Red Eagle and the Wars With the Creek Indians of Alabama Part 10

[Footnote 5: Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson.]

Nothing that the perplexed commander could do or say or write, however, could help him. Day by day food became scarcer, poorer, and more difficult to get, and the men were becoming mutinous, as volunteers are sure to do when left to starve in inaction. If the enemy had appeared in his immediate neighborhood, Jackson would certainly have cured all the disorders of the camp and removed its discontent by giving the men constant occupation for their minds in conflicts with the foe. As it was, there was neither food nor fighting to be had at Fort Strother, and General Jackson did not dare to attempt a march upon the nearest Indian stronghold, about sixty miles away, without supplies.

Not many days had pa.s.sed after the return to the Ten Islands when information reached Jackson that the men of the militia regiment intended to return to their homes with or without permission, and that they had appointed the next day as the time of starting. Luckily he believed that he could still depend upon the volunteers. He knew, too, that in this matter he had to deal with bodies of men, not with individuals. The power of public sentiment, which in this case was corps sentiment, was the power arrayed against him. He knew that the men would not desert singly, that their pride would restrain them from desertion unless they could act together, each being sustained by the opinion and the common action of all his fellows. The militia had determined to march home in a body; Jackson determined to restrain them in a body.

On the appointed day he called the volunteers to arms, and at their head placed himself in the way of the mutinous militiamen. He plainly informed the men that they could march homeward only by cutting their way through his lines, and this was an undertaking which they were not prepared for. Being unable to overcome Jackson, they had no choice but to yield to him and return to their tents, which they did at once, with what cheerfulness they could command.

The volunteers whose power Jackson was thus able to use in arresting the departure of the militia were scarcely less discontented than they. On the very day on which they stopped the march of the militia they resolved themselves to go home, and prepared to depart on the following morning. Jackson had information of what was going on, and he prepared to reverse the order of things by using the militia in their turn to oppose the volunteers. The militia having returned to their duty obeyed the commands of their general, and opposed a firm front to the mutinous volunteers. The affair wore so much of the appearance of a practical joke that it put the whole force into momentary good-humor.

With his men in this mood, however, Jackson knew that he had merely gained a very brief time by his firmness, and that the discontent of which the mutiny was born existed still in undiminished force. He therefore sent the cavalry to Huntsville to recruit their horses, first exacting a promise that they would return as soon as that end could be accomplished--a promise which the men afterward violated shamelessly. He then called all the officers of the army together, and, after giving them all the facts in his possession upon which he founded the confident hope that provisions in plenty would soon arrive, he made a speech to them, trying to win them back to something of their old devotion to duty. He had good reason to believe that supplies both of meat and of breadstuffs were now actually on their way to him, and his chief present purpose was to gain time, to persuade his followers to patience and obedience for the two or three days which he thought would end the period of short rations. According to Eaton's report of the speech, Jackson said to his officers:

"What is the present situation of our camp? A number of our fellow-soldiers are wounded and unable to help themselves. Shall it be said that we are so lost to humanity as to leave them in this condition?

Can any one, under these circ.u.mstances and under these prospects, consent to an abandonment of the camp; of all that we have acquired in the midst of so many difficulties, privations, and dangers; of what it will cost us so much to regain; of what we never can regain--our brave wounded companions, who will be murdered by our unthinking, unfeeling inhumanity? Surely there can be none such! No, we will take with us when we go our wounded and sick. They must not, shall not perish by our cold-blooded indifference. But why should you despond? I do not; and yet your wants are not greater than mine. To be sure we do not live sumptuously; but no one has died of hunger or is likely to die. And then how animating are our prospects! Large supplies are at Deposit, and already are officers despatched to hasten them on. Wagons are on the way; a large number of beeves are in the neighborhood, and detachments are out to bring them in. All these resources cannot fail. I have no wish to starve you, none to deceive you. Stay contentedly, and if supplies do not arrive in two days we will all march back together, and throw the blame of our failure where it should properly lie; until then we certainly have the means of subsisting, and if we are compelled to bear privations, let us remember that they are borne for our country, and are not greater than many, perhaps most, armies have been compelled to endure. I have called you together to tell you my feelings and wishes. This evening think on them seriously, and let me know yours in the morning."

To this appeal the response was not satisfactory. The militia indeed agreed to remain during the stipulated two days, and promised that if the expected provisions should come within that time they would cease to murmur, and go on with the campaign; but the volunteers were now wholly given over to mutiny. They insolently informed General Jackson that they were going to march back to the borders of Tennessee, and that if he refused to yield immediately to their will in the matter, without waiting for the allotted two days to expire, they would go without permission and would use force if necessary to accomplish that end.

There can be no doubt whatever about the nature of the reply which Jackson would have made to this message if he had had even a small force upon which he could rely at his back. In that case the volunteers must have chosen between submission to his will and a battle with him. As it was, he was one man against the whole force. He could not oppose the mutinous volunteers with arms, and he felt that he must in some way prevent the abandonment of all that had been gained in the campaign. He therefore resorted to a compromise, which he hoped would solve the perplexing problem. He commanded the militia and one regiment of the volunteers to remain in the fort as a garrison, and ordered the other volunteer regiment to march toward Fort Deposit until it should meet the provision train, and then to countermarch and return with it. In this way he lost immediately only one half of the volunteers, winning the rest of them to his proposition for a delay of two days; and even the regiment which had been sent away might yet return with the provisions, as the lack of food was the only plea that had been urged in defence of the mutiny.

The discontent really lay much deeper than that: it had come as much from idleness in camp and from home-sickness as from hunger, and it had eaten into the soldierly characters of the men, honeycombing them with sedition and insubordination; but while the plea of starvation remained to them the men urged no other, and Jackson's memory of their courage and good conduct on former occasions, led him to hope that with this cause of trouble removed the trouble itself would disappear.

When the two days of waiting had pa.s.sed, and no supplies had come, a new difficulty lay in Jackson's path, namely, his own voluntary promise. He had asked for two days' delay, promising to permit the men to march away if food did not arrive within that time. The promise now fell due and the men exacted its fulfilment. In his sore distress he could do nothing further to compel obedience. He had even relinquished his right to command the men to remain and his privilege to bargain for further delay. He must let them go now, but there was no reason why any of them who chose to do so might not voluntarily remain to defend the fort. It was a slender hope, but Jackson was grasping at straws now. He set out to seek volunteers, declaring that if even two men should consent to stay with him he would not abandon Fort Strother and the campaign, but would stay there and wait for the coming of reinforcements. One of his captains at once offered himself as one of this army of two, and by an earnest effort they succeeded in swelling the number of volunteers to one hundred and nine men.

This was all that was left of Jackson's army, and the campaign lay mostly before him. A man of less stubborn resolution would have despaired; but Jackson held on in the hope of gaining strength after awhile and gathering men enough around him to make a resumption of operations possible.

He permitted the rest of his troops to leave the post, first exacting a promise that they would return if they should meet the supply train, and in order the more effectually to enforce this demand Jackson accompanied the column, leaving his army, one hundred and nine strong, to hold the fort until his return.

Twelve miles from the fort the column met the provision train. Jackson called a halt and ordered rations to be distributed to the men. It was now his turn to insist upon the faithful fulfilment of a promise. He had kept his word in permitting his men to abandon Fort Strother at the time appointed; he could now, with especially good grace, insist that the men should keep their promise and return with the provision train.

Now for the first time the mutiny began to a.s.sume its true colors. With stomachs filled with good beef and bread--for a large drove of beef cattle was with the provision train, and Jackson had given the men beef rations--it was no longer possible to urge hunger in excuse for abandonment of duty; but the men had set out intending to go home, and they had no thought of relinquis.h.i.+ng that intention merely because the excuse by which they had justified their conduct would no longer serve their purpose.

When ordered to take up the line of march toward the fort the men rebelled and started homeward instead.

Then ensued one of the most impressive scenes in Jackson's career.

Raving with rage, his thin lips set and his frame quivering with anger, the commander's face and mien were terrible. His left arm was still carried in a sling, and the hards.h.i.+ps, hunger, fatigue, and ceaseless anxiety to which he had been subject ever since he quitted his sick-bed to come upon this campaign had not made his wasted frame less emaciated; he was a sick man who ought to have been in bed: but the illness was of the body, not of the soul. The spirit of the man was now intensely stirred, and when Jackson was in this mood there were few men who had the courage to brave him.

Riding after the head of the column, he placed himself with a few followers in front of it, and drove the men back like sheep. Then leaving the officers who were with him he rode alone down the road, until he encountered a brigade which was drawn up in column, resolved to conquer its way by a regular advance against any body of men who might oppose its homeward march. If a company or a battalion had undertaken to arrest the march of these men there would have been a battle there in the road without question. They were prepared to fight their comrades to the death; they were ready to meet a force equal to their own. They met Andrew Jackson instead--Andrew Jackson in a rage, Andrew Jackson with all the blood in his frail body boiling; and that was a force greatly superior to their own.

s.n.a.t.c.hing a musket from one of the men Jackson commanded the mutineers to halt. He broke forth in a torrent of vituperation, and declared that they could march toward home only over his dead body; he declared, too, with an emphasis which carried conviction with it, that while he could not, single-handed, overcome a brigade of armed men, he at least could and would shoot down the first man who should dare to make the least motion toward advancing.

The men were overawed, terrified, demoralized by the force of this one resolute man's fierce determination. They stood like petrified men, not knowing what to do. It was now evident that no man there would dare to make himself Jackson's target by being the first to advance. Jackson had beaten a brigade, literally single-handed, for he had but one hand that he could use.

By this time General Coffee and some staff officers had joined Jackson, and now a few of the better disposed men, seeing their general opposing a brigade of mutineers, ranged themselves by his side, prepared to a.s.sist him in any encounter that might come, however badly overmatched they might be. The mutineers were already conquered, however, and sullenly yielding they were sent back to the fort.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JACKSON CONFRONTING THE MUTINEERS.]

CHAPTER XXIII.

A NEW PLAN OF THE MUTINEERS.

Having thus succeeded in sending what remained of his army back to Fort Strother, with abundant food at least for present uses, Jackson hastened to Fort Deposit and succeeded there in effecting arrangements for a constant supply of bread and meat.

Then he mounted his horse and rode back to Fort Strother, determined to collect what force he could without delay, and by vigorous measures to bring the campaign to a speedy and successful end.

His first measure was to order General c.o.c.ke to join him with the East Tennessee troops, saying in his letter to that officer that if he could arrive at Fort Strother by the 12th of December, bringing with him all the provisions he could gather, the Creeks could be crushed within three weeks. This was a most inspiriting prospect, and Jackson was apparently all the more elated because of his recent depression.

His good fortune was destined to be short-lived, however. He had scarcely reached Fort Strother on his return from Fort Deposit when he discovered that his volunteers were planning a new mutiny, or, as they stoutly maintained, were preparing to leave him with legal right and justice on their side.

The state of the case may be briefly summed up as follows: These volunteers had been mustered into service on the 10th of December, 1812, the terms of their enlistment being that they should serve for one year within the next two years, unless sooner discharged; that is to say, they were to be discharged as soon as they should have served a year; or, if their actual service in the field should not amount to a full year they should be discharged on the 10th of December, 1814. They were called into service when Jackson made his march with them to Natchez, which has been spoken of in a former chapter. After a few months, their services not being needed, they were dismissed from actual service to their homes, subject, however, to a call at any time until their time of service should expire.

Under this enlistment they were recalled to the field in September, 1813, as we have seen, and were under obligation to serve for a sufficient time to complete their term of one year in the field; but as it had been supposed when they were enlisted that their services would be needed continuously for a year, they had thought little about the alternative condition. They now held that their enlistment would expire just one year after it had begun--that is to say, on the 10th of December, 1813, a date now at hand. They were determined to permit no allowance to be made for the months which they had pa.s.sed at home, and insisted that as they had enlisted for one year they would go home when the year should end.

In this demand for discharge the officers, who should have been the men's instructors in such a case, made the matter hopeless by joining the discontented soldiery. With their colonels and majors and captains to second them, the men were doubly certain to persist in their interpretation of the contract of service.

Not long before the disputed date the colonel of one of the volunteer regiments laid their case before Jackson in a letter, in which he a.s.sured him that the volunteers would demand their honorable discharge from service on the 10th of December, the anniversary of their enlistment. The appeal made in this letter was an adroit effort to play upon next to the strongest feeling in Jackson's heart--his fatherly affection for the men who had followed him into battle. We say next to the strongest feeling in his heart, because the strongest was, undoubtedly, his desire to serve his country by accomplis.h.i.+ng the utter suppression of the Creeks. The colonel told Jackson that the volunteers looked to their loved and honored general to protect them in this their right, and to secure justice to them; that they lamented the necessity of leaving the field at such a time, but that their families and their private affairs required their return to their homes; that upon him, to whom they looked with reverence as to a father, depended the question whether, after their hard service under his leaders.h.i.+p, they should be permitted to go home with the certificates of honorable discharge to which they were ent.i.tled, or should be forced to carry with them the ill-repute of deserters. He was strongly implored not to reward their devotion to the cause and to him by fixing this brand of disgrace upon them and their children after them.

The appeal was adroit we say, and a masterly piece of special pleading; but the officer who wrote it must have known when he did so that the demand which he sought to enforce was unjust; that even if it had been just, Jackson had no more authority than he himself had to grant it; and that the disputed question had already been submitted formally and fully to the Secretary of War, who had decided it adversely to the men, and had accompanied that decision by the a.s.surance that as the matter was governed by an express act of Congress, no power short of that of the national legislature--neither the Secretary nor the President himself--was competent to change the terms of the enlistment, or to discharge the troops until either they had given a year to actual service, or the two years during which they were subject to a call had expired. For the men, and perhaps also for the subordinate officers, there may have been the excuse of an honest misunderstanding, but for this colonel, whose letter shows him to have been a man of high intelligence, there can have been no excuse at all.

Jackson replied to this letter in one of the ablest doc.u.ments which has come from his hand. Eaton has preserved it in his Life of Jackson, and Mr. Parton has copied it. Let us see what the commander, touched without doubt by the _argumentum ad hominem_ that was used, had to say by way of answer:

"I know not what scenes will be exhibited on the 10th instant, nor what consequences are to flow from them, here or elsewhere; but as I shall have the consciousness that they are not imputable to any misconduct of mine, I trust I shall have the firmness not to shrink from a discharge of my duty.

"It will be well, however, for those who intend to become actors in those scenes, and who are about to hazard so much on the correctness of their opinions, to examine beforehand with great caution and deliberation the grounds on which their pretensions rest. Are they founded on any false a.s.surances of mine, or upon any deception that has been practised toward them? Was not the act of Congress, under which they are engaged, directed by my general order to be read and expounded to them before they enrolled themselves? That order will testify, and so will the recollection of every general officer of my division. It is not pretended that those who now claim to be discharged were not legally and fairly enrolled under the act of Congress of the 6th of February, 1812.

Have they performed the service required of them by that act, and which they then solemnly undertook to perform? That required one year's service out of two, to be computed from the day of rendezvous, unless they should be sooner discharged. Has one year's service been performed?

This cannot be seriously pretended. Have they then been discharged? It is said they have, and by me. To account for so extraordinary a belief, it may be necessary to take a review of past circ.u.mstances.

"More than twelve months have elapsed since we were called upon to avenge the injured right of our country. We obeyed the call. In the midst of hards.h.i.+ps, which none but those to whom liberty is dear could have borne without a murmur, we descended the Mississippi. It was believed our services were wanted in the prosecution of the just war in which our country was engaged, and we were prepared to render them. But though we were disappointed in our expectations we established for Tennessee a name which will long do her honor. At length we received a letter from the Secretary of War directing our dismission. You will recollect the circ.u.mstances of wretchedness in which this order was calculated to place us. By it we were deprived of every article of public property; no provision was made for the payment of our troops or their subsistence on their return march; while many of our sick, unable to help themselves, must have perished. Against the opinion of many I marched them back to their homes before I dismissed them. Your regiment, at its own request, was dismissed at Columbia. This was accompanied with a certificate to each man, expressing the acts under which he had been enrolled and the length of the tour he had performed. This it is which is now attempted to be construed 'a final discharge.' But surely it cannot be forgotten by any officer or soldier how sacredly they pledged themselves, before they were dismissed or received that certificate, cheerfully to obey the voice of their country, if it should re-summon them into service; neither can it be forgotten, I dare hope, for what purpose that certificate was given; it was to secure, if possible, to those brave men, who had shown such readiness to serve their country, certain extra emoluments, specified in the seventh section of the act under which they had engaged, in the event they were not recalled into service for the residue of their term.

"Is it true, then, that my solicitude for the interest of the volunteers is to be made by them a pretext for disgracing a name which they have rendered ill.u.s.trious? Is a certificate, designed solely for their benefit, to become the rallying word for mutiny? Strange perversion of feeling and of reasoning! Have I really any power to discharge men whose term of service has not expired? If I were weak or wicked enough to attempt the exercise of such a power, does any one believe the soldier would be thereby exonerated from the obligation he has voluntarily taken upon himself to his government? I should become a traitor to the important concern which has been intrusted to my management, while the soldier who had been deceived by a false hope of liberation would be still liable to redeem his pledge. I should disgrace myself without benefiting you.

"I can only deplore the situation of those officers who have undertaken to persuade their men that their term of service will expire on the 10th. In giving their opinions to this effect they have acted indiscreetly and without sufficient authority. It would be the most pleasing act of my life to restore them with honor to their families.

Nothing could pain me more than that any other sentiments should be felt toward them than those of grat.i.tude and esteem. On all occasions it has been my highest happiness to promote their interest, and even to gratify their wishes, where with propriety it could be done. When in the lower country, believing that in the order for their dismissal they had been improperly treated, I even solicited the government to discharge them finally from the obligations into which they had entered. You know the answer of the Secretary of War: that neither he nor the President, as he believed, had the power to discharge them. How then can it be required of me to do so?

"The moment it is signified to me by any competent authority, even by the Governor of Tennessee, to whom I have written on the subject, or by General Pinckney, who is now appointed to the command, that the volunteers may be exonerated from further service, that moment I will p.r.o.nounce it with the greatest satisfaction. I have only the power of p.r.o.nouncing a discharge, not of giving it, in any case--a distinction which I would wish should be borne in mind. Already have I sent to raise volunteers on my own responsibility, to complete a campaign which has been so happily begun, and thus far so fortunately prosecuted. The moment they arrive, and I am a.s.sured that, fired by our exploits, they will hasten in crowds on the first intimation that we need their services, they will be subst.i.tuted in the place of those who are discontented here. The latter will then be permitted to return to their homes with all the honor which, under such circ.u.mstances they can carry along with them. But I still cherish the hope that their dissatisfaction and complaints have been greatly exaggerated. I cannot, must not, believe that the 'volunteers of Tennessee,' a name ever dear to fame, will disgrace themselves and a country which they have honored, by abandoning her standard as mutineers and deserters; but should I be disappointed and compelled to resign this pleasing hope, one thing I will not resign--my duty. Mutiny and sedition, so long as I possess the power of quelling them, shall be put down; and even when left dest.i.tute of this, I will still be found in the last extremity endeavoring to discharge the duty I owe my country and myself."

CHAPTER XXIV.

JACKSON'S SECOND BATTLE WITH HIS OWN MEN.

When troops unused as these men were to systematic obedience make up their minds to abandon the service they are of very little account thereafter, as soldiers. If one pretext for mutiny and desertion fails them, they quickly find another, as the men had done in this case. While famine lasted, famine was the best possible excuse for wis.h.i.+ng to go home, and the men thought of no other. They even protested their devotion to the cause and their willingness to remain in service if food could be found for them; but no sooner were their mouths stopped with abundant supplies of beef and bread than they tried to leave, as has been described, without any pretext whatever. Failing in that, they picked this flaw, or this pretended flaw, in their contract of enlistment, and Jackson probably knew that so far as their restoration to the condition of good soldiers was concerned, he was wasting words in arguing the case; but it was necessary to detain these men until the others for whom he had sent to Tennessee should arrive to take their places. They were useless for any thing like offensive operations, else he would have marched with them at once toward the Creek strongholds; but while they should remain at Fort Strother he could depend upon them to defend that post against any a.s.sault that might be made upon it, simply because in the event of an attack they must defend themselves, and to do that would have been to defend the fort.

Jackson had ordered the enlistment of a new force to take the place of these discontented men, but until the new army should come he was bent upon keeping the old one.