Once set in motion, the machinery of conquest proceeded to pare off slices of Florida with the neatness and despatch of a meat-cutting machine. The plans of the American Government worked out as smoothly as a church wedding which has been rehearsed beforehand. The carefully laid scheme first manifested itself in October, 1810, when a revolution broke out in that portion of West Florida bordering upon the Mississippi. In that region there was a family of American settlers named Kemper who had suffered many injustices under Spanish rule. Two of these men, Samuel and Reuben (the same Reuben Kemper, by the way, whose exploits in Mexico are described in “Adventurers All”), determined to get rid of their hated rulers, incited the neighboring settlers to rise in armed revolt. Assembling at St. Francisville, they marched through the night, arrived before Baton Rouge at dawn, took it by surprise, and after a skirmish in which the Spanish governor was killed drove out the garrison and occupied the town. In order to throw a cloak of legality over their acts, the revolutionists organized a convention, issued a declaration of independence modelled on Jefferson’s immortal document, elected Fulwar Skipwith, formerly American diplomatic agent in France, president of the new republic, and hoisted over the captured town a flag with a single star—the same emblem under which the Texans were to win their independence thirty odd years later. This done, the infant republic asked the United States to recognize it as an independent nation. But President Monroe, instead of extending recognition, asserting that the revolted province had been ceded by Spain to France along with Louisiana in 1800, and therefore, being part and parcel of Louisiana, belonged to the United States anyway, declared the Territory of West Florida, as far east as the Pearl River, an American possession.
Shortly after the capture of Baton Rouge Colonel Kemper, acting under orders from the revolutionary government, led another expedition against Mobile. Made overconfident by their easy triumph at Baton Rouge, the filibusters encamped a few miles above Mobile and spent the night in a grand carousal in celebration of their anticipated victory on the morrow. But the Spanish governor, learning from a spy of the Americans’ befuddled condition, sallied out at the head of three hundred men, took the revolutionists by surprise, and completely routed them. A major and nine men who were taken prisoners were transported to Havana, where they paid for their affront to the majesty of Spain by spending five years in Morro Castle. A few weeks later a strong force of American regulars arrived off Mobile and coolly sat down within sight of the Spanish fortifications. They explained their presence to the Spanish governor by saying that they had been sent by the American Government to protect him and his men from further attacks by the insurgents. The gentlemen who were shaping the policies of the nation in Washington certainly must have had a sense of humor. Though the Spanish flag still flew over Mobile, the United States was now, to all intents and purposes, in complete possession of West Florida. In the spring of 1812, when the American Government finally determined on a war with England, the strategic importance of Mobile became apparent and President Monroe, deciding that the time had come to end the farce, despatched an expedition under General Wilkinson to oust the Spanish garrison and formally occupy the city. The United States was now in full possession of one of the Gulf ports she had so long been coveting, and the machinery of conquest was still in working order.
Meanwhile the American Government, having heard rumors that the British were about to assume control of East Florida under the provisions of a secret arrangement with Spain, asked permission of the Spanish authorities to occupy that province with troops that it might not be used by the British as a base of operations. (The occupation was to be purely temporary; oh, yes indeed, the American troops would be withdrawn as soon as the war-clouds which were piling up along the political horizon lifted a little.) It is scarcely to be wondered at, however, that Spain curtly refused the request, whereupon Congress, in secret session, passed an act authorizing the seizure of East Florida. But it would have smacked too much of highway robbery or of burglary, whichever you choose to call it, for the United States to have sent a military expedition into the province and taken it by force of arms. That would have been just a little too coarse and crude and might, moreover, have called forth a European protest. But surely no blame could be attached to the United States because the settlers in southern Georgia, exasperated, they said, by the lawless conditions which prevailed in the adjacent Spanish province, suddenly determined to follow the example of their neighbors in West Florida and organize a republican form of government in East Florida as a preliminary to applying for admission to the Union. It was a strange coincidence, was it not, that the instigator of the revolution, General George Mathews, a former governor of Georgia, had been appointed a commissioner, under the secret act of Congress, to secure the province? Amelia Island, lying just off the Florida coast and a little below the boundary of Georgia, provided an admirable base of operations. The fine harbor of its capital, Fernandina, was just becoming of considerable commercial importance and in Spanish hands might prove a serious menace to the United States in the approaching war with England. Hence the acquisition of this island and harbor was regarded by the American authorities as a military necessity. Early in 1812, therefore, a force of some two hundred Georgian frontiersmen under General Mathews moved down upon Fernandina and sent a flag of truce, demanding the surrender of the town and island. As a flotilla of American gunboats, by a streak of the greatest good luck, happened into the harbor at this psychological moment, and a force of American regulars, by another singular coincidence, appeared upon the scene and placed themselves under Mathews’s orders, there was nothing left for the Spanish commandant but to haul down his flag. Whereupon General Mathews, assuming the attitude of a protector, took possession of the place in the name of the United States. With the precedent of Baton Rouge to guide him, Mathews naturally supposed that the secret and ambiguously worded instructions under which he had gone to Fernandina meant that he was to take possession of East Florida, and he was strengthened in this supposition by the condition of affairs that he found there. St. Mary’s River was filled with British vessels engaged in smuggling British merchandise into the United States in defiance of the Embargo Act, while Amelia Island was a notorious rendezvous for smugglers, upon whom the Spanish authorities looked with marked tolerance, if, indeed, they did not lend them actual assistance. As soon as the Americans took possession a custom-house was established, the smuggling promptly ceased, and over the fort was raised a flag bearing the inscription: “Vox populi lex salutis.” Though the uneducated frontiersmen were a trifle hazy as to the motto’s meaning, it sounded well and lent a certain air of dignity to the proceedings. The next move of the insurgents, now become eight hundred strong by reinforcements from Georgia, was to besiege the Spanish governor in St. Augustine, for Mathews, confident that Congress would pass a bill sanctioning his seizure of the province, ran things with a high hand. As a matter of fact, such a bill was passed by the House in secret session, but was rejected by the Senate, whereupon President Madison disavowed the act of Mathews and ordered him to evacuate the territory he had seized—probably because it was deemed unwise to provoke hostilities with another power at the very moment we had declared war on England. But the conquest of Florida was not abandoned—merely postponed.
A century ago the region south of the Tennessee River was popularly known as “the Creek country.” Because it lay directly athwart the best water communications between the settlements in Tennessee and the outside world, and because its lands were among the most fertile in the South, the eyes of the American pioneers were turned covetously upon it. Now, no one realized better than the Creeks themselves that if they were to hold their lands they must fight for them. Their decision to resist American encroachments was strengthened by the appearance among them of the great northern chieftain, Tecumseh. In October, 1811, this remarkable man, in pursuance of his scheme for uniting the red men from the Great Lakes to the Gulf in an Indian confederacy for the purpose of resisting the white man’s further progress westward, suddenly appeared at a Creek council held on the upper Tallapoosa. Perhaps the most brilliant orator the Indian race has ever produced and gifted with extraordinary personal magnetism, he held his audience spellbound as, standing in the circle of light thrown by the council-fire, ringed about by row on row of blanketed and feathered warriors, he outlined his scheme for a union of all the Indians of the West in a confederation powerful enough to bid defiance to the white man. Standing like a bronze statue, the firelight playing on his haughty features, his copper skin, and the single eagle feather slanting in his hair, he held aloft his war-club; then, finger by finger, he slowly relaxed his grasp until it crashed to the ground. By that significant pantomime, so powerful in its appeal to the primitive intellects of his hearers, he drove home with telling effect the weakness which comes from disunion. Though a few weeks later, on the banks of the Tippecanoe River, William Henry Harrison broke Tecumseh’s power forever and drove him from American soil, he had aroused in the Creeks a determination to retain their lands or to go down upon them fighting.
Meanwhile British agents had been secretly at work among the discontented Creeks, whooping them on to a campaign of extermination against the American settlers and supplying them with arms and ammunition in return for the promise of their assistance in the war which every one realized was now at hand. On the 18th of June, 1812, Congress declared war on England, and a week later every Creek fighting man was daubing the war-paint on his copper skin. Though the danger of a war with the Creeks was perfectly understood in Washington, the military authorities were too busy pushing forward their preparations for an invasion of Canada to spare much thought for the settlers dwelling along our unprotected southern frontier. But the Indians, under the leadership of the half-breed war-chief Weatherford, had nothing to divert their attention from the business in hand.
A pioneer farmer named Samuel Mimms had built a stockade for the protection of his cattle on Lake Tensaw, twenty miles or so north of Mobile, and here the settlers of the surrounding region had taken refuge, Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana, hurrying a small force of militia under Major Beasley to protect them. In August, 1813, the place, popularly known as Fort Mimms, sheltered within its log stockade five hundred and fifty-three persons: soldiers and settlers, men, women, and children. Although Governor Claiborne had himself visited the post during the preceding month and had urged on its commander the necessity for the most unrelaxing vigilance, Beasley and his men evidently came to look upon the affair as a false alarm as the summer days slipped by without bringing any signs of hostile Indians. So cocksure did they become, indeed, that even after a friendly Indian had brought word that the Creeks were preparing to attack the place they continued to leave the gates of the stockade unguarded during the day. They paid a fearful price for their negligence, however. At noon on the 30th of August, when the occupants of the fort were at their dinner, a thousand fiends in paint and feathers slipped like shadows from the gloom of the encircling forest, sped on noiseless, moccasined feet across the strip of cultivated ground without the walls, and, before the demoralized garrison realized what had happened, were pouring through the unguarded entrance in a howling, shrieking wave like demons pouring through the gates of hell. Though taken completely by surprise and outnumbered five to one, the garrison put up a most desperate and gallant resistance. The scene was dreadful beyond imagination. It was hand-to-hand fighting in its bloodiest form: bayonets against war-clubs, muskets against tomahawks, pistols against knives. Increasing the horror of the situation a hundredfold were the women and children, for there was no question as to their fate if the Indians were victorious. Beasley fell at the first attack and every officer died at the gateway in a vain attempt to stem the Indian rush. A young lieutenant, badly wounded, was carried by two women to a blockhouse, but when he was a little revived insisted on being taken back that he might die with his comrades on the fighting line. Though hopeless from the first, the defense was prolonged for hours; for after the men of the garrison had fallen, the women and children shut themselves up in one of the blockhouses, where they held off the yelling savages with the courage of despair. Finally, however, the Indians, by means of burning arrows, succeeded in setting the building on fire, and after that it was no longer a battle but a butchery. Of the five hundred and fifty-three people within the fort, only twelve escaped. It was a dearly bought victory for the Indians, however, for piled around the gateway were four hundred of their best fighting men.
From one end of the border to the other rose the cry for vengeance. Nor was it long in coming. The legislature of Tennessee voted to raise men and money to wipe out the Creeks, and called for volunteers. Jumping at this chance to even up old scores with the Indians, the frontiersmen, their long squirrel rifles on their shoulders and clad in their serviceable buckskin dress, came pouring in to offer their services in the campaign of retribution. The command of the expedition was given to a brigadier-general of Tennessee militia who up to that time had scarcely been heard of outside the borders of his own State. He was a tall, emaciated figure of a man, with a clean-shaven, sallow face, a jaw like a bear-trap, a great beak of a nose, eyes as penetrating as gimlets and as cold as a winter’s morning, and a shock of unkempt sandy hair just beginning to gray under his forty-seven years. He was not at all the sort of man that a stranger would slap on the back and address by his first name—at least he would not do it a second time. His garments were as severe and businesslike as the man himself: a much-worn leather cap, a short, Spanish cloak of frayed blue cloth, and great unpolished boots whose tops swayed uneasily about his bony knees. He carried his arm in a sling as the result of a pistol wound received during a brawl in a Nashville tavern. Everything considered, this man who had been chosen to strike terror to the Creeks was a strange and striking figure. You may have heard of him—his name was Andrew Jackson.
This was the extraordinary man who, early in the autumn of 1813, took the field at the head of three thousand volunteers as rough and ready as himself. A vast amount of nonsense has been written about pioneer troops. Though some of the most brilliant and daring campaigns in which Americans have borne a part were carried through by soldiers recruited on the frontier and though the marching and fighting qualities of these men have been surpassed by no troops on earth, they were, on the other hand, nearly always insubordinate, contemptuous of discipline, impudent to their officers, quickly homesick, and very dependent for success on enthusiasm for their leaders. Jackson was the best man that could possibly have been chosen to command such troops as these, for he had been born and brought up on the frontier, he understood the men with whom he was dealing, and managed them with energy, firmness, and tact. He rarely had any difficulty in filling his ranks, for he permitted no obstacles to deter him from reaching and crushing an enemy; hence the men who followed him in his campaigns always had stories to relate and were looked upon as heroes in the settlements. To be pointed out as “one of Andy Jackson’s men” came to be looked upon as as great an honor as the scarlet ribbon of the Legion of Honor is in France.
Jackson’s plan of campaign provided for the construction of a military road, fifty miles in length, from the Tennessee to the Coosa, whence, after building a fortified base of supplies, he planned to make a quick dash southward, spreading death and destruction as he went, until he dictated peace on the Hickory Ground. The Hickory Ground, which lay at the junction of the Alabama and the Coosa, near the present site of Montgomery, was the headquarters of the Creek confederacy and a place of refuge, the Indian medicine-men having asserted that no white could set foot upon its sacred soil and live. Jackson, as I have already remarked, permitted no obstacles to deter him. So, when his engineers reported that it was not feasible to build a road through the unmapped wilderness, he took the matter out of their hands and built the road himself. And when the contractors assured him that it was out of the question to transport supplies for three thousand men to the Coosa within the time he had specified, he commandeered horses and wagons and did that, too. When one of his regiments attempted to settle a dispute over the term of enlistment by turning about and marching home, Jackson, his left arm still disabled and in a sling, snatched a musket from a soldier with his right hand and, using the neck of his horse for a rest, covered with his weapon the column of sullen, scowling mutineers. With eyes flashing and frame quivering with passion, he single-handed held the disaffected regiment at bay, shouting shrilly, with a volley of oaths, that he would let daylight into the first man who stirred. Colonels Reid and Coffee, learning of the mutiny, came galloping up from the rear and took their stand by the side of their commander, while some loyal companies formed up across the road with weapons levelled, seeing which the mutineers changed their minds as to the wisdom of going home and sullenly marched on.
He first met the Creeks on the 3d of November at Talluschatches—now Jacksonville, Ala.—and promptly attacked them with a thousand mounted men. No quarter was asked and none was given, and when the battle was over not an Indian brave was left alive. Six days later, at Talladega, he swooped down upon a war party of a thousand Creeks who had surrounded a band of friendly Indians and sent a third of them to the happy hunting-grounds. At the same time General John Floyd invaded the Creek country from Georgia at the head of a punitive expedition, while from the west also came an avenging column under Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana. The latter discovered a town of refuge, called Econochaca, on the Alabama. It was built on holy ground, the Indian prophets said, and, as a result of the spells they had cast over it, it was safe from paleface invasion. The Americans arrived not an instant too soon, for, guided by the throbbing of the war-drums, they burst into the village to find the Indians, their ringed and streaked bodies more fiendish still in the glare of a great fire, whooping and capering about a row of stakes to which were bound white captives of both sexes, ready to be burned. When Claiborne’s men finished their work, the “holy ground” was carpeted with Indian dead, and the medicine-men who had boasted that it was immune from invasion were themselves scalped and staring corpses.