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events of the war, which was soon after terminated by peace.

After the termination of the war, General Gaines received high compliments from congress and the states of Virginia, Tennessee, and Alabama; each of which presented him with a sword. A medal was struck in honor of him, by authority of the nation, referring to the defence of Fort Erie.

On the reduction of the war establishment, he was retained in service, with his old rank, and, after a brief furlough, assigned to command in the south, where the Florida Indians and negroes yet continued to harass the frontier of Georgia.

CHAPTER IV.

GAINES (Continued.)

Difficulties with respect to Florida-General Jackson takes command of the southern division-General Gaines assigned to the command of West Florida-Instructions to GainesJackson's operations-Arbuthnot and Ambrister—Capture of Pensacola-Termination of the Florida war- -Sketch of Generals Gibson and Arbuckle.

THE territory of Florida, it will be remembered, had been discovered by the companions of Columbus, one of whom, De Soto, had landed near the present city of St. Augustine, and passed thence far beyond the Mississippi. The Spanish empire yet retained the nominal command of this peninsula; though, shorn of its power by the encroachment of Napoleon, it was unable to exercise more control over it than over the rest of its vast empire.

During the war with the United States, terminated in fact by the battle of New Orleans, Great Britain had taken advantage of the feeble condition of Spain to harass the southern frontier of the United States; and, after the ratification of peace, seemed by no means disposed to relinquish the advantages afforded by the bay of Pensacola and the disguise of a neutral flag, and bands of Indians over whom Spain exercised but a nominal control. The man appointed to the command of this frontier, was one emphatically qualified to perform this duty well. The general who had dared, at the beck of necessity, to disregard the form of law of

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his own country, was not likely to shrink from the technicalities of the statutes of another realm.

Major-General Andrew Jackson was assigned to the command of the southern division of the army of the United States, and, early in 1816, repaired to New Orleans to station his troops so as to repel the incursions of the hostile Indians and whites beyond our frontier, yet clearly amenable to the United States, as their hostilities and outrages were committed within their borders. In October, 1816, General Jackson returned to his head-quarters at Nashville, Tennessee, where he was busied in perfecting the police of the army and the discipline of his own department.

Many tribes of Indians were crowded into the province of Florida, intermingled with whom were abrasions from many of the northern races. Adventurers, refugees from the French, Spanish, and English colonies, and from the United States, were within its limits, and also a vast number of runaway slaves, from states as far north as North Carolina and Virginia. All of these were restrained from inroads into the United States by a mere line of longitude, never run and never defined.

This (1817) was the era of the South American and Mexican revolutions; and the whole southern portion of the New World was convulsed by the efforts of nations long enslaved, to throw off the shackles of oppression and prejudice. The reaction of the nations which at this crisis started into being, was fearful; and palpable wrong was not unfrequently confounded with palpable right, merely because the two had previously been inculcated by the same authority. One of the officers of the Colombian naval service (Commodore Aury) at this time took possession of Amelia Island, which undoubtedly belonged to Florida, but which came within the jurisdic

tion of the United States, as it was made the centre of a horde of brigands, who outraged the sovereignty of the Union, and whom Spain could not or would not expel. This state of things had, to a great degree, existed during the late war.

It will be remembered by all familiar with the general history of the late war, that a Colonel Nichols had been driven from Pensacola by General Jackson, previous to the battle of New Orleans. This worthy, long after the proclamation of peace, established a fort near the present city of St. Mark's, around which he collected a band of fugitives of all nations and countries, who long outraged the law of nations and of humanity, until their fort was destroyed by Colonel Clinch, January 10th, 1816. This, for a time, terminated the war in West Florida.

To the command of West Florida General Gaines had been assigned after the conclusion of peace. On the 30th of October, 1817, he received a letter from the war department, authorizing him to call a detachment of Georgia militia into service, and stating "that the assurance of an additional force, the president flatters himself, will have the effect at least of restraining the Seminoles from committing farther depredations, and inducing them to make reparation for the murders they have committed; should they, however, persevere in their refusal to make such reparation, it is the wish of the president that you should not, on that account, pass the line, and make an attack upon them within the limits of Florida, until you shall have received further instructions from this department. You are authorized to remove the Indians still remaining on the lands ceded by the treaty made by General Jackson with the Creeks."

Various outrages, however, were committed subsequently, the crowning one of which was the massacre of

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a party of United States soldiers, commanded by Lieutenant Scott, while on the way to the mouth of the Apalachicola from Fort Scott, a stockade on the Flint, above its junction with the Chattahoochee. This took place in November, about the 15th.

Before the news of this outrage, however, reached Washington, the secretary of war had written on the 2d of December, to General Gaines, thus: "The state of our negotiations with Spain, and the temper manifested by the principal European powers, make it impolitic, in the opinion of the president, to move a force at this time into the Spanish possessions, for the mere purpose of chastising the Seminoles for depredations which have heretofore been committed by them."

A second letter, dated December 9th, instructed General Gaines to exercise his own discretion, should the Indians cross into the United States, as to whether he should cross the line and attack them.

A third letter authorized him, if the Seminoles per sisted in outrages on the United States, to cross the line and attack them. Under these circumstances he was required immediately to notify the department. In obedience to these orders, General Gaines called into service from Georgia a large reinforcement of militia, and as the wont then was, to draft for a short period, before they had become accustomed to the routine of camp, it became necessary to call out a second thousand to replace them.

In the meantime General Jackson was ordered to assume command of this country, which lay in fact within his department. The secretary of war on the 16th of June wrote to General Gaines, who previously had been sent to Amelia Island, that the dignity of the United States required that the Seminoles should