General Coffee was moving forward on a litter when the battle at Enotachopco began, suffering from the wound he had received at Emuckfau; but when the army broke into a confused and flying mass he mounted his horse in spite of his condition, and to his exertions chiefly Major Eaton attributes the rallying of the men and the ultimate repulse of the enemy.
It became Coffee's duty to write a letter breaking the news of Captain Donelson's death to his friends, and in that letter, the manuscript of which is preserved in the archives of the Tennessee Historical Society, he says of the ill-luck of the expedition:
"Our great loss has been occasioned by our troops being raw and undisciplined, commanded by officers of the same description. Had I had my old regiment of cavalry I could have driven the enemy wherever I met them, without loss. But speculation had taken them out of the field, and thus we have suffered for them. Their advisers ought to suffer death for their unwarrantable conduct, and I hope our injured citizens will treat them with the contempt they so justly merit."
Jackson had no sooner reached his camp at Fort Strother, than he called Colonels Perkins and Stump to account for their conduct at Enotachopco, preferring charges against them and sending them before a court-martial for trial. The court, upon the evidence submitted, acquitted Colonel Perkins, but found Colonel Stump guilty of the charge of cowardice, and sentenced him to be cashiered.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HOW RED EAGLE WHIPPED "CAPTAIN FLOYD"—THE BATTLE OF CALEBEE CREEK.
We left Floyd retiring upon his base of supplies on the Chattahoochee River after the battle of Autosse, suffering from a wound received in that action. After a few weeks of inaction he resumed operations, with the town of Tookabatcha for the objective point of his campaign. Jackson's chief purpose in his expedition to Emuckfau had been to create a diversion in favor of Floyd, and so help to the accomplishment of that general's purpose. In his report of the operations detailed in the last chapter, Jackson, apparently feeling that it was necessary to vindicate the wisdom of the movement, laid special stress upon the fact that his operations had tended thus to assist Floyd. If Floyd had attained the objects of his expedition, this might have been full recompense for Jackson's ill-success; but almost at the very time when the Red Sticks—for that was the term by which the hostile Creeks were called, because Tecumseh had given sticks painted red to all the Creeks who would "take his talk"—almost almost at the very time, we say, when the Red Sticks were "whipping Captain Jackson" at Emuckfau and Enotachopco, they were also "whipping Captain Floyd"—they always called commanders captains—at Calebee Creek, not defeating him in battle, but so hurting him as to compel him to retire and abandon the purpose with which he set out, even more entirely than they had compelled Jackson to abandon his.
Floyd made his advance slowly and cautiously, pausing to establish forts at intervals so that a line of defensive posts should lie like a trail behind him, protecting his line of communications and affording convenient places for the storage and safe keeping of supplies. He began his march with about twelve hundred infantry, four hundred friendly Indians, one cavalry company and his artillery, making a total force of seventeen hundred or eighteen hundred men. It was his purpose to push his column into the Creek country, not rapidly, but resistlessly; so firmly establishing it as to make it, as it were, a permanent wedge of invasion.
When he arrived at a point on Calebee Creek, in what is now Macon County, Alabama, he determined to establish one of his fortified posts upon some high ground there. Here, however, Red Eagle entered his protest against the plans of the Georgia general. Leading a force of Creeks in person, the commander of the Indians was dogging Floyd's footsteps for several days before his arrival at Calebee Creek, but having selected that as the ground on which he would give battle to the whites, the shrewd Indian general adroitly concealed his presence, so handling his force as to keep himself fully informed of Floyd's movements without permitting that officer to know in return that the enemy was near. Floyd took all those precautions which prudence dictates to a commander marching through an enemy's country, but he does not appear to have discovered Red Eagle's presence, or to have expected the attack that was made upon him on the morning of January 27th.