Nowhere was the news received with greater enthusiasm than at Nashville; and by no one with more satisfaction than by Andrew Jackson. As major general of militia Jackson had for ten years awaited just such a chance for action. In 1811 he wrote fervently to Harrison offering to come to his assistance in the Wabash expedition with five hundred West Tennesseeans, but his services were not needed. At the close of the year he induced the Governor of his State, William Blount, to inform the War Department that he could have twenty-five hundred men "before Quebec within ninety days" if desired. Again he was refused. But now his opportunity had come. Billy Phillips was hardly on his way to Natchez before Jackson, Blount, and Benton were addressing a mass meeting called to "ratify" the declaration of war, and on the following day a courier started for Washington with a letter from Jackson tendering the services of twenty-five hundred Tennesseeans and assuring the President, with better patriotism than syntax, that wherever it might please him to find a place of duty for these men he could depend upon them to stay "till they or the last armed foe expires." After some delay the offer was accepted. Already the fiery major general was dreaming of a conquest of Florida. "You burn with anxiety," ran a proclamation issued to his division in midsummer, "to learn on what theater your arms will find employment. Then turn your eyes to the South! Behold in the province of West Florida a territory whose rivers and harbors are indispensable to the prosperity of the western, and still more so, to the eastern division of our state. . . . It is here that an employment adapted to your situation awaits your courage and your zeal, and while extending in this quarter the boundaries of the Republic to the Gulf of Mexico, you will experience a peculiar satisfaction in having conferred a signal benefit on that section of the Union to which you yourselves immediately belong." It lay in the cards that Jackson was to be a principal agent in wresting the Florida country from the Spaniards; and while there was at Washington no intention of allowing him to set off post-haste upon the mission, all of the services which he was called upon to render during the war converged directly upon that objective. After what seemed an interminable period of waiting came the first order to move. Fifteen hundred Tennessee troops were to go to New Orleans, ostensibly to protect the city against a possible British attack, but mainly to be quickly available in case an invasion of West Florida should be decided upon; and Jackson, freshly commissioned major general of volunteers, was to lead the expedition.