presented themselves,
Governor Blount authorized the whole number to be mustered. On the 7th
of January the hastily equipped detachment started, fourteen hundred
infantrymen going down the ice-clogged Cumberland in flatboats and six
hundred and seventy mounted riflemen proceeding by land. The Governor
sent a letter carrying his blessing. Jackson responded with an
effusive note in which he expressed the hope that "the God of battles
may be with us." Parton says with truth that the heart of western
Tennessee went down the river with the expedition. In a letter to the
Secretary of War Jackson declared that his men had no "constitutional
scruples," but would, if so ordered, plant the American eagle on the
"walls" of Mobile, Pensacola, and St. Augustine.

After five weeks the troops, in high spirits, reassembled at Natchez.
Then came cruel disappointment. From New Orleans Governor James
Wilkinson, doubtless moved by hatred of Jackson quite as much as by
considerations of public policy, ordered the little army to stay where
it was. And on the 15th of March there was placed in the commander's
hands a curt note from the Secretary of War saying that the reasons
for the undertaking had disappeared, and announcing that the corps
under the Tennesseean's command had "ceased to exist."

Jackson flew into a rage--and with more reason than on certain other
occasions. He was sure that there was treachery somewhere; at the
least, it was all a trick to bring a couple of thousand good Tennessee
volunteers within the clutches of Wilkinson's recruiting officers. He
managed to write to the President a temperate letter of protest; but
to Governor Blount and to the troops he unbosomed himself with
characteristic forcefulness of speech. There was nothing to do but
return home. But the irate commander determined to do it in a manner
to impress the country. He kept his force intact, drew rations from
the commissary department at Natchez, and marched back to Nashville
with all the _eclat_ that would have attended a returning conqueror.
When Wilkinson's subordinates refused to pay the cost of transporting
the sick, Jackson pledged his own credit for the purpose, to the
amount of twelve thousand dollars. It was on the trying return march
that his riflemen conferred on him the happy nickname "Old Hickory."

The Secretary of War later sought to appease the irascible major
general by offering a wholly plausible explanation of the sudden
reversal of