait for orders to do what
every man of sense knew, what every patriot felt to be right? He did
not; and yet how highly and justly did the government extol his manly
and energetic conduct! and how dear has his name become to every friend
of his country!
"You say that an order to bring the necessary quota of men into the
field has been given, and that of course your power ceases; and although
you are made sensible that the order has been wholly neglected, you can
take no measure to remedy the omission. I consider it your imperious
duty, when the men called for by your authority, founded upon that of
the government, are known not to be in the field, to see that they be
brought there; and to take immediate measures with the officer who,
charged with the execution of your order, omits or neglects to do it. As
the executive of the State, it is your duty to see that the full quota
of troops be constantly kept in the field for the time they have been
required. You are responsible to the government; your officer to you. Of
what avail is it to give an order if it be never executed and may be
disobeyed with impunity? Is it by empty mandates that we can hope to
conquer our enemies and save our defenceless frontiers from butchery and
devastation? Believe me, my valued friend, there are times when it is
highly criminal to shrink from responsibility or scruple about the
exercise of our powers. There are times when we must disregard
punctilious etiquette, and think only of serving our country. What is
really our present situation? The enemy we have been sent to subdue may
be said, if we stop at this, to be only exasperated. The
commander-in-chief, General Pinckney, who supposes me by this time
prepared for renewed operations, has ordered me to advance and form a
junction with the Georgia army; and upon the expectation that I will do
so are all his arrangements formed for the prosecution of the campaign.
Will it do to defeat his plans and jeopardize the safety of the Georgia
army? The General Government, too, believe, and have a right to believe,
that we have now not less than five thousand men in the heart of the
enemy's country, and on this opinion are all their calculations
bottomed; and must they all be frustrated, and I become the instrument
by which it is done? God forbid!
"You advise me to discharge or dismiss from service, until the will of
the President can be known, such portion of the militia as have rendered
three months' service. This advice astonishes me even more than the
former. I have no such discretionary power; and if I had, it would be
impolitic and ruinous to exercise it. I believed the militia who were
not specially received for a shorter period were engaged for six months,
unless the objects of the expedition should be sooner attained; and in
this opinion I was greatly strengthened by your letter of the 15th, in
which you say, when answering my inquiry upon this subject, 'The militia
are detached for six months' service;' nor did I know or suppose you had
a different opinion until the arrival of your last letter. This opinion
must, I suppose, agreeably to your request, be made known to General
Roberts' brigade, and then the consequences are not difficult to be
foreseen. Every man belonging to it will abandon me on the 4th of next
month; nor shall I have the means of preventing it but by the
application of force, which under such circumstances I shall not be at
liberty to use. I have labored hard to reconcile these men to a
continuance in service until they could be honorably discharged, and had
hoped I had in a great measure succeeded; but your opinion, operating
with their own prejudices, will give a sanction to their conduct, and
render useless any further attempts. They will go; but I can neither
discharge nor dismiss them. Shall I be told that, as they will go, it
may as well be peaceably permitted? Can that be any good reason why I
should do an unauthorized act? Is it a good reason why I should violate
the order of my superior officer and evince a willingness to defeat the
purposes of my government? And wherein does the 'sound policy' of the
measures that have been recommended consist? or in what way are they
'likely to promote the public good'? Is it sound policy to abandon a
conquest thus far made, and deliver up to havoc or add to the number of
our enemies those friendly Creeks and Cherokees who, relying on our
protection, have espoused our cause and aided us with their arms? What!
Retrograde under such circumstances? I will perish first. No. I will do
my duty; I will hold the posts I have established, until ordered to
abandon them by the commanding general, or die in the struggle; long
since have I determined not to seek the preservation of life at the
sacrifice of reputation.
"But our frontiers, it seems, are to be defended; and by whom? By the
very force that is now recommended to be dismissed: for I am first told
to retire into the settlements and protect the frontiers; next to
discharge my troops; and then that no measures can be taken for raising
others. No, my friend, if troops be given me, it is not by loitering on
the frontiers that I will seek to give protection: they are to be
defended, if defended at all, in a very different manner--by carrying
the war into the heart of the enemy's country. All other hopes of
defence are more visionary than dreams.
"What, then, is to be done? I'll tell you what. You have only to act
with the energy and decision the crisis demands, and all will be well.
Send me a force engaged for six months and I will answer for the result;
but withhold it and all is lost--the reputation of the State, and yours
and mine along with it."
Fortunately, Governor Blount had not only the sense to see into what
errors he had fallen, when the real state of the case and the
obligations it placed upon him were thus pointed out, but the courage
also to act inconsistently and to do that which he had once solemnly
declared that he ought not to do. It was too late to undo the mischief
he had done by advising the discharge of the discontented militia, but
he set to work at once to provide men to take their places. The militia
left in spite of all that Jackson cared to do to detain them, and
Cocke's volunteers followed them ten days afterward, but in the meantime
a force of nine hundred new men had arrived. They had enlisted in part
for two and in part for three months, and were therefore of
comparatively little value; but Jackson resolved to use them at least
while waiting for the arrival of the larger and better force which had
been ordered to gather at Fayetteville on the 28th of January. He meant
to strike a blow with what force he had while its enlistment should
continue, so that no more men might be paid for service as soldiers
without doing any fighting. The volunteers whose term had expired
marched out of camp on the 14th of January, and on the next day Jackson
set his new men in motion for work.
They were undrilled, undisciplined, and weak in numbers, but Jackson was
now bent upon fighting with any thing that he could get which remotely
resembled an army.