242 ANDREW JACKSON 



of the matter. In a tavern at Nashville Jackson 

 undertook to horsewhip Benton, and in the ensuing 

 scuffle the latter was pitched downstairs, while Jackson 

 got a bullet in the left shoulder which he carried for 

 more than twenty years. Jackson and Benton had 

 been warm friends. After this affair they did not 

 meet again until 1823, when both were in the United 

 States Senate. They were both as frank and gener- 

 ous as they were impulsive, and soon became fast 

 friends again. There is an amusing side to the primi- 

 tive Homeric boisterousness of such scenes among 

 grown-up men of high station in life. In the early 

 part of this century, though quite characteristic of the 

 Southwest, it was not confined to that part of the 

 country. It was not so many years since two con- 

 gressmen, Matthew Lyon of Vermont and Roger 

 Griswold of Connecticut, had rolled on the floor of 

 the House of Representatives, cuffing and pounding 

 each other like angry schoolboys. 



The war with Great Britain was complicated with 

 an Indian war which could not in any case have been 

 avoided. The westward progress of the white settlers 

 toward the Mississippi River was gradually driving 

 the red man from his hunting-grounds ; and the cele- 

 brated Tecumseh had formed a scheme, quite similar 

 to that of Pontiac fifty years earlier, of uniting all the 

 tribes between Florida and the Great Lakes in a grand 

 attempt to drive back the white men. This scheme 

 was partially frustrated in the autumn of 1811, while 

 Tecumseh was preaching his crusade among the Chero- 

 kees, Creeks, and Seminoles. During his absence his 

 brother, known as the Prophet, attacked General Har- 

 rison at Tippecanoe and was overwhelmingly defeated. 



