266 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS son became the idol of his troops, and his sturdi- ness won him the nickname of "Old Hickory," by which he was affectionately known among his friends and followers for the rest of his life. Shortly after his arrival at Nashville there occurred an affray between Jackson and Thomas H. Benton, growing out of an unusually silly duel in which Jackson had acted as second to the antago nist of Benton s brother. In a tavern at Nashville, Jackson undertook to horsewhip Benton, and in the ensuing scuffle the latter was pitched down-stairs, while Jackson got a bullet in his left shoulder which he carried for more than twenty years. Jackson and Benton had formerly been friends. After this affair they did not meet again until 1823, when both were in the U. S. senate. Their friendship was then renewed. 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 celebrated 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 preach ing his crusade among the Cherokees, Creeks, and
