A History of the American People

pre-Victorian melodrama. When John Woods, a militiaman of eighteen, refused an order, and
grabbed a gun when arrested, Jackson had no hesitation in having him shot by firing-squad, with
the entire army watching. He banned whiskey. He made his men get up at 3.30, his staff half an
hour earlier, to forestall Indian morning raids. Senior officers who objected were sent home
under arrest. The shooting of Woods was decisive. According to Jackson's ADC, John Reid:
The opinion, so long indulged, that a militiaman was for no offense to suffer death was from that moment abandoned and a strict obedience afterwards characterised the army.' Jackson thus welded into existence a formidable army, 5,000 strong, which paradoxically attracted volunteers. With this he attacked the Creeks’ main fortress, at Horseshoe Bend, an awesome peninsula of l00 acres, almost surrounded by deep water, the land side defended by a 3 50-yard breastwork 5 to 8 feet high with a double row of firing holes across its neck. It was, wrote Jackson,well formed by Nature for defense, & rendered more secure by Art.' Jackson
never underestimated the Indians and was impressed by their military ingenuity-'the skill which
they manifested in their best work was astonishing.' The Creeks had 1,000 warriors inside the
fort. Jackson began with diversions, such as fire-boats, then stormed the rampart, calculating that
scaling-ladders, always awkward to use, were not needed. Ensign Sam Houston was the first man
to get safely across the breastwork and into the compound. What followed the breach of the wall
was horrifying. The Indians would not surrender and were slain. The Americans kept a body-
count by cutting off the tips of the noses of the dead, giving a total of 557 in the fort, plus 300
drowned trying to escape in the river. The dead included three leading prophets in full war-paint.
The men cuts strips of skin from them for harness. Jackson lost forty-seven whites and twenty-
three friendlies.
After that it was simply a matter of using terror-burning villages, destroying crops-until the
Indians had had enough. On April 14, 1814, Red Eagle, virtual paramount chief of the Creeks,
surrendered. He told Jackson: I am in your power ... My people are all gone. I can do no more but weep over the misfortunes of my nation.' Jackson spared Red Eagle because he was useful in getting other Indians to capitulate. He was given a large farm in Alabama where, like other Indian planters, he kept a multitude of black slaves. Four months later Jackson imposed a Carthaginian peace on thirty-five frightened Indian chiefs. Jackson was an impressive and at times terrifying orator, who left the Indians in no doubt what would be their fate if they failed to sign the document he thrust at them. It forced the Creeks to part with half their lands-three-fifths of the present state of Alabama and a fifth of Georgia. Jackson wrote gleefully to a business partner:I finished the convention with the Creeks ... [which] cedes to the United States 20
million acres of the cream of the Creek Country, opening a communication from Georgia to
Mobile.’ He knew it was only a matter of time before the Americans got the rest. The Treaty of
Fort Jackson was the tragic turning-point in the destruction of the Indians east of the Mississippi.
Jackson now moved swiftly to safeguard his conquests from the Spanish and the British. He was
fighting on behalf of the American settler class and he took no notice of orders (or the lack of
them) from Washington. Before the end of August he had occupied Mobile and Fort Bower on
the key to the south of it. When British land-sea forces moved into the area in mid-September,
they found the fort strongly guarded and failed to take it. On November 7 Jackson occupied the
main Spanish base at Pensacola. America and Spain were not at war and Jackson had no
authority for this act of aggression, but Washington was still too shell-shocked to protest when
his letter arrived telling them what he had done. Jackson's move frustrated the plan of the British
force commander, Cochrane, to take Mobile and move inland, cutting off New Orleans. So
instead he decided on a frontal assault. This gave Jackson his opportunity to become America's