But what was Jackson to do? The troops he had were about to leave him, and it began to appear that no others were likely to come to him. Even Governor Blount advised him to yield to the demands both of the six-months' volunteers who wanted to quit the service at the end of three months, and of the militia who wanted to quit almost immediately. Governor Blount sent Jackson a letter in which he urged this course upon him, advising him to regard the campaign as at an end, retire to the borders of Tennessee and protect that state as well as he could, abandon the attempt to raise a new force by enlisting volunteers, and quietly wait until the National Government should provide him with an army by ordering a draft or by some other means. Governor Blount believed that he had no authority to raise further forces, and that any attempt which he might make to do so must injure rather than help the service. Then Jackson rose to the occasion, and showed that he was no less able as a debater than as a fighter. He wrote a letter to Governor Blount which changed the whole face of affairs, converted that executive officer to views the opposite of those that he had held, and led to the creation of a new army, or rather of two new armies, one being a temporary supply of short-term men, with whom Jackson did some work, and the other coming immediately to take its place. This letter, for the text of which we are indebted to Mr. Parton, is called by that writer "the best letter he [Jackson] ever wrote in his life--one of those historical epistles which do the work of a campaign." Jackson wrote: