On another occasion he had a youth who
had been guilty of insubordination shot before the whole army as an
object lesson. At last it became apparent that nothing could be done
with such troops, and the volunteers--such of them as had not already
slipped away--were allowed to go home. Governor Blount advised that
the whole undertaking be given up. But Jackson wrote him a letter that
brought a flush of shame to his cheek, and in a short time fresh
forces by the hundreds, with ample supplies, were on the way to Fort
Strother. Among the newcomers was a lank, angular-featured
frontiersman who answered to the name of Sam Houston.
After having been reduced for a short period to one hundred men,
Jackson by early spring had an army of five thousand, including a
regiment of regulars, and found it once more possible to act. The
enemy decided to make its stand at a spot called by the Indians
Tohopeka, by the whites Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa. Here a
thousand warriors, with many women and children, took refuge behind
breastworks which they believed impregnable, and here, in late March,
Jackson attacked with a force of three thousand men.
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