Threat Of Starvation – Men Turn To Mutiny

Excerpt from ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS: Confrontation – Chapter from the Creek Indian War in Alabama -(Story continued below)

Leaving Colonel Russell in command of Fort Claiborne, General Claiborne returned to Mount Vernon, partly because he had fully accomplished all that his orders from Flournoy permitted him to do, and partly because the discharge of his Mississippi volunteers had reduced his army to sixty men, and even these had but a month longer to serve.

Colonel Russell was no sooner left in command at Fort Claiborne than he instituted proceedings designed to fix the responsibility for the sufferings of the men during the campaign. He ordered a court of inquiry in each case. Major Cassels was permitted to escape censure on the ground that his guide had misled him. For the failure of the food supply the contractor was held responsible, as it was shown that General Claiborne had given him strict orders to provide abundant supplies for the expedition.

In February following the events at Fort Claiborne, it was Colonel Russell’s purpose to march to the Old Towns on the Cahawba River, and to attack the Red Sticks wherever he could find them, and to establish his base of supplies at that point. He provided a barge, loaded it with food for the troops, and putting Captain Denkins in command of it, with a piece of artillery as his armament, he directed that officer to ascend the Alabama River to the mouth of the Cahawba River, and then to make his way up the Cahawba to Old Towns, where the army would meet him. There, with his regiment reinforced by an infantry company from the neighborhood of Fort Madison under command of Captain Evan Austill, and a cavalry company commanded by Captain Foster—the two forming a battalion under the lead of Sam Dale, who was now a Major—Colonel Russell marched to the appointed place of rendezvous.

When he arrived, he learned that the barge had not arrived, and as he had marched with only six days of provisions his situation was a critical one. To hasten the coming of the barge he sent a canoe manned by Lieutenant Wilcox and five men in search of Captain Denkins. This party, while making its way down the river, traveling at night and hiding in the cane on the banks by day, was attacked by Indians. Lieutenant Wilcox and three of his companions were made prisoners, the other two escaped and made their way through many hardships to the settlements, where they arrived in a famished condition.

PCaptain Denkins passed the mouth of the Cahawba River by mistake and gone a considerable distance up the Alabama River before discovering his error. When he discovered it, he knew that it was now too late for him to think of carrying out his original instructions. He knew that before he could possibly reach the Old Towns, the army would be starved out and compelled to retreat so he decided to return to Fort Claiborne. On his way down the river he discovered a canoe, and found in it Wilcox scalped and dying, and his two companions already dead.

Meantime Colonel Russell had waited two days at the Old Towns for the coming of the barge. Finally, being wholly without provisions, his was forced to start his return march and only managed to save his army from starvation by killing and eating his horses on the route.

The situation at Fort Storther near Ten Islands was not any better at General Jackson’s camp. From the time of the Talladega Battle to Holy Ground, food provisions had grown steadily worse. Jackson lost no opportunity to secure such provisions as could be had from the surrounding country, but these were barely sufficient to keep famine at bay from day to day, and Jackson busied himself with the writing of letters to everybody who could in any way contribute to hasten forward adequate supplies. He wrote to one contractor, saying:

I have been compelled to return here for the want of supplies when I could have completed the destruction of the enemy in ten days; and on my arrival I find those I had left behind in the same starving condition with those who accompanied me. For God’s sake send me with all dispatch plentiful supplies of bread and meat. We have been starving for several days, and it will not do to continue so much longer. Hire wagons and purchase supplies at any price rather than defeat the expedition. General White, instead of forming a junction with me, as he assured me he would, has taken the retrograde motion, after having amused himself with consuming provisions for three weeks in the Cherokee Nation, and left me to rely on my own strength.

Day by day food became scarcer, poorer, and more difficult to get, and the men were becoming mutinous, as volunteers are sure to do when left to starve in inaction. As it was, there was neither food nor fighting to be had at Fort Strother, and General Jackson did not dare to attempt a march upon the nearest Indian stronghold, about sixty miles away, without supplies.

Jackson knew that the men would not leave singly, that their pride would restrain them from desertion unless they could act together, each being sustained by the opinion and the common action of all his fellows. The militia had determined to march home in a body and Jackson determined to restrain them in a body.

On the appointed day they planned to desert, he called the volunteers to arms and at their head placed himself in the way of the mutinous militiamen. He plainly informed the men that they could march homeward only by cutting their way through his lines, and this was an undertaking which they were not prepared for. Being unable to overcome Jackson, they had no choice but to yield to him and return to their tents with what cheerfulness they could command.

The volunteers whose power Jackson was able to use in stopping the departure of the militia were scarcely less discontented than they. On the very day on which they stopped the march of the militia, they resolved themselves to go home and prepared to depart on the following morning. Jackson had information about what was going on, and he prepared to reverse the order of things by using the militia in their turn to oppose the volunteers. The militia had returned to their duty obeyed the commands of their general, and revealed a firm front to the mutinous volunteers. The affair wore so much of the appearance of a practical joke that it put the whole force into momentary good-humor.

However, the supplies did not arrive and the men remained discontented. Finally, Jackson asked for two days’ delay, promising to permit the men to march away if food did not arrive within that time. Two days passed and still, no food arrived. Jackson knew he had to let them go, but grasping at straws, he declared that if even two men would consent to stay with him, then he would not abandon Fort Strother and the campaign. Immediately, one of his captains agreed to stay as one of this army of two, and finally, the number of volunteers who agreed to stay swelled to one hundred and nine men. This was all that was left of Jackson’s army, and a good deal of the campaign lay ahead.

Jackson permitted the rest of the troops to leave, but demanded that they return if they met with the supply train. In order to enforce his demand, he accompanied the column and left the one hundred and nine volunteers to hold down the fort until his return.

The column met the provision train twelve miles from the fort, so Jackson called a halt and issued rations to the men. With their stomachs filled with beef and bread, Jackson ordered the men to return to the fort, but the troops refused and started homeward instead.

Red Eagle and the Wars with the Creek Indians of Alabama 1812-1814 

Historian George Cary Eggleston in his Red Eagle: And the Wars with the Creek Indians of Alabama, describes one of the most impressive scenes in Jackson’s career. Eggleston states the following:

Raving with rage, his thin lips set and his frame quivering with anger, the commander’s face and mien were terrible. His left arm was still carried in a sling, and the hardships, hunger, fatigue, and ceaselesss anxiety to which he had been subject ever since he quitted his sick-bed to come upon this campaign had not made his wasted frame less emaciated; he was a sick man who ought to have been in bed: but the illness was of the body, not of the soul. The spirit of the man was now intensely stirred, and when Jackson was in this mood there were few men who had the courage to brave him.

Riding after the head of the column, he placed himself with a few followers in front of it, and drove the men back like sheep. Then leaving the officers who were with him he rode alone down the road, until he encountered a brigade which was drawn up in column, resolved to conquer its way by a regular advance against any body of men who might oppose its homeward march. If a company or a battalion had undertaken to arrest the march of these men there would have been a battle there in the road without question. They were prepared to fight their comrades to the death; they were ready to meet a force equal to their own. They met Andrew Jackson instead—Andrew Jackson in a rage, Andrew Jackson with all the blood in his frail body boiling; and that was a force greatly superior to their own.

Snatching a musket from one of the men Jackson commanded the mutineers to halt. He broke forth in a torrent of vituperation, and declared that they could march toward home only over his dead body; he declared, too, with an emphasis which carried conviction with it, that while he could not, single-handed, overcome a brigade of armed men, he at least could and would shoot down the first man who should dare to make the least motion toward advancing.

The men were overawed, terrified, demoralized by the force of this one resolute man’s fierce determination. They stood like petrified men, not knowing what to do. It was now evident that no man there would dare to make himself Jackson’s target by being the first to advance. Jackson had beaten a brigade, literally single-handed, for he had but one hand that he could use.

By this time General Coffee and some staff officers had joined Jackson, and now a few of the better disposed men, seeing their general opposing a brigade of mutineers, ranged themselves by his side, prepared to assist him in any encounter that might come, however badly over-matched they might be. The mutineers were already conquered, however, and sullenly yielding they were sent back to the fort.”

Jackson continued on to Fort Deposit and succeeded in arranging for a constant supply of bread and meat. Then he returned to Fort Strother. However, his success was short-lived because he discovered on his return that the volunteers were planning a new mutiny because they had completed the year for which they had enlisted which would end on December 10^th . On the evening of the 9^th, word came that the men were already strapping their knapsacks on their backs and getting ready to march immediately.

Jackson had to act. The scene that took place next is described by George Cary Eggleston.

Jackson issued one of the shortest of all his proclamations, ordering all good soldiers to assist in putting down the mutiny. Then he ordered the militia to parade at once under arms. Placing his cannon in a commanding position, he drew up the militia in-line of battle and confronted the mutinous volunteers.

Riding to the front he made a speech to the volunteers, beginning by assuring them that they could march only over his dead body; that he had done with entreaty, and meant now to use force; that they must now make their choice between returning to their tents and remaining quietly upon duty, and fighting him and his troops right where he stood; the point, he said, could be decided very quickly by arms if they chose to submit the question to that kind of argument. He told them, too, that he was expecting new troops to take their places, and that until these new troops should arrive not a man present should quit the post except by force.

He was now terribly in earnest, and bent upon no half-way measures. He had drawn his men up in line of battle, not as a threat, but for purposes of battle. He was ready to fight, and meant to fight, not defensively, but offensively. He wanted no negotiation, asked no man upon what terms he would submit. He had dictated the terms himself and meant now to enforce them. He had given the volunteers a choice—either to remain peaceably until he should send them home, or to fight a battle with him right there in the road and right then on the 9^th of December; he had offered them this choice, and they must choose and say what their choice was. When he ended his speech the volunteers stood grimly, sullenly silent. They did not offer to advance, but that was not enough. They must say whether they would remain and obey, or accept battle. If they would promise to remain without further attempts of this kind, he was content; if not, the battle would begin.

“I demand an explicit answer,” he said; and no reply coming, he turned to his artillerymen and ordered them to stand to their guns with lighted matches.

It was now a question merely of seconds. Jackson gave the men time to answer, but not many moments would pass before he would speak the only words which were left to him to speak—the words “commence firing,” those words which in every battle are the signal for the transformation of iron or brazen guns from harmless cylinders of metal into bellowing monsters, belching fiery death from their throats.

There was silence for a moment—that awful silence which always precedes the turmoil of battle, doing more to appall men than all the demoniac noises of the contest do; then a murmur was heard as of men hastily consulting; then the officers of the volunteer brigade stepped a pace to the front and delivered the answer which Jackson had demanded.

They had made their choice, and the answer was that they would return to duty, and remain at the fort until the new men should come, or until their commander should receive authority to discharge them.

This affair of the 9^th of December, 1813, is nowhere set down in the list of Jackson’s battles; but nowhere did he win a more decided victory or display his qualities as a great commander to better advantage.

Jackson continued to have trouble keeping his soldiers while he waited on new troops to take their place.  The militia finally left in spite of all that Jackson tried to do to detain them, and Cocke’s volunteers followed them ten days afterward, but in the meantime a force of nine hundred new men had arrived. They had enlisted in part for two and in part for three months, and were therefore of comparatively little value; but Jackson resolved to use them at least while waiting for the arrival of the larger and better force which had been ordered to gather at Fayetteville on the 28^th of January.

He meant to strike a blow with what force he had while its enlistment should continue so that no more men might be paid for service as soldiers without doing any fighting. The volunteers whose term had expired marched out of camp on the 14^th of January, and on the next day, Jackson set his new men in motion for work. They were undrilled, undisciplined, and weak in numbers, but Jackson was now bent upon fighting with anything that he could get which remotely resembled an army.

ALABAMA FOOTPRINTS Confrontation: Lost & Forgotten Stories (Volume 4)

is a collection of lost and forgotten stories that reveals why and how the confrontation between the Native American population and settlers developed into the Creek-Indian War as well as stories of the bravery and heroism of participants from both sides.

Some stores include:

• Tecumseh Causes Earthquake
• Terrified Settlers Abandon Farms
• Survivor Stories From Fort Mims Massacre
• Hillabee Massacre
• Threat of Starvation Men Turn To Mutiny
• Red Eagle After The War