It was while he was getting his men back home again that Jackson received the nickname of “Old Hickory,” which clung to him all the rest of his life, and which was really a good description of him.  The story also illustrates how it was that his men came to idolize him, and why it was that he appealed so strongly to the common people.  Jackson had three good horses, on that weary journey, but instead of riding one of them himself, he loaned all three to sick men who were unable to walk, and himself trudged along at the head of his men.

“The general is tough, isn’t he?” one of them remarked, glancing at the tall, sturdy figure.

“Tough!” echoed another.  “I should say he is—­as tough as hickory!”

Jackson was lying in bed with a bullet in his shoulder, which he had received in an affray with Jesse Benton, and also, no doubt, nursing his chagrin over his treatment by the War Department, when news came of a great Indian uprising in Alabama.  The Creeks had gone on the warpath and had opened proceedings by capturing Fort Mims, at the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on August 30, 1813, and massacring over five hundred people who had taken refuge there.  Alabama was almost abandoned by the whites, and Georgia and Tennessee at once rushed to her relief by voting men and money to put down the Indians.

Jackson forgot wound and chagrin and took the field as soon as he was able to stir.  He at once quarrelled with the other officers; but his men believed in him, though lack of food and the expiring of the short term of enlistment created so much insubordination that, on one occasion, he had to use half his army to prevent the other half from marching home.  His energy was remarkable; he pushed forward into the Creek country, cut the Indians to pieces at Horseshoe Bend, and drove the survivors into Florida.  At the end of seven months, the war was over, and the Creeks had been so punished that there was never any further need to fear them.

The campaign had another result—­it established Jackson’s reputation as a fighter, and soon afterwards he was appointed a major-general in the army of the United States, and was given command of the Department of the South.  The pendulum had swung the other way, with a vengeance!  But Jackson rose magnificently to this increased responsibility.  He discovered that the English were in force at Pensacola, which was in Florida and therefore on Spanish territory; but he did not hesitate.  He marched against the place with an army of three thousand, stormed the town, captured it, blew up the forts, which the Spaniards hastily surrendered, and so made it untenable as an English base.  Perhaps no other exploit of his career was so audacious, or so well carried out.  Pensacola subdued, he hastened to New Orleans, which was in the gravest danger.