Chapter One
SEPTEMBER 3, 1813
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE
9:00 A.M.
Andrew Jackson has vengeance on his mind.
The white-haired general with the soft southern accent is armed with a riding whip and a sword, which he carries every day. This morning the six-foot-one former senator is also carrying a loaded pistol in his back pocket. An up-and-coming politician named Thomas Hart Benton, a former friend and confidant, has publicly slandered Jackson, claiming he conspired to make a fool of Benton’s brother in a recent duel.
But the fact is that young Jesse Benton has made a fool of himself. Instead of standing completely still after turning to fire his pistol, per protocol, he squatted down to avoid getting shot—only to end up with a lead musket ball in his ample backside. When Jesse relayed the news to his brother, who was visiting Washington, D.C., at the time, the young man wove a tale of deceit that blamed Andrew Jackson. After that, Thomas Hart Benton began making public assertions that the legendary general is a cheat and a liar.
Uncharacteristically, Jackson has held his temper for weeks. But as Benton journeys home to Nashville and is overheard repeating the slander in many a barroom along the way, Tennessee’s “first citizen” can take no more. Andrew Jackson publicly pronounces he will horsewhip the thirty-five-year-old Benton “on sight.”
Andrew Jackson in a painting by Thomas Sully, 1845
That moment has come.
Thomas Hart Benton stands in the doorway of Clayton Talbert’s Tavern. In time, he will become a formidable political figure, instrumental in America’s westward expansion. But at present, he is struggling to find his way. Benton was born into wealth but was expelled from the University of North Carolina for stealing from his fellow students, an embarrassment he still carries.
His brother, the heavyset Jesse, stands a few steps back inside the barroom. He is six years younger than Thomas, with a reputation for being arrogant and impulsive.
Both Benton brothers are armed.
Andrew Jackson has spent the night at the luxurious Nashville Inn, one hundred diagonal yards across the town square. The three-story establishment is the general’s favorite lodging and will remain so for decades. He enjoys gambling on the cockfights in the vacant lot next door. Wine and games of billiards flow freely in the ground-floor tavern, and the general stables his horses around back. The Bentons also normally stay at the Nashville Inn, but this is not a normal day. For their own safety, they selected Talbert’s Tavern—for they know a battle is brewing. Word of the pending confrontation between Jackson and the Benton brothers has spread quickly. Local citizens fill the square at a discreet distance, keeping out of pistol range as they await the action to come.
Jackson ignores the bystanders. His close friend, Colonel John Coffee, walks at his side. Together, the two men follow the wooden sidewalk leading around the square to Talbert’s. They stroll slowly, feigning deep conversation. Jackson is a rail-thin 145 pounds and prefers to wear his overcoats baggy, to give the appearance of being larger. Colonel Coffee is an enormous man, with a booming voice and an even temper that balances out Jackson’s explosive personality. Both are in their forties, although the general’s gray hair contrasts with Coffee’s dark locks. Their friendship is so profound that Colonel Coffee once fought a duel to defend Jackson’s honor, during which the military officer took a ball in the thigh.
“Do you see that fellow?” Coffee asks quietly, glancing at Thomas Hart Benton, who is still standing in the tavern doorway.
“Oh, yes,” Jackson replies. “I have my eye on him.”
Andrew Jackson feels the weight of the whip in his right hand, his sword in its scabbard, and the heft of the pistol against his back hip. The weapon weighs more than three pounds and features a barrel almost eight inches long. A scar creases Jackson’s left arm, the result of a British sword three decades ago in the Revolutionary War. Inside Jackson’s chest, a musket ball is lodged just inches from his heart, a painful reminder of a duel seven years ago. His opponent shot first and scored a direct hit. Yet despite the hole in his chest and the blood pouring from his wound that would soon fill both his boots, Jackson managed to take a steady aim, then shot and killed his opponent. Doctors say that Jackson himself will die if the bullet is ever removed. Thus, it remains.1
With every step along the sidewalk, General Jackson and Colonel Coffee draw closer to Talbert’s Tavern. Jackson knows there is a barroom on the ground floor, with a side hallway and a door leading to a back porch. A plan takes shape in his mind.
The two men stop directly in front of the hotel. Jackson quickly pivots to face Thomas Hart Benton.
“Now, you damned rascal, I am going to punish you,” snarls Jackson, shifting the whip to his left fist.
Benton reaches for his pistol. At one time the young man idolized Jackson, whose successful career in the House of Representatives and Senate provided a road map to the sort of life Benton hopes to enjoy. Benton’s own father died when he was just eight years old, and at first Jackson seemed to fill that void. In time, however, Benton longed to be more powerful, more famous, and even more beloved than the man nicknamed “Old Hickory.” His respect turned into jealousy as Benton realized that his only chance of surpassing Jackson was to kill him.
But Thomas Hart Benton is nervous as he reaches for his gun. He has never drawn a weapon before. Benton fumbles to pull his eight-inch-long flintlock “pocket” pistol from his coat.
Andrew Jackson has no such problem.
The general smoothly draws his gun and presses the barrel against Benton’s heart. Jackson pushes him backward into the tavern, toward the back door. Tennessee is still a lawless frontier state in many ways, but should Jackson opt to shoot the young plantation owner there can be no witnesses. Behind him, Colonel Coffee stands at the front door, blocking anyone from following Jackson out the back.
In all the commotion, Jesse Benton has been forgotten. Now, he slips from the tavern into a back hallway, where he takes up position behind Andrew Jackson and his older brother. Jesse fires his pistol. The first shot hits Jackson in his left arm, lodging in the humerus bone. The second shatters the general’s shoulder blade. A third shot goes wild, stuck in the hotel wall.
Andrew Jackson pitches forward, firing as he falls. The powder burns Thomas Benton’s coat. Though not hit, Benton tumbles backward down a flight of stairs. Colonel Coffee rushes to General Jackson’s rescue and finds him facedown in a pool of blood. Bystanders follow Coffee, wrestling Jesse Benton to the ground and threatening to kill him. An irate John Coffee turns away from the prone Andrew Jackson and steps forward to pummel the younger Benton, but the crowd separates them. Thomas Hart Benton remains unhurt on the floor in the basement.
Now all eyes focus on Jackson. Colonel Coffee instructs the group of bystanders to help him carry Jackson back to his room across the square at the Nashville Inn. The general is losing so much blood that he soaks through a thin cotton mattress. When that cushioning becomes too saturated, it is replaced by another. Jackson’s blood does not stop pouring from his wounds, and soon the second mattress is also a dark red.
Clearly, Andrew Jackson is dying.
The best doctors in Nashville arrive, called to care for the general. His left arm must be amputated; that much is clear. They hover over him, preparing the saw needed to cut away the shattered limb.
Suddenly, Jackson barks from the bed: “I’ll keep my arm.”
The doctors would ignore any other patient, but this is the great Andrew Jackson. It is determined that the ball lodged against the bone in his arm cannot be removed, meaning that the general now has two pieces of lead taking up permanent residence inside his body. A poultice made of slippery elm is applied to the wounds in Jackson’s arm and chest, followed by a splint. There is nothing more to be done but let him rest.
Thus, Andrew Jackson remains bedridden for eight days, fading in and out of consciousness. His face turns a yellow gray. The Benton brothers have publicly denounced Jackson as a failed assassin, yet there is no way he can fight back. Jackson grows weaker with every passing day.
Then on Sunday, September 12, almost two weeks after setting out from southern Alabama, nineteen-year-old Samuel Edmondson gallops into Nashville with news about the massacre at Fort Mims. He bears a letter demanding that no less than General Andrew Jackson come to the immediate rescue of the beleaguered American settlers and fight the Creek Indians.
Jackson is strong enough to read the missive. It is an outrageous request, appealing to a lone man from Tennessee rather than the U.S. government to somehow bring the full force of military might to bear on the Creek aggressors.
Yet the general does not find it audacious. Rather, the letter is a tonic to his wounds. The general rises in bed and dictates a response. The call to battle appears in the September 14 edition of the Nashville Whig. In a letter addressed to “Fellow Soldiers,” Jackson makes a call for the men of Tennessee to volunteer and follow him into battle.2
Enoch Parsons, a member of the Tennessee senate, proposes a bill authorizing the state to fund a war with the Creeks. He visits Jackson as a courtesy, informing the general that the bill will soon become law.
“I mentioned,” Parsons would later write, “that I regretted very much that the general entitled to command, and who all would desire should command the forces of the state, was not in a condition to take the field.”
“The devil in hell he is not,” Jackson replies through gritted teeth.
The Benton brothers are forgotten for now. Andrew Jackson will deal with them later.
A second letter from Jackson is published on September 24. As panic about another Creek uprising spreads through the south, Andrew Jackson makes it clear that he is ready for war. “The health of your general is restored,” he informs the people of Nashville, speaking in the third person. “He will command in person.”
But Jackson is still frail. He returns to the Hermitage, his plantation ten miles outside Nashville, where he remains bedridden until the first week of October. The general wills himself to heal. The pain in his left shoulder is so great that he cannot wear his full military uniform, the weight of his epaulets causing extreme pain. His arm is still in a sling, making it impossible to mount a horse without help. Yet by the first week of October, just three weeks after being shot, Jackson is riding south to meet up with his new army. Colonel John Coffee has already led the force to the town of Fayetteville, Alabama, to await further orders.
“He was still suffering pain and was looking pale and emaciated from the wound received in the famous duel with Benton,” one young lieutenant from Florida will later write of Jackson’s appearance. “He was mounted on Duke, the brave old war horse that afterwards bore his gallant master so proudly on many glorious battlefields. His graceful, manly form, usually erect, was now bent with pain.”
“His pallid cheek gave evidence of his suffering. Yet there was something in the lineaments of his face, a slumbering fire in his pale blue eye,” twenty-one-year-old Richard K. Call will add, “that made me and everyone, recognize the presence of a great man.”
Despite his misery, Jackson rides into Fayetteville on horseback. His army awaits. No longer an invalid, the wounded warrior is determined to once again lead men onto the field of battle.
But as he dismounts to greet his troops, even Andrew Jackson has no idea just how bloody that field will be.
Chapter Two
MARCH 27, 1814
HORSESHOE BEND, ALABAMA
6:30 A.M.
General Andrew Jackson prepares to “exterminate the hostiles.”
After spending five months conducting raids against the Creek Indians in central Alabama, Jackson is glad spring has arrived. He stands atop a small rise on this chilly Sunday morning, peering out at the enemy encampment through his collapsible brass spyglass. Finally, after a winter of war with the United States, the Creek nation appears to be trapped. As the sun rises, Jackson discerns smoke from cooking fires in the makeshift village. Houses large enough for twenty to thirty Indians back up to a line of trees. It is hard to count the number of Creek warriors milling about, but it looks to be close to one thousand. Jackson can also see hundreds of women and young children on the premises.
Copyright © 2020 by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard
