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 the Government's policy; and the expenses of the troops on
the return march were fully met out of the national treasury. But
Jackson drew from the experience only gall and wormwood. About the
time when the men reached Natchez, Congress definitely authorized the
President to take possession of Mobile and that part of Florida west
of the Perdido River; and, back once more in the humdrum life of
Nashville, the disappointed officer could only sit idly by while his
pet project was successfully carried out by General Wilkinson, the man
whom, perhaps above all others, he loathed. But other work was
preparing; and, after all, most of Florida was yet to be won.

In the late summer of 1813 the western country was startled by news of
a sudden attack of a band of upwards of a thousand Creeks on Fort
Minis, Alabama, culminating in a massacre in which two hundred and
fifty white men, women, and children lost their lives. It was the most
bloody occurrence of the kind in several decades, and it brought
instantly to a head a situation which Jackson, in common with many
other military men, had long viewed with apprehension.

From time immemorial the broad stretches of hill and valley land
southwards from the winding Tennessee to the Gulf were occupied, or
used as hunting grounds, by the warlike tribes forming the loose-knit
Creek Confederacy. Much of this land was extremely fertile, and most
of it required little labor to prepare it for cultivation.
Consequently after 1800 the influx of white settlers, mainly cotton