"I have to inform you," runs the communication, "that just
now the President's express-rider, Bill Phillips, has tore through
this little place without stopping. He came and went in a cloud of
dust, his horse's tail and his own long hair streaming alike in the
wind as they flew by. But as he passed the tavern stand where some
were gathered he swung his leather wallet by its straps above his head
and shouted--'Here's the Stuff! Wake up! _War! War with England!!
War!!!'_ Then he disappeared in a cloud of dust down the Salisbury
Road like a streak of Greased Lightnin'." Nine days brought the
indefatigable courier past Hillsboro, Salisbury, Morganton, Jonesboro,
and Knoxville to Nashville--a daily average of ninety-five miles over
mountains and through uncleared country. In eleven days more the
President's dispatches were in the hands of Governor Claiborne at New
Orleans.
The joy of the West was unbounded. The frontiersman was always ready
for a fight, and just now he especially wanted a fight with England.
He resented the insults that his country had suffered at the hands of
the English authorities and had little patience with the vacillating
policy so long pursued by Congress and the Madison Administration.
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