The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812: The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17Paine, Ralph Delahaye
History
The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812: The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17
Paine, Ralph Delahaye
United States -- History -- War of 1812
With this disgruntled, unreliable, weary force, Jackson came, at
length, to a great war camp of the Creek Indians at a loop of the
Tallapoosa River called Horseshoe Bend. Here some ten hundred picked
warriors had built defensive works which were worthy of the talent of a
trained engineer. They also had as effective firearms as the white
troops who assaulted the stronghold. Andrew Jackson bombarded them with
two light guns, sent his men over the breastworks, and captured the
breastworks in hand-to-hand fighting in which quarter was neither asked
nor given. No more than a hundred Indians escaped alive, and dead among
the logs and brushwood were the three famous prophets, gorgeous in war
paint and feathers, who had preached the doctrine of exterminating the
paleface.
The name of Andrew Jackson spread far and wide among the hostile Indian
tribes, and the fiercest chiefs dreaded it like a tempest. Some made
submission, and others joined in signing a treaty of peace which Jackson
dictated to them with terms as harsh as the temper of the man who had
conquered them.
For his distinguished services Jackson was made a major general of the
regular army. He was then ordered to Mobile, where his impetuous anger
was aroused by the news that the British had landed at Pensacola and
had pulled down the Spanish flag. The splendor of this ancient seaport
had passed away, and with it the fleets of galleons whose sailors heard
the mission bells and saw the brass guns gleam from the stout fortresses
which in those earlier days guarded the rich commerce of the overland
trade route to St. Augustine.
Aforetime one of the storied and romantic ports of the Spanish Main,
Pensacola now slumbered in unlovely decay and was no more than a village
to which resorted the smugglers of the Caribbean, the pirates of the
Gulf, and rascally men of all races and colors. The Spanish Governor
still lived in the palace with a few slovenly troops, but he could no
more than protest when a hundred royal marines came ashore from two
British sloops-of-war, and the commander, Major Nicholls, issued a
thunderous proclamation to the oppressed people of the American States
adjoining, letting them know that he was ready to assist them in
liberating their paternal soil from a faithless, imbecile Government.
They were not to be alarmed at his approach. They were to range
themselves under the standard of their forefathers or be neutral.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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