them be forced by their necessities to enlist. The quarter-master refused the necessary supply of wagons, to transport the sick. General Jackson gave up his own horses to them, borrowed on his own account, five thousand dollars, of a merchant in Natchez, to defray the expenses of the troops, and went on foot with the common soldier, through the wilderness to Nashville. Arrived there, he wrote to the secretary of war, that, although he had refused to obey his orders, to disband his army at Natchez, it was not from any disposition on his part to be disobedient to the higher authority; that he considered such obedience most binding, in all cases not plainly and palpably conflicting with higher, and more sacred duties, as his late order did; but that, if he would order him to Canada, he promised, not only to obey the order cheerfully, but to try and plant the banner of his country, on the British forts at Malden.

Fortunately, for us of the South, the secretary did not accept of his services. General Jackson's conduct here, in 1813, if well studied, gives the key to his whole character. What he believed to be his first duty, he would always perform, regardless of personal consequences to himself. As it was his first duty to protect the young men entrusted to his charge, and to see them safely home, sc likewise, when entrusted with the defence of this south-western country, his first duty, in his estimation, was to protect the inhabitants from the enemy. He did not believe that he was sent here to quibble, argue, or discuss, mooted points of constitutional law, or the law of nations, but to save New Orleans from seizure by the enemy, and the inhabitants from a brutal soldiery. To defend the country, was his first duty, and if, in the discharge of this high duty, he should do anything, not warranted by the constitution, or in violation of the laws, he stood ready to pay the penalty. What though Andrew Jackson suffers, is fined, or imprisoned, provided he drives back the British invaders, and rescues the women and children of the Mississippi territory, from Britain's savage ally, of the tomahawk and scalping-knife. Love of country filled his whole heart, and in bending all his energies to the defence of the people, who looked to him for protection, he seems never to have thought of Andrew Jackson. Self, and all considerations connected with self, were banished from his bosom, and his country, one, and indivisible, filled and swelled his whole soul. Acting on the principle, that he belonged to his country, and should freely risk health, fame, fortune, life, everything, in its defence, induced many persons to misunderstand the man, and to suppose, that he was acting on the principle of Cæsar, Napoleon, and other tyrants-as if the country belonged to him, and not he to the country. His submission, however, to the civil authority, when all danger was over, and his bowing, in meekness, to the decision of Judge Hall, and

cheerfully paying the fine, imposed upon him for alleged violation of law, is the best proof in the world, that he was not a tyrant, come to destroy liberty, but a whole souled-patriot, come to defend it, and ready, if need be, like a martyr, to suffer in its cause. was patriotism personified.

He

One among the many instances wherein his countrymen have not been unanimous in doing justice to General Jackson's character and services, his invasion of Florida, and taking of Pensacola, in 1814, stands conspicuous. Mr. Adams has given an elaborate defence of his conduct on that occasion. Nevertheless, it is still viewed by a respectable minority as an unwarrantable stretch of power, and as a dangerous example-more especially as General Jackson wrote to the government, asking for permission, and the government did not choose to reply. As nearly a tenth of his whole army, on that occasion, was composed of Mississippians, a portion of whom are still living, and present in this vast assemblage, here congregated in honour of his memory, it may not be unappropriate to call to mind a few of the facts and circumstances, in justification of the invasion, in addition to those adduced by Mr. Adams, while the witnesses are still living to substantiate them. General Jackson had authority to invade Florida, at least on authority which no Mississippian can gainsay. It was written in the blood of Mississippi, of her women and children, and more particularly, in that of a gallant officer of this our city of Natchez.

General Jackson had frequently complained to the governor of Pensacola, by repeated letters and special messengers, of his violation of the laws of nations, for permitting that town to be used as a rallying point of the enemies of the United States, both British and Indians. One of the messengers whom he had sent to Pensacola, Captain Gordon, a most gallant officer, reported that he saw in Pensacola and its vicinity, one hundred and fifty British officers, a park of artillery, and about five hundred Indians, dressed in British uniform, and under drill by British officers, and that the incendiary, Colonel Nichols, had taken up his quarters at the governor's. But to make assurance doubly sure, our townsman, Lieutenant Murry, of the Adams County Guards, with twenty-five men, was sent to reconnoitre Pensacola and the Barrancas, to report the truth of the matter. They saw seven British armed vessels in the bay, and the British Jack hoisted by the side of the Spanish flag, on the walls of the Barrancas. Returning, within three miles of Pensacola an Indian warrior started up, threw up his hands in token of peace, but soon picked an opportunity, and gave Lieutenant Murry a mortal wound. The report of the Indian's rifle was answered from the fort and the town, and the detachment had to hasten onwards to avoid capture. The desperate savage, who, like the rest of the Creeks, had been inflamed to madness, by such incendiaries

as Nichols and Woodbine, was despatched on the spot, and Lieutenant Murry was put on horseback, and the troop proceeded. It had gone but a short distance, when it was perceived that the lieutenant was dead. In full hearing of the whoops, yells, and firing, indicating a pursuit, the troop halted at a little hole in the earth, or ravine, and laid the body of our townsman therein, “with his martial cloak around him;" a little earth and leaves were hastily thrown over his remains, our worthy fellow-citizen, Mr. Robert Dunbar, assisting in the mournful obsequies, and speedily 'hey pushed forward to the American camp.

Arrived there, as soon as General Jackson found that the detachment had lost its leader, and heard the circumstances of his death, how he was treacherously murdered on the neutral territory by a desperate savage, and that hundreds of such savages were fed and fostered by the Spanish authorities, and drilled and armed by British officers, "he gave orders to march on Pensacola." In a few days thereafter he was before the city-when our gallant army came to the line, separating the United States from Florida, it did not stop to chatter about constitutional law, nor to demand of their general his authority for crossing. They all saw his authority. It was written in letters of blood, and the fresh blood of a fellow-soldier, shed on the neutral territory, was crying from the ground for vengeance. "When we came within a mile," says General Jackson, in one of his despatches, "we were in full view. Never was my pride more heightened, than in viewing the uniform firmness of my troops, and with that undaunted courage they advanced, with a strong fort ready to assail them on the right, and seven British armed vessels on the left, strong block-houses and batteries of cannon on their front, but with unshaken firmness they entered the town." They stormed the batteries at the point of the bayonet, soon had possession of the place, and the governor suing for mercy at their feet. General Jackson required a surrender of the forts. The governor promised to surrender them, if a force were displayed before them. The Mississippi Dragoons were ordered to display before one of the forts, and the treacherous garrison fired on them. The cannon was then ordered up and pointed at the fort, and it surrendered. General Jackson, under the rules of war, might have put the garrison to the sword, but he was a tenderhearted and humane man, whenever his country's interest did not require him to be hard-hearted and severe.

In the mean time the British vessels in the bay were annoying our army with their guns, anchored off, as they supposed, in safety from the American fire. But to their great astonishment they saw two pieces of heavy cannon move down upon the beach, where open, exposed, and uncovered, Lieutenant McCall gave them a fire so brisk and well aimed, as soon to drive the flotilla off.

As yet, the Barrancas and the adjacent fortresses, ten or fifteen miles west of Pensacola, were in the possesssion of the British. General Jackson had got everything ready to take the Barrancas by storm. But the British blew up the forts and retreated from the bay. Their Indian allies, being abandoned, fled to the Appalachicola. Major Blue was sent to pursue them, and to break up a depot of supplies the enemy had provided for them there.

Two days after entering Pensacola, General Jackson restored it to Governor Manrequez, and withdrew his troops, informing the governor that he held himself responsible for any injury that the public or private property of the Spaniards had sustained by the American troops. The Spaniards lost the Barrancas and the adjacent fortress, by their friends, the British, who also took with them three or four hundred of the Spaniard's negroes; but they lost not a cent's worth of property by the Americans. The British, mistaking General Jackson's character, and supposing him to be a lawless invader, coming not only to seize, but to hold the province, determined to deprive him of the Barrancas, and the neighbouring fortresses, and hence blew them up. They thus unconsciously played into the hands of General Jackson, from ignorance of his character. The British, in blowing up the forts of a neutral power, themselves violated the laws of nations, gained the ill will of their late friends, the Spaniards, deprived themselves and their savage allies of protection and shelter in Florida, and thus accomplished every object, that General Jackson had in view, by the very means used to counteract his supposed designs. The blows levelled against the ideal tyrant, were only so many blows to assist the real patriot.

One of the principal reasons why General Jackson was never conquered in the field, and no matter what the odds against him, never lost a battle, and never failed, as a statesman, to carry out every measure he recommended, was owing to his opponents misunderstanding him, and directing all their energies against an imaginary personage, while he, with bosom bare, and eye fixed on God and his country, was approaching his object, unharmed by the blows which fell thick and heavy on some imaginary character that had been mistaken for him. Thus, at Emuckfaw, the Indians, mistaking the character of the man they had to deal with, planned an attack against a sleepy-headed general, ignorant of the woods, and unconscious of danger, intending to surprise him in the night, and utterly exterminate his little army. But he seized hold of the very means, which he foresaw that the enemy were about to use against him, and gained a glorious victory.

With a little army of raw recruits, wearied with long marches, with nothing but parched corn to eat, General Jackson found himself surrounded by nearly the whole nation of Creek Indians, lying n three bodies near the Emuckfaw Creek. So far from retreating,

he boldly encamped for the night, and lit up fires, as if he apprehended no danger; the Indians supposing that they would have nothing to do but to surprise him and cut off his men by the light of their own fires, while they stood securely in the dark. A little before day, they made the attack, but instead of surprising General Jackson, he surprised them by a well-aimed and most destructive fire. To their utter astonishment, General Jackson had, on this great emergency, used darkness as a mantle to cover his men from their view, and had, at the same time, made a circle of light outside of his camp to expose the enemy. All this he effected by camp-fires, built just far enough beyond the hollow square, on which he formed his little army, as to compel the Indians, as soon as they got in good rifle range, to come within the circle of light, where blinking, they could see nothing, while the lurid glare of light encircling the camp exposed their bodies, like so many red targets, to the American rifle from the dark circle within, where stood the great hero and his little band, with the imponderable elements of light and darkness pressed into his service to make him equal to the

enemy.

When morning came, so many hundreds of the bravest Indian warriors had fallen, that the hero was enabled to maintain his ground against the remainder. They, however, fought him nearly the whole day, and two days afterwards they came very near defeating him, owing to a panic that seized the troops on being attacked while crossing Ennotochopco Creek. A few men alone stood firm. Carroll was left with only twenty men. Armstrong, of the artillery, had fallen, badly wounded. Captain Quarles, Bird, Evans, and Captain Hamilton lay dead at his side. Hamilton's father and his two sons, Russell, of the spies, and his three sons, the venerable Judge Cocke, of Columbus, and some few young men, maintained the fight around the cannon, until General Jackson could form his panic-stricken army, recross the creek, and come to their aid. The gallant Coffee, though wounded through the body two days before, sprang from the litter on which he was carried, mounted his horse, and assisted greatly in restoring order -General Jackson pointing at General Coffee and telling his men "We'll whip them, the dead have risen and come to our aid.” Armstrong, though wounded, and supposed to be dead, called out from the heaps of dead bodies around him-" Save the gun." This is the individual to whom General Jackson left his sword.

The English, as well as some of our own countrymen, are very prone to attribute too much to cotton bales, in making General Jackson a great man, and enabling him to triumph over the veteran soldiers of Wellington. Still they confess that they cannot understand why troops, that in Spain scaled forts and ramparts of solid rock forty feet high, strongly garrisoned and mounted with heavy