the year he induced the Governor of his State, William
Blount, to inform the War Department that he could have twenty-five
hundred men "before Quebec within ninety days" if desired. Again he
was refused. But now his opportunity had come. Billy Phillips was
hardly on his way to Natchez before Jackson, Blount, and Benton were
addressing a mass meeting called to "ratify" the declaration of war,
and on the following day a courier started for Washington with a
letter from Jackson tendering the services of twenty-five hundred
Tennesseeans and assuring the President, with better patriotism than
syntax, that wherever it might please him to find a place of duty for
these men he could depend upon them to stay "till they or the last
armed foe expires."

After some delay the offer was accepted. Already the fiery major
general was dreaming of a conquest of Florida. "You burn with
anxiety," ran a proclamation issued to his division in midsummer, "to
learn on what theater your arms will find employment. Then turn your
eyes to the South! Behold in the province of West Florida a territory
whose rivers and harbors are indispensable to the prosperity of the
western, and still more so, to the eastern division of our state....
It is here that an employment adapted to your situation awaits your
courage and your zeal, and while extending in this quarter the
boundaries of the Republic to the Gulf of Mexico, you will experience
a peculiar satisfaction in having conferred a signal benefit on that
section of the Union to which you yourselves immediately belong."

It lay in the cards that Jackson was to be a principal agent in
wresting the Florida, country from the Spaniards; and while there was
at Washington no intention of allowing him to set off post-haste upon
the mission, all of the services which he was called upon to render
during the war converged directly upon that objective. After what
seemed an interminable period of waiting came the first order to move.
Fifteen hundred Tennessee troops were to go to New Orleans, ostensibly
to protect the city against a possible British attack, but mainly to
be quickly available in case an invasion of West Florida should be
decided upon: and Jackson, freshly commissioned major general of
volunteers, was to lead the expedition.

The rendezvous was fixed at Nashville for early December; and when
more than two thousand men, representing almost every family of
influence in the western half of the State,