A Nation Rising (11 page)

Jackson's fiery temperament and unforgiving approach to war were on display in this battle, the first action in what would be called the Creek War. The assault on the Creeks had been carried out with brutal efficiency. But there was more to come as the campaign dragged into winter. When the Creek warriors melted deeper into the southern wilderness, Jackson became more and more frustrated
by his inability to meet and engage the enemy. Pushing farther into Red Stick territory, Jackson unleashed what has been described as “a widespread assault of savagery against the Indians, killing, burning villages, and plundering food supplies.”
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The fact that runaway slaves, including some of those who had been taken from Fort Mims, were now allying themselves with the Red Stick forces added to Jackson's resolve. A slaveholder himself, Jackson would remain a staunch defender of the “peculiar institution,” and he certainly did not want to encourage any runaways. These blacks had taken up the Red Stick cause as a means to their own freedom. The growing alliance between black men and red men was going to be one of the complicating factors as the Indian wars in the Southeast played out. Not only was Jackson sending a clear message to Indians of the dangers of taking up arms against America; he was also letting American slaves know that escape and rebellion were not options.

Jackson's attitudes toward Indians and slaves stand high among the reasons that some contemporary historians—and many Native Americans—take a dim view of the general that the Indians called “Sharp Knife.” The historian David S. Reynolds has described the seventh president as “a potent killing machine,” adding: “His shortcomings reflected his era, as did those of other great leaders from Jefferson to Lincoln. But understanding Jackson, perhaps more than most leading Americans of his time, requires an ability to resist either vilification or veneration to see the man whole—his failings as well as his successes.”
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Despite his victories in the field, Jackson had yet to deliver the fatal stroke to the main Red Stick forces. As time went by, his plans
were also threatened by growing troubles within his own ranks. Grumbling over the poor rations and endless marches increased daily. A few men had deserted, and with supplies short as winter approached and enlistments for some of these militiamen were coming to an end, Jackson was ultimately forced to confront a mutiny. With the support of a few loyal officers and men, Jackson had faced down a large group of militiamen who were about to desert. Jackson's unwavering, ramrod-stiff resolve as he stood in front of a large contingent of armed mutineers served him well. His courage and refusal to make concessions added to Old Hickory's legendary fearless determination. Just as he had shown the doctors his force of will when he refused amputation, his unwavering determination thwarted an armed revolt that might have ended the campaign, and with it his own career.

Sick and seriously weakened by March 1814, Jackson finally received some long-promised reinforcements and supplies. This timely relief column permitted him to maneuver his army for what he thought might be a climactic end to the war. At Horseshoe Bend, where the Tallapoosa River in what is now central Alabama curves in a U-shape, Jackson discovered Red Eagle's main force. With some 3,000 men, and more Indian allies from the Cherokee and Allied Creek nations, Jackson confronted the Red Sticks, about 900 warriors and 300 women and children, in their village by the river. On the north bank of the river, the Creek camp was well protected by a strong breastwork of logs and earth. The Red Sticks also had canoes by the river so as to escape if necessary.

On March 27, 1814, Jackson commenced the assault that would end the Creek War. Sending one force to the river's south side, or the rear of the Indian encampment to cut off retreat, Jackson opened
his attack with an artillery barrage that did little to break through the village's well-constructed defenses. Then he ordered an infantry assault on the defensive works. At the same time, the troops he had sent to the rear of the village had begun to cross the river and had taken the Red Stick canoes—here again, to cut off retreat. As they moved in on the village from two sides, Jackson's forces held the Red Sticks in a deadly vise.

There was desperate hand-to-hand fighting as the Red Stick warriors fought to defend their women and children. Among the men who mounted the breastworks was a young officer named Sam Houston, a twenty-one-year-old Tennessean who had traded farming, and clerking in a general store, for the army and who would now take an arrow in his leg. Known to the Cherokee as Raven, he had lived with them and spoke their language. As the young officer had the arrow pulled from his leg, Jackson rode by and ordered him from the field. But Houston later returned to the battlefield of his own accord and attempted to lead another charge.

Against overwhelming odds and American artillery, the Red Stick defenses were inadequate; they were overrun, and the battle turned into a rout and finally a bloodbath. Warriors ran to the river to escape and were easily picked off by Jackson's soldiers until the river ran red.

Simple victory was not enough for the Americans, many of whom wanted to avenge the Fort Mims Massacre. “Many white soldiers mutilated the dead Muscogees, cutting off long bands of skin from the bodies to make belts and bridle reins for their horses.…Seeking a body count from the previous day's slaughter, Jackson's soldiers moved among the dead and sliced off the nose of each
Red Stick corpse to keep an accurate number. Old Hickory's officers counted 557 enemy dead—and estimated 250 to 300 more warriors killed in the river, raising the total to close to 850. Jackson's victory was complete and devastating.”
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It was perhaps the bloodiest defeat of Native Americans in the long and tragic history since Europeans had first arrived. And America had a new war hero.

But William Weatherford was not among the dead. A few weeks later, a lone rider entered the newly constructed Fort Jackson. He approached Jackson's tent and announced, “I am Bill Weatherford.”

At first enraged, Jackson demanded, “How dare you…”

But something in Weatherford's pluck and demeanor won Jackson's admiration. In an account that has rightfully raised the suspicion of some historians, Jackson supposedly offered his enemy a brandy. That fact goes unrecorded. But it is known that Weatherford told him, “I am in your power. Do with me as you please. I am a soldier. I have done the white people all the harm I could; I have fought them bravely: if I had an army, I would yet fight, and contend to the last: but I have none; my people are all gone.”

Jackson, who would say that as a young boy he had read the stories of William Wallace, the hero of the Scots, may have seen a touch of Wallace in this Scots-Creek warrior. He admired Weatherford's bravery. And this seemed to be all that was needed to spare Weatherford the hanging Jackson had promised. With a pledge that Red Eagle—William Weatherford—would persuade the rest of his people to surrender, Jackson allowed the defeated Creek leader to leave Fort Jackson. He went to Alabama and took up life as a planter.

Shortly after that extraordinary encounter, Jackson got back to the business at hand: destroying the Creek threat and punishing the Creek without regard for their allegiance. As he wrote to his wife, Rachel, “I will give them, with the permission of heaven, the final stroke.”

He summoned the Creek chiefs to a peace council. Under the treaty of Fort Jackson, executed almost one year after the Fort Mims Massacre, the United States confiscated 23 million acres of Creek land, three-fifths of what is now Alabama and one-fifth of Georgia. Jackson also demanded removal of the Indians from lands bordering several states. Even the Indians who had fought beside Jackson had to accept these terms. One of them, a Cherokee chief named Junaluska, reportedly said, “If I had known that Jackson would drive us from our homes, I would have killed him that day at the Horseshoe.”
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A
S THE HERO
of Horseshoe Bend, Andrew Jackson was rewarded with a promotion to major general in the U.S. Army. Then he set off for New Orleans with the War of 1812 still raging. The growing legend of Old Hickory was about to reach new heights. On January 8, 1815, Jackson's motley—and multiracial—command included about 4,000 men. Among them were militiamen from neighboring states, pirates, a group of African American freedmen of New Orleans, some Haitians, and Choctaw Indians. Facing an army of British regulars more than twice their number, this American army defeated Major General Sir Edward Michael Pakenham, a brother-in-law of the duke of Wellington, in the greatest land battle of the
War of 1812. The American forces lost thirteen men; British losses were 1,262 wounded, 383 captured, and 291 dead, including Pakenham himself and several other high-ranking officers.

Unfortunately for the men who fought and died that day, the Battle of New Orleans shouldn't have taken place. The war had ended a few days earlier, when the Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve, 1814. News traveled slowly in the early nineteenth century. But for Andrew Jackson, the victory burnished his growing personal legend. “When Jackson bragged that he had ‘defeated this Boasted army of Lord Wellingtons,' he celebrated the populist triumph of the amateur over the professional, the citizen over the gentleman,” the military historians Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton wrote. “After New Orleans, he seemed as unstoppable as a force of nature.”
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But even New Orleans was not truly the last engagement of the war. That dubious honor belongs to another incident, which is far more often overlooked. It took place in nearby Florida, which Andrew Jackson continued to eye eagerly. The Spanish were still in control, and Andrew Jackson wanted the territory for America. A few Creek and Seminole Indians who had been allied with Pakenham saw the British depart from American soil in 1815. Their best hope for a victory over the Americans and Andrew Jackson was gone. They retreated to Florida, where Andrew Jackson would continue to press his campaign to clear the territory of Indians and foreign forces. His first opportunity came at a British fort that had been abandoned to a few escaped slaves and their Native American allies.

In 1814, two British officers—Colonel Edward Nicolls of the
Royal Marines and Captain George Woodbine—had established a small stronghold on the Apalachicola River in Florida's western panhandle. For years, escaped slaves had been coming to this territory, which was still in Spain's hands. During the war, more than 300 escaped slaves had taken refuge in the fort, where they were welcomed by the British. By early 1814, Red Stick Creeks escaping from American territory, along with Seminoles and fugitive slaves, had made the fort a headquarters of resistance to Americans. Nicolls reported, “Indians and blacks are very good friends and cooperate bravely together.”
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When the British evacuated Florida in the spring of 1815, they left this well-constructed fortification in the hands of the freed blacks. As word of the fort spread, it eventually attracted more than 800 fugitive slaves and became known as the “Negro Fort.”

In March 1816, Andrew Jackson petitioned the Spanish governor of Florida to destroy the settlement. Jackson was being pressured by slaveholders in Georgia to do something about the Negro Fort, which had become a beacon for runaways. While negotiating with the Spanish authorities, Jackson also instructed Major General Edmund P. Gaines, the man who had arrested Aaron Burr, and was now commander of U.S. military forces in the “Creek nation,” to destroy the Negro Fort and “restore the stolen negroes and property to their rightful owners.”

On July 27, following a series of skirmishes in which they were routed by the Negro Fort's warriors, the American forces and their 500 Lower Creek allies launched an all-out attack on the fort. The two sides exchanged cannon fire, but the shots of the inexperienced
black gunners failed to hit their targets. A shot from the American forces entered the opening to the fort's powder magazine, igniting an explosion that destroyed the fort and its occupants.

The leader of the free blacks—a man named Garson—and a Choctaw chief were among the few who survived the carnage. Both were handed over by the American forces to the Creek allies, who shot Garson and scalped the chief. Other black survivors were returned to slavery.

The destruction of the Negro Fort ended one more attempt at resistance by blacks and Indians in Florida, who increasingly saw their fates as linked. But it did not finish the fighting between white Americans, Florida's Indians, and their new allies: runaway slaves and other free blacks. It would take many years and cost many lives to end that resistance.

Again, Andrew Jackson would be at the heart of the matter. In December 1817, he was directed by President Monroe to lead a campaign against the Creeks and Seminoles in Georgia. He was also charged with preventing Spanish Florida from becoming a refuge for more runaway slaves. Spain, Indians, and escaped slaves: Jackson would attack all three of his most hated enemies at once. With the tacit acknowledgment of the Monroe administration and some ambiguous orders, Andrew Jackson essentially went to war with Spain.

Claiming that there had been an attack on American soil by Seminole warriors, Jackson invaded Florida and captured Pensacola, a Spanish outpost, with barely a shot fired. But he did not stop there. Jackson then arrested two British citizens—Robert Ambrister, a former British Marine; and a seventy-year-old Scottish Indian trader, Alexander Arbuthnot—on the Scotsman's schooner. The
two were convicted by a hastily assembled military tribunal of “aiding and abetting the enemy” in what later came to be called the First Seminole War.

In words that presage the controversies over ignoring the Geneva Convention and the legal status of “enemy combatants” in America's “war on terror,” Andrew Jackson said, “The laws of war did not apply to conflicts with savages.”