JACKSON
JACKSON
forces and to proceed to Fort Scott. The express
bearing these orders reached the Hermitage,
Jan. 11, 1818, and on January 31 two regiments of
mounted men, recruited in Tennessee in twenty
days, were at Fayetteville under Colonel Hayne,
ready to take up their march to Fort Jackson
and thence to Fort Scott, where General Jackson
had preceded them, recruiting on his way 2000
Creek warriors under command of Brigadier-
General MTntosh, the half-breed chief who had
commanded the friendly Indians at the Horse-
Shoe in 1811. He also gathered nine hundred
Georgia volunteers and on March 9, 1817, reached
Fort Scott to find there no jDrisoners, a starving
garrison and no news from General Gaines or
Colonel Hayne. His only alternative was to
take up the line of march and gather the needed
provisions as they might. On reaching Negro
Fort on Prospect Bluff, his aide. Lieutenant Gads-
den, built a fortification, which his chief named
Fort Gadsden, and his force obtaining no news
of supplies promised from New Orleans, he put
his troops on half-rations, determined until the
completion of the fort to subsist on the enemy
in their own country. Meantime Colonel Hayne
and General Gaines reached the main army. On
March 25, General Jackson wrote to the governor
of Pensacola not to interrupt the passage of
transports on pain of declaration of liostilities
with his Catholic majesty, reciting that both
governments were interested in the punishment
of the savages. The same day Colonel Gibson,
U.S.A., and Captain McKeever, U.S.N. , arrived
with the flotilla of provisions, and the next
day Jackson moved his army toward St. Marks,
and reached the place April 6. He then sent
Lieutenant Gadsden to the governor with a
letter exjjlaining his purpose and object to be
"to chastise a savage foe, who combined with
a lawless band of negro brigands who had been
for some time past carrying on a cruel and
unprovoked war against the citizens of the
United States." He also announced his deter-
mination to garrison the fort with American
troops until the close of the present war in order
to prevent its being made a place of refuge for
the enemy, and at the same time he provided
protection to Spanish rights and property. On
April 7, Captain Twiggs took forcible possession
of the fort, lowering the Spanish flag and raising
the Stars and Stripes. Alexander Arbuthnot,
an Indian trader whom Jackson had sought, was
found within the fort, an inmate of the governor's
own quarters, and Twiggs caused his arrest just
as he was mounting liis horse to escape. The
two leaders of the Seminoles, Francis, the pro-
phet or Hellis Hojo, and Cliief HimoUemico,
who had tortured Lieutenant Scott, had been
captured by Captain McKeever, and were
promptly hanged, by order of General Jackson.
On April 17, 1818, Jackson's army encamped
on the banks of the Sewanee river, but the
foe had escaped from the town and Jackson burned
the place, which comprised about three lumdred
houses. Robert C. Ambrister blundered into the
American camp, seeking to meet the Indians, and
was arrested with his attendant, Peter B. Cook,
and two negro servants, and on the person of one
of the servants was found a letter from Arbuthnot
to his son warning the Indians of the presence of
Jackson's army. The Seminole war was ended,
and on April 20 the Georgia troops marched home-
ward. On the 2-lth General Mcintosh and his
brigade of Indians were dismissed, and on the
25th General Jackson returned with his Tennessee
troops and the regulars to Fort St. Marks, where
he convened a military court for the trial of
Ambrister and Arbuthnot', April 26, 1818. On
the 28th the court brought in a verdict of guilty
and they were sentenced to be shot. The case of
Arbuthnot was reconsidered, and the sentence
was changed to fifty stripes on his bare back
and confinement by ball and chain to hard
labor for twelve months. General Jackson dis-
ai^proved the reconsideration in the case of
Arbuthnot, and arbitrarily changed his first sen-
tence from being sliot to being hanged; his son,
John James Arbuthnot, to be furnished a passage
to Pensacola by the first vessel. On April 29 the
sentences were carried out. Jackson left Fort St.
Marks, April 28; reached Fort Gadsden, May 2;
started northward, and was received at Nashville
with all the honors of a military hero. In the
administrative councils at Washington the Presi-
dent, with all his cabinet except Secretary of
State Adams, felt that General Jackson in taking
Pensacola had transcended his orders, but Mr.
Adams's arguments in his defence reassured the
people of the United States and went far toward
conciliating the Spanish government. It had the
effect of averting war with Spain, and received
the endorsement of Jefferson, Secretary- Callioun
proposed a court of inquiry, but it was not held.
Early in January, 1819, General Jackson set out
for Washington, and reached that place. Jan-
uary 27, and awaited the deliberations of congress
on his campaign in Florida. The debate had
begun, January 12, and Mr. Clay had made a bitter
speech, which was the beginning of a long feud
between the two statesmen. Col. R. M. Johnson
replied to Mr. Clay, and on February 2, one week
before the close of the long debate. Representa-
tive George Poindexter, of Mississippi, made his.
able defence of Jackson, which he fortified by
papers and documents. Representative William
Henry Harrison, of Oliio, condemned the course of
General Jackson. On February 8 the vote of the
committee of the whole was taken, and General
