As has been said, the army remained but one day at Fort Deposit, and during that day constructed a fortress; but Jackson found time in which to write an address to his men, whom he was now about to lead upon a campaign in which they would encounter famine and hardships of the sorest kind, as well as the savage enemy. They needed all the courage that enthusiasm in the cause could give them, and the address was designed to key them up, so to speak, to the pitch of their commander's temper. The address read as follows:
"You have, fellow-soldiers, at length penetrated the country of your enemies. It is not to be believed that they will abandon the soil that embosoms the bones of their forefathers without furnishing you an opportunity of signalizing your valor. Wise men do not expect, brave men will not desire it. It was not to travel unmolested through a barren wilderness that you quitted your families and homes, and submitted to so many privations: it was to revenge the cruelties committed upon your defenceless frontiers by the inhuman Creeks, instigated by their no less inhuman allies; you shall not be disappointed.
"If the enemy flee before us we will overtake and chastise him; we will teach him how dreadful, when once aroused, is the resentment of freemen. But it is not by boasting that punishment is to be inflicted or victory obtained. The same resolution that prompted us to take up arms must inspire us in battle. Men thus animated and thus resolved, barbarians can never conquer; and it is an enemy barbarous in the extreme that we have now to face. Their reliance will be on the damage they can do you while you are asleep and unprepared for action; their hopes shall fail them in the hour of experiment. Soldiers who know their duty and are ambitious to perform it are not to be taken by surprise. Our sentinels will never sleep, nor our soldiers be unprepared for action; yet while it is enjoined upon the sentinels vigilantly to watch the approach of the foe, they are at the same time commanded not to fire at shadows. Imaginary dangers must not deprive them of entire self-possession. Our soldiers will lie with their arms in their hands; and the moment an alarm is given they will move to their respective positions without noise and without confusion. They will thus be enabled to hear the orders of their officers, and to obey them with promptitude.
"Great reliance will be placed by the enemy, on the consternation they may be able to spread through our ranks by the hideous yells with which they commence their battles; but brave men will laugh at such efforts to alarm them. It is not by bellowings and screams that the wounds of death are inflicted. You will teach these noisy assailants how weak are their weapons of warfare, by opposing them with the bayonet. What Indian ever withstood its charge? What army of any nation ever withstood it long?
"Yes, soldiers, the order for a charge will be the signal for victory. In that moment your enemy will be seen flying in every direction before you. But in the moment of action coolness and deliberation must be regarded; your fire made with precision and aim; and when ordered to charge with the bayonet you must proceed to the assault with a quick and firm step, without trepidation or alarm. Then shall you behold the completion of your hopes, in the discomfiture of your enemy. Your general, whose duty as well as inclination is to watch over your safety, will not, to gratify any wishes of his own, rush you unnecessarily into danger. He knows, however, that it is not in assailing an enemy that men are destroyed; it is when retreating and in confusion. Aware of this, he will be prompted as much by a regard for your lives as your honor. He laments that he has been compelled, even incidentally, to hint at a retreat when speaking to freemen and to soldiers. Never until you forget all that is due to yourselves and your country will you have any practical understanding of that word. Shall an enemy wholly unacquainted with military evolutions, and who rely more for victory on their grim visages and hideous yells than upon their bravery or their weapons—shall such an enemy ever drive before them the well-trained youths of our country, whose bosoms pant for glory, and a desire to avenge the wrongs they have received? Your general will not live to behold such a spectacle; rather would he rush into the thickest of the enemy and submit himself to their scalping-knives. But he has no fears of such a result. He knows the valor of the men he commands, and how certainly that valor, regulated as it will be, will lead to victory. With his soldiers he will face all dangers, and with them participate in the glory of conquest."
Nothing could have been better fitted than this address was to serve the end for which it was designed. Jackson knew his Tennesseeans, both in their temper and in their habits; and he adroitly managed to warn them against the consequences of those faults which were most prominent in their characters, while seeming merely to appeal in a stimulating fashion to their pride of courage. He knew, as they did not, how trying the hardships of a campaign in a wilderness with insufficient supplies are; he knew how prone raw troops are to fall into confusion and panic in the excitement of a sudden attack; and against all these things he did what could be done to brace them by an adroit appeal to their pride of race and of personal courage. If some of his expressions seem to suggest any thing like contempt of the Creeks as foes, they were meant merely to arouse the pride of his own men, and indicated no disposition on his part not to "respect his enemy," as Claiborne said. On the contrary, he showed the profoundest respect for his enemy by his extreme solicitude about the condition and the conduct of his own men.
The marching was now as nearly continuous as was possible in the circumstances. Frequent pauses had to be made, in order that provisions might be gathered from the surrounding country, but as soon as there was food in camp the march was resumed.
On the 28th of October, a detachment under command of Colonel Dyer left the main body, and the next day attacked the Indian village of Littefutchee, surprising it before daylight in the morning, destroying it, and bringing in twenty-nine prisoners as the first-fruits of the campaign.
This was the beginning of a series of battles which followed each other in as rapid succession as the starving condition of the army permitted. Jackson was now in the enemy's country, and within striking distance of his strategic points. How vigorously and persistently he struck, we shall see in the chapters which follow.