“The General refused to let us go.  We were, however, determined to go.  With this, the General issued his orders against it.  We began to fix for a start.  The General went and placed his cannon on a bridge we had to cross, and ordered out his regulars and drafted men to prevent our crossing.  But when the militia started to guard the bridge, they would holler back to us to bring their knapsacks along when we came; for they wanted to go as bad as we did.  We got ready, and moved on till we came near the bridge, where the General’s men were all strung along on both sides.  But we all had our flints ready picked and our guns ready primed, that, if we were fired on, we might fight our way through, or all die together.

“When we came still nearer the bridge we heard the guards cocking their guns, and we did the same.  But we marched boldly on, and not a gun was fired, nor a life lost.  When we had passed, no further attempt was made to stop us.  We went on, and near Huntsville we met a reinforcement who were going on to join the army.  It consisted of a regiment of sixty-day volunteers.  We got home pretty safely, and in a short time we had procured fresh horses, and a supply of clothing better suited for the season.”

The officers and soldiers ere long rendezvoused again at Fort Deposit.  Personally interested as every one was in subduing the Creeks, whose hostility menaced every hamlet with flames and the inmates of those hamlets with massacre, still the officers were so annoyed by the arrogance of General Jackson that they were exceedingly unwilling to serve again under his command.

Just as they came together, a message came from General Jackson, demanding that, on their return, they should engage to serve for six months.  He regarded enlistment merely for sixty days as absurd.  With such soldiers, he justly argued that no comprehensive campaign could be entered upon.  The officers held a meeting to decide upon this question.  In the morning, at drum-beat, they informed the soldiers of the conclusion they had formed.  Quite unanimously they decided that they would not go back on a six-months term of service, but that each soldier might do as he pleased.  Crockett writes: 

“I know’d if I went back home I wouldn’t rest for I felt it my duty to be out.  And when out, I was somehow or other always delighted to be in the thickest of the danger.  A few of us, therefore, determined to push on and join the army.  The number I do not recollect, but it was very small.”

When Crockett reached Fort Strother he was placed in a company of scouts under Major Russel.  Just before they reached the fort, General Jackson had set out on an expedition in a southeasterly direction, to what was called Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River.  The party of scouts soon overtook him and led the way.  As they approached the spot through the silent trails which threaded the wide solitudes, they came upon many signs of Indians being around.  The scouts gave the alarm, and the main body of the army came up.  The troops under Jackson amounted to about one thousand men.  It was the evening of January 23d, 1814.