The General waits, and curses Commander Wilkinson, for divers weeks. Then occurs one of those imbecilities, of which only the witlessness of Government is capable, and whereof the archives at Washington carry so many examples. The General receives a curt dispatch from the war secretary, “dismissing” him and his hunting-shirt soldiers from the service of the United States. Not a word is said as to pay, or provision for returning to the Cumberland. Having gotten the General and his little army several hundred wilderness miles from home, the thick-head Government, with no intelligence and as little heart, coolly reduces him and them to the practical status of vagrants; which feat accomplished, it walks away, as it were, hands in pockets, whistling “Yankee Doodle.” Possibly, the Government thinks that the General and his hunting-shirt friends can float upstream as they floated down. The angry General, however, makes no such marine mistake, and the intricate oaths which he now evolves and fulminates, as expressive of his feelings, would have won the admiration of any army that ever fought in Flanders.
The General's credit is golden, since he has ever been a fanatic about paying debts. Invoking that credit, he cashes a handful of drafts, and marches home with his hunting-shirt contingent at his own expense. Also he indites a letter to that war secretary which reddens the latter's departmental ears, and causes his departmental head to buzz like a nest of hornets. Later, the Government pays the General the amount of those drafts; not because it is right--since the argument of right has little Washington weight--but for the far more moving reason that Tennessee, in a rage, is preparing to desert the boneless President Madison for the Federalists. It is the latter thought which brings a ray of common sense to the besotted Government, and his money to our General, now back in Tennessee.
The bellicose General is vastly disappointed at missing a brush with invading British; for, aside from a saber-engrafted hatred of all English things and men, he is one to dote on fighting for fighting's crimson sake, and is almost as well pleased with mere battle as with victory. However, he is given scanty room for sorrowful reflections, since fate is hurrying to his relief with a private war of his own.