XLIA. D. 1813ANDREW JACKSON
TheNations were playing a ball game: “Catch!” said France, throwing the ball to Spain, who muffed it. “Quick!” cried Napoleon, “or England will get it—catch!” “Caught!” said the first American republic, and her prize was the valley of the Mississippi.
Soon afterward the United States in the name of freedom joined Napoleon the Despot at war with Great Britain; and the old lion had a wild beast fight against a world-at-arms. In our search for great adventure let us turn to the warmest corner of that world-wide struggle, poor Spanish Florida.
Here a large Indian nation, once civilized, but now reduced to savagery, had taken refuge from the Americans; and these people, the Creeks and Seminoles, fighting for freedom themselves, gave shelter to runaway slaves from the United States. A few pirates are said to have lurked there, and some Scottish gentlemen lived with the tribes as traders. Thanks perhaps to them, Great Britain armed the Creeks, who ravaged American settlements to the north, and at Fort Minns butchered four hundred men.
Northward in Tennessee the militia were commanded by Andrew Jackson, born a frontiersman, but by trade a lawyer, a very valiant man of high renown, truculent as a bantam.
Without orders he led two thousand, five hundred frontiersmen to avenge Fort Minns by chasing the Spanish governor (in time of peace) out of Pensacola, and a British garrison from Fort Barrancas, and then (after peace was signed) expelled the British from New Orleans, while his detachment in Florida blew up a fort with two hundred seventy-five refugees, including the women and children. Such was the auspicious prelude to Jackson’s war with the Creeks, who were crushed forever at the battle of Horseshoe Bend.