d
arm in its sling, he faced them, and swore he would shoot the first man
who stirred. They hesitated, wavered, yielded.

Seeing, however, that nothing could be done with the volunteers, Jackson
finally permitted them to go, keeping with him the militia and a small
body of Cocke's men. The militia claimed that their term would expire
January 4, 1814; the term of Cocke's men would expire a week later.
Anxiously awaiting reinforcements, Jackson got, instead, a letter from
Governor Blount advising him to give up the struggle. But he would not
give up; his magnificent spirit rose higher with every blow. He wrote
the governor a letter that taught him his duty. Through the governor, in
fact, that letter roused the whole State, and soon a new army was on the
way from West Tennessee, while Cocke was marching another force
southward from East Tennessee. With some five hundred raw recruits that
reached him before Cocke's first command left, Jackson held Fort
Strother. He even ventured to make a raid into the enemy's country,
aiming at the town of Emuckfau. The Indians attacked him. He repulsed
them, but soon made up his mind to return. On his way back, he was again
attacked while crossing a creek, his rear guard was driven in, and for a
moment a panic and rout was imminent. But the valor of a few men saved
the army, and he got safely back to Fort Strother.

He did not move again until the middle of March, and then he had five
thousand men. Cocke, for a speech addressed to his troops when they
threatened mutiny, was sent to Nashville under arrest. To stamp out
insubordination among the men from West Tennessee, a youth named Woods,
who had been found guilty of mutiny, was shot before the whole army. The
thirty-ninth regiment of regulars was now a part of the command, and the
general proposed to use them, whenever occasion offered, to suppress
insubordination among the volunteers. But from this time he had little
of that to deal with, and was free to grapple with the Creeks, who had
so far held their own against the Georgians and Mississippians.

The centre of their resistance was the Hickory Ground, near the fork of
the Coosa and Tallapoosa; but the final blow was struck at a bend in the
Tallapoosa midway between its source and mouth. The spot was called by
the Indians Tohopeka; by the whites, The Horseshoe. Across the neck of a
small peninsula the hostiles had thrown up a rough line of breastworks.
On the banks of the river they