Andrew Jackson (33 page)

Harrison’s mounted troops shattered the British lines at the start of the battle, leaving Tecumseh’s Indian force to carry the weight of the contest. They fought gallantly, and none more gallantly than their leader. Tecumseh placed himself in the thickest of the struggle. He urged his comrades forward, shouting defiance and showing the way. In his exposed position he was an irresistible target for the American rifles. One bullet hit him in the arm. He paused just long enough to bind the wound before taking up weapons again. He drew more bullets and went down.

His fall demoralized his warriors, and the battle degenerated into a rout. Proctor fled the field, leaving several hundred of his troops to surrender. The casualties were surprisingly light, given the lopsidedness of the outcome. Harrison counted twelve British dead and twenty-two wounded, against twelve American dead and seventeen wounded. “The Indians suffered most,” he added, “thirty-three of them having been found upon the ground besides those killed in the retreat.”

The Indian dead included Tecumseh. “I saw him with my own eyes,” Thomas Rowland, a major under Harrison, explained. “It was the first time I had seen this celebrated chief. There was something so majestic, so dignified, and yet so mild in his countenance, as he lay stretched on the ground where a few moments before he had rallied his men to the fight, that while gazing on him with admiration and pity, I forgot he was a savage. . . . He had such a countenance as I shall never forget.”

T
ecumseh’s death killed his hopes of rolling back the tide of white settlement. Indian resistance would continue, but the unity he preached and imperfectly accomplished couldn’t survive without its apostle and ablest practitioner. Neither whites nor Indians had ever seen his like or would see it again.

Jackson applauded the death of the Shawnee leader and would have appreciated it more had he not been utterly occupied trying to hold his own army together. The men were constantly hungry. Provisions never arrived on time, and when they did arrive they fell far short of the need. Clothing wore thin and then out. Hundreds of miles of marching had put holes in shoes and boots, finally leaving the worst-shod unshod entirely. The weather turned cold, and the men shivered in the rain. The one thing that kept many of the volunteers from abandoning the field dishonorably was the knowledge that their honorable discharge would come in early December.

Or so they interpreted their terms of enlistment. Much of Jackson’s force had accompanied him to Natchez the previous winter, and these men counted their twelve-month enlistment as starting with their muster in December 1812. They considered themselves no less brave or patriotic than anyone else in Jackson’s army—or than Jackson himself, for that matter—but they had made plans based on service only till December 1813. Jackson hadn’t helped matters by his haste in recalling them to avenge the Fort Mims massacre. The men had leaped to obey, but their very alacrity meant that many had had no time to prepare either themselves or their families for a long absence. They came without winter clothes and without having left means for their families to survive till spring. Farmwork needed doing; mortgages had to be paid. “If they do not get home soon, there are many of them who will be literally ruined,” Colonel William Martin told Jackson on December 4.

Martin commanded the most restive regiment, and he found himself caught between the understandable desire of his men to get home and Jackson’s insistence that they stay. To encourage participation in the Creek campaign, Martin and his fellow officers had emphasized that the men wouldn’t be asked to serve beyond December 10. “This was one of our strongest arguments to get the men out,” he told Jackson. Without it, many of them wouldn’t have come. For their discharge to be delayed would provoke great distress and anger. Martin realized this wasn’t what Jackson wanted to hear, and so it was with trepidation that he made his men’s case to the general.

It would be desirable for those men who have served with honor to be honorably discharged, and that they should return to their families and friends without even the semblance of disgrace. . . . It is with their General, whom they love, to place them in that situation. They say, and with truth, that with him they have suffered, have fought and have conquered. They feel a pride of having fought under his command. . . . But having devoted considerable portion of their time to the service of their country, by which their domestic concerns are much deranged, they wish to return and attend to their own affairs. Above all things they wish to part with their General with that cordiality with which they have served together. . . . This is the language and those are the feelings of these noble hearted soldiers.

Jackson was beginning to have doubts about the noble hearts of Martin’s soldiers, but he was absolutely sure the colonel wasn’t doing anything to enhance their nobility. Martin should be appealing to the patriotism of the men, Jackson judged, not pandering to their homesickness. Yet Jackson managed to hold his temper while he composed his response, which took the same high ground Martin trod. “It is well known that the 10th of December 1812 was the proudest day of my life,” Jackson said. “It was the proudest day for West Tennessee. . . . We braved the snowy blasts and the dangers of the icy sea”—river, that is—“without murmur, did our duty and established a fame by our proper conduct.” Officers and men had stood together against the “fatal order” of dismissal from service, and had returned to Tennessee together. They must stand together now. The men had enlisted for twelve months’ service but had given barely four. Their term would expire not on December 10 but the following June. This should have been clear to the officers, who should have made it clear to the men.

Jackson closed with an appeal and a warning. “The honor of the volunteers has been the constant care, theme, and pride of life. It is so still, and I have a pleasing hope that they will nobly die before they will do an act that will disgrace them. I still have a pleasing hope, when they reflect upon the rules and articles of war, they never will attempt an act of mutiny.” But they must know that if they did, he would act accordingly. “I will quell mutiny and punish desertion when and wheresoever it may be attempted. I shall always do my duty.”

As a showdown loomed, a group of Jackson’s officers tried to avert it. “Our men have come out with patriotic motives but were advised not to bring their clothing necessary for the present and approaching season,” they said. The men’s horses were worn out and required replacing. “If permitted to return only the shortest time to their homes,” the officers promised, the troops “would get fresh horses and bring clothing, prepared to go with you through the winter season or until the end of the campaign.” The men were not mutinous, merely hungry and cold. “We find this only one sentiment pervades the whole of our men, and hope you will modify your order.”

Jackson didn’t relish a showdown, either. He tried to prevent it by haranguing his superiors and provisioners to deliver the food and clothing his men so desperately needed. “In the name of God, what is McGee doing?” he demanded regarding one jobber who had taken the government’s money but not delivered the bread he had promised. “It is wholly unaccountable that not a pound of it has ever arrived.” And he explained to his men that even if he wanted to discharge them, he lacked the authority to do so. Only the governor could discharge the militia.

This last argument was correct but disingenuous. Jackson had never allowed lack of authority to prevent him from doing what he thought duty required, and he wouldn’t have allowed lack of authority to prevent him from discharging the troops. Yet he employed the argument to give himself more time. He conspicuously applied to the governor for permission to discharge, knowing that the application and any response would consume two weeks or more and hoping that supplies would arrive in the meantime. He guessed that full bellies would change everything.

The tension escalated as December 10 approached. “What may be attempted tomorrow I cannot tell,” Jackson wrote Coffee on the ninth. But Jackson was ready, and he wanted Coffee, who controlled the road home, to be ready as well. “Should they attempt to march off in mass, I shall do my duty. Should the mutineers be too strong, and you should meet any officers or men returning without my written authority, you will arrest and bring them back. . . . If they attempt to disobey your order, you will immediately fire on them and continue the fire until they are subdued.”

That evening the crisis came to a head. One of Jackson’s lieutenants arrived breathless at his tent with word that his brigade of volunteers was preparing to march north at daybreak. Jackson scribbled an order to the whole army: “The commanding general being informed that an actual mutiny exists in his camp, all officers and soldiers are commanded to put it down.” The offending brigade was ordered to assemble in formation. Jackson directed that his artillery be placed in front of and behind the volunteer brigade, with cannons at the ready. Loyal militia units were stationed on the route north.

John Reid, who witnessed the confrontation at close firsthand, recorded the moment of truth.

The general rode along the line, which had been formed agreeably to his orders, and addressed them by companies, in a strain of impassioned eloquence. He feelingly expatiated on their former good conduct, and the esteem and applause it had secured them; and pointed to the disgrace which they must heap upon themselves, their families, and country, by persisting, even if they could succeed, in the present mutiny. But he told them they should not succeed but by passing over his body; that even in opposing their mutinous spirit he should perish honorably, by perishing at his post and in the discharge of his duty.

“Reinforcements,” he continued, “are preparing to hasten to my assistance; it cannot be long before they will arrive. I am, too, in daily expectation of receiving information whether you may be discharged or not. Until then, you must not, and shall not, retire. I have done with entreaty; it has been used long enough. I will attempt it no more. You must now determine whether you will go, or peaceably remain. If you persist in your determination to move forcibly off, the point between us shall soon be decided.”

At first they hesitated. He demanded an explicit and positive answer. They still hesitated, and he commanded the artillerist to prepare the match, he himself remaining in front of the volunteers and within the line of fire, which he intended soon to order.

Alarmed at his apparent determination, and dreading the consequences involved in such a contest, “let us return” was presently lisped along the line, and was soon after determined upon. The officers now came forward and pledged themselves for their men, who either nodded assent or openly expressed a willingness to retire to their quarters and remain without further tumult until information were had or the expected aid arrived.

Thus passed away a moment of the greatest peril, pregnant with the most important consequences.

None present ever forgot the performance. For many years Tennesseans told of Jackson threatening to blow his own men, and himself, to pieces to make his patriotic point. Participants disputed the details, including whether the threat to march had actually reached the point of mutiny. But none disputed Jackson’s resolve.

I
n Jackson’s army that season was a young man named David Crockett. Born on the banks of the Nolichucky River in eastern Tennessee to a family plagued by bad luck, Crockett left home at twelve to seek his fortune. He never found much fortune but did discover a gift for hunting and a knack for telling stories. He moved west with the tide of settlement and in 1813 was living in Franklin County, just north of the Mississippi Territory border, when the shocking news of the Fort Mims massacre set all Tennessee on edge. Crockett was old enough to have family recollections of Indian massacres—“By the Creeks my grandfather and grandmother Crockett were both murdered in their own house,” he said—and young enough (twenty-seven in 1813) not to have fought the Indians himself. “There had been no war among us for so long that but few who were not too old to bear arms knew any thing about the business. I, for one, had often thought about war, and had often heard it described.” The stories inevitably evoked questions as to whether the younger generation could match the courage of their elders. The Mims massacre provided a chance to see. “When I heard of the mischief which was done at the fort, I instantly felt like going.”

Crockett’s dependents felt differently, as dependents of prospective heroes often do. “My wife, who had heard me say I meant to go to the war, began to beg me not to turn out. She said she was a stranger in the parts where we lived, had no connexions living near her, and that she and our little children would be left in a lonesome and unhappy situation if I went away.” Crockett conceded the weight of her arguments. “But my countrymen had been murdered, and I knew that the next thing would be that the Indians would be scalping the women and children all about there if we didn’t put a stop to it. I reasoned the case with her as well as I could, and told her that if every man would wait till his wife got willing for him to go to war, there would be no fighting done, until we would all be killed in our own houses.” She wasn’t convinced, but she realized she couldn’t stop him. “Seeing I was bent on it, all she did was to cry a little and turn about to her work. The truth is, my dander was up, and nothing but war could bring it right again.”