In the mean time, great anxiety was felt for the fate of New Orleans, towards which an imposing armament was hastening, bearing a veteran army fresh from the victorious fields of Spain. England had loaned this army to feudalism in Europe for the overthrow of free principles there, and intoxicated with success, resolved to use it to carry out here the same tyrannical system which has ever since been covering her with infamy and for which the final day of reckoning has not yet arrived. Jackson had been appointed Major-General in place of Harrison, who resigned, and given the command of the southern army to which was entrusted the protection of the coast near the mouth of the Mississippi. Pensacola, then under Spanish authority, was the resort of British emissaries, who stirred up the surrounding savages to massacre and bloodshed, and he determined as a first step to take active measures against it. [Sidenote: August.] He sent Captain Gordon to reconnoitre the place, who reported, on his return, that he had seen a number of soldiers and several hundred savages in British uniform under drill by British officers. Jackson immediately despatched this report to government. Under such a palpable violation of treaty stipulations there was only one course to be pursued, and Gen. Armstrong, the Secretary of War, issued an order authorizing Jackson to attack the town. This order was made out; but, by some mysterious process, was so long in getting into the post-office, that it never reached its destination till the 17th of January the next year. Jackson waited patiently for the sanction of his government to move forward, not wishing that his first important step as Major-General in the regular army should meet the disapproval of those who had entrusted him with power. But a proclamation, issued by a British officer named Nicholls, and dated Pensacola, calling on all the negroes and savages, nay, even the Americans themselves, to rally to the British standard, put an end to his indecision.