For the first few years the great Creek War prevailed, which resulted in driving the Creeks east of a line running southeast from old Fort Toulouse. It was begun by the massacre of perhaps five hundred men, women and children at Fort Mims, in the Tensaw district, terrifying the whole Southwest. It did not reach Mobile, but a blockhouse was built near the present cathedral. The war was marked by thrilling scenes in Washington County and the fork made by the Alabama and Bigbee; by such incidents as the Canoe Fight on the lower Alabama River and Austill’s night ride; and by Claiborne’s storming of the Holy Ground. In it Andrew Jackson won his fame up on the Coosa and Tallapoosa by such battles as that of the Horse Shoe Bend. When he had made peace with the brave Creek Weatherford, and sent Pushmataha and the allied Choctaws home, he floated down to Mobile. And there was need. The British were preparing to invade the country. Four vessels under Commodore Percy attacked Fort Bowyer at the mouth of the bay, but Lawrence with the garrison brilliantly repelled them. His motto was, “Don’t give up the fort.” The _Hermes_ drifted directly under his guns and was fired, and then the others withdrew. Indians, under Woodbine, were on land near by, but had no opportunity to participate. Jackson reconnoitred around Mobile. His headquarters are said to have been at an old Spanish building, standing until a few years since at the southwest corner of Conti and Conception Streets, opposite the site of the Indian House of former times; but the troops were encamped south of the town, near Frascati. A tree under which he dined used to be pointed out over Three-Mile Creek, and a magnificent Jackson Oak is still shown at the village on the bay above Daphne, commemorating a stop on the way to the capture of Pensacola. It was from Mobile that he issued the two famous proclamations to Louisianians, white and black; and the first stage of his march westward to win the battle of New Orleans was at that beautiful spot near Cottage Hill ever since called the Cantonment. After their defeat at New Orleans, the British reappeared at Mobile in overwhelming force. Fort Bowyer now had to surrender, and Dauphine Island was for months occupied by British troops. But the treaty of Ghent caused its restoration, and Mobile settled down to its long American development. “Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war,” but they have less of incident. The settlement of Alabama, the immigration from the Atlantic States to the lands won in the Creek War, developed her Gulf port. Cotton was king, and it made her queen. Even in 1818, the year before Alabama became a State, Mobile had established her Bank of Mobile, and primitive steamboats, such as the _Harriet_ and _Cotton Plant_, built much on the model of Fulton’s _Clermont_, were already plying the rivers.