go, though it seems to belong
to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most
respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each
other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner
recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward
famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous
in a dozen ways. The men of the frontier in those days were hot in
temper and quick in action, and family feuds led quickly to wounds and
death, as they still do in the mountains of East Tennessee.

Some trifling quarrel, that might perhaps have been settled by five
minutes of common-sense arbitration, led to this fierce fray, in the
midst of which Jesse Benton, brother of the colonel, fired at Jackson
with a huge pistol, loaded to the muzzle with bullets and slugs. It was
like a charge of grape-shot. A slug from it shattered Jackson's left
shoulder, a ball sank to the bone in his left arm, and another ball
splintered a board by his side.

When the fight ended Jackson was found insensible in the entry of a
tavern, with the blood pouring profusely from his wounds. He was carried
in and all the doctors of the town were summoned, but before the
bleeding could be stopped two mattresses were soaked through with blood.
The doctors said the arm was so badly injured that it must be taken off
at once. But when Old Hickory set his lips in his grim way, and said,
"I'll keep my arm," the question was settled; no one dare touch that
arm.

For weeks afterward Jackson lay, a helpless invalid, while his terrible
wounds slowly healed. And while he lay there a dreadful event took place
in the territory to the south, which called for the presence of men like
Old Hickory, sound of limb and in full strength. This was the frightful
Indian massacre at Fort Mimms, one of the worst in all our history.

It was now the autumn of the year 1813, the second year of the war with
England. Tecumseh, the famous Indian warrior and orator, had stirred up
the savages of the South to take the British side in the war, and for
fear of an Indian rising the settlers around Fort Mimms, in southern
Alabama, had crowded into the fort, which was only a rude log stockade.
On the morning of August 30 more than five hundred and fifty souls, one
hundred of them being women and children, were crowded within that
contracted space. On the evening of that day four hundred of them,
including all the women