Beacon Lights of History, Volume 12 | Page 5

England. But duelling was a peculiar
Southern institution; most Southern people settled their difficulties with
pistols. Some of Jackson's duels were desperate and ferocious. He was
the best shot in Tennessee, and, it is said, could lodge two successive
balls in the same hole. As early as 1795 he fought with a fellow lawyer
by the name of Avery. In 1806 he killed in a duel Charles Dickinson,
who had spoken disparagingly of his wife, whom he had lately married,
a divorced woman, but to whom he was tenderly attached as long as
she lived. Still later he fought with Thomas H. Benton, and received a
wound from which he never fully recovered.
Such was the life of Jackson until he was forty-five years of age,--that
of a violent, passionate, arbitrary man, beloved as a friend, and feared
as an enemy. It was the Creek war and the war with England which
developed his extraordinary energies. When the war of 1812 broke out
he was major-general of Tennessee militia, and at once offered his
services to the government, which were eagerly accepted, and he was
authorized to raise a body of volunteers in Tennessee and to report with
them at New Orleans. He found no difficulty in collecting about sixteen
hundred men, and in January, 1813, took them down the Cumberland,

the Ohio, and Mississippi to Natchez, in such flat-bottomed boats as he
could collect; another body of mounted men crossed the country five
hundred miles to the rendezvous, and went into camp at Natchez, Feb.
15, 1813.
The Southern Department was under the command of General James
Wilkinson, with headquarters at New Orleans,--a disagreeable and
contentious man, who did not like Jackson. Through his influence the
Tennessee detachment, after two months' delay in Natchez, was
ordered by the authorities at Washington to be dismissed,--without pay,
five hundred miles from home. Jackson promptly decided not to obey
the command, but to keep his forces together, provide at his own
expense for their food and transportation, and take them back to
Tennessee in good order. He accomplished this, putting sick men on his
own three horses, and himself marching on foot with the men, who,
enthusiastic over his elastic toughness, dubbed him "Old Hickory,"--a
title of affection that is familiar to this day. The government afterwards
reimbursed him for his outlay in this matter, but his generosity,
self-denial, energy, and masterly force added immensely to his
popularity.
Jackson's disobedience of orders attracted but little attention at
Washington, in that time of greater events, while his own patriotism
and fighting zeal were not abated by his failure to get at the enemy.
And very soon his desires were to be granted.
In 1811, before the war with England was declared, a general
confederation of Indians had been made under the influence of the
celebrated Tecumseh, a chief of the Shawanoc tribe. He was a man of
magnificent figure, stately and noble as a Greek warrior, and withal
eloquent. With his twin brother, the Prophet, Tecumseh travelled from
the Great Lakes in the North to the Gulf of Mexico, inducing tribe after
tribe to unite against the rapacious and advancing whites. But he did
not accomplish much until the war with England broke out in 1812,
when he saw a possibility of realizing his grand idea; and by the
summer of 1813 he had the Creek nation, including a number of tribes,
organized for war. How far he was aided by English intrigues is not

fully known, but he doubtless received encouragement from English
agents. From the British and the Spaniards, the Indians received arms
and ammunition.
The first attack of these Indians was on August 13, 1813, at Fort Mims,
in Alabama, where there were nearly two hundred American troops,
and where five hundred people were collected for safety. The Indians,
chiefly Creeks, were led by Red Eagle, who utterly annihilated the
defenders of the fort under Major Beasley, and scalped the women and
children. When reports of this unexpected and atrocious massacre
reached Tennessee the whole population was aroused to vengeance,
and General Jackson, his arm still in a sling from his duel with Benton,
set out to punish the savage foes. But he was impeded by lack of
provisions, and quarrels among his subordinates, and general
insubordination. In surmounting his difficulties he showed
extraordinary tact and energy. His measures were most vigorous. He
did not hesitate to shoot, whether legally or illegally, those who were
insubordinate, thus restoring military discipline, the first and last
necessity in war. Soldiers soon learn to appreciate the worth of such
decision, and follow such a leader with determination almost equal to
his own. Jackson's troops did splendid marching and fighting.
So rapid and relentless were his movements against the enemy that the
campaign lasted but seven