Two days after the Creek treaty was signed, Jackson and his little army set off toward the Gulf of Mexico, marching as quickly as they could. The new reality of a British threat fed an existing fear: those who read the papers already knew the British could be ruthless. The previous summer the Crown’s men, rampaging through the Virginia countryside, committed terrible atrocities. One woman seeking to escape was said to have been “pursued up to her waist in the water, and dragged on shore by ten or twelve of these ruffians, who satiated their desires upon her, after pulling off her clothes,
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