Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama.

by George Cary Eggleston

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!