In this perilous situation of affairs it was useless for General Claiborne, or his superior officer, General Flournoy, to appeal to the government at Washington for aid. Even if the troops of the Government had not been fully occupied already in other parts of the country, the distance was so great that any assistance which the general government might be able to render must of necessity come too late to be of any avail. It would take a month for the messenger asking for help to reach Washington, another month for a force to be gathered, and perhaps two months more for it to reach the exposed point. Three or four months at least, and probably a greater time, must pass before help could come from that quarter, and it might as well have taken a hundred years, so far as all practical purposes were concerned. The only resource, therefore, was an appeal to the people of the surrounding States. Messengers were sent in hot haste to South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, carrying despatches which simply set forth the facts and the danger, and asked for help. The response was quick and generous. Georgians and South Carolinians began at once to organize forces, which soon afterward invaded the Creek country. But the most efficient aid was to come from Tennessee, a State which had already shown itself quick to answer to every demand made upon it. It had furnished its full quotas of men to the national army; and less than a year before the time of which we now write, it had sent a full division of volunteers under Jackson to reinforce the army at New Orleans. This division had been ordered to disband while at Natchez, when they were without money or provisions with which to reach their homes, but Jackson had resolutely disobeyed the order, and instead of disbanding his division had marched it back to Tennessee in a body. There had been loud murmurs at the treatment these volunteers had received, but when the news came that the people of the Tensaw country were suffering brutal butchery at the hands of savages, and that Mobile was threatened, Tennessee hushed her murmurs, and promptly responded to the call. On the 18th day of September, the people of Nashville assembled in a public meeting to consider the news which had just been received. General Jackson lay upon his bed, weak, emaciated, and racked with pain from a wound received in a street fight; but everybody felt that his counsel in matters of this kind was essential. Indeed, it was known that upon the question of his ability to lead the forces that were to be raised their success in raising forces at all must in a great measure depend. The meeting, therefore, did no business on the first day, except to express its members' determination to render assistance to their brethren in the South, and to appoint a committee, headed by Colonel (afterward General) Coffee, to consult with the Governor of the State and with General Jackson, and to report the result.