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More Dixie Stuff
** Here is another piece of Dixie history that most do not know today! Read and learn! Not all of the history is presented correctly in the modern Politically Incorrect views... **
Date: 7/28/2013 8:22:18 PM ( 11 y ) ... viewed 10302 times John R Coffee (June 2, 1772 – July 7, 1833) was an American planter and state militia general in Tennessee. He commanded troops under General Andrew Jackson in the Creek Wars (1813–1814) and the later Battle of New Orleans.
President Andrew Jackson appointed Coffee as his representative, along with Secretary of War John Eaton, to negotiate treaties with Southeast American Indian tribes to accomplish removal, a policy authorized by Congressional passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Coffee negotiated the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek of 1830 with the Choctaw by which they ceded their lands, and started negotiations with the Chickasaw, but they did not conclude a treaty until after his death.
Militia service:
At the beginning of the War of 1812, Coffee raised the 2nd Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Riflemen, composed mostly of Tennessee militiamen (and a few men from Alabama). In December 1812, Governor Willie Blount had called out the Tennessee militia in response to a request from General John Wilkinson and the U.S. Secretary of War. Under Jackson's command, Coffee led 600 men in January 1813 to Natchez, Mississippi Territory, via the Natchez Trace, in advance of the rest of the rest of the troops, who traveled via flatboats.
After the two groups reunited in Natchez, Wilkinson and the U.S. government disbanded Jackson's troops. All marched back to Nashville to disband, and on this march Jackson earned the nickname Old Hickory from his troops. They arrived in Nashville on May 18, 1813.
On September 4, 1813 Coffee was involved in the Andrew Jackson-Benton Brothers duel in Nashville, knocking Thomas Benton down a flight of stairs after Benton's failed assassination attempt on Jackson.
In October 1813, the 2nd Regiment was combined with Col. Cannon's Mounted Regiment and the 1st Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Gunmen to form a militia brigade of mounted infantry. Coffee was promoted to brigadier-general and placed in command.
Coffee led his brigade, *** {which consisted largely of free blacks and American Indian warriors from allied Southeast tribes} at the Battle of New Orleans. They played a key role in holding the woods to the east of the British redcoats' column. Coffee's brigade was the first to engage the British, by firing from behind the trees and brush.
*** " Did you notice the use of Free Blacks (obviously not all Negros were slaves in the old South!)"
Jackson chose General Coffee as his advance commander in the Creek War, in which he commanded mostly state militia and allied American Indians. Under Jackson's command, Coffee led his brigade at the Battle of Tallushatchee, the Battle of Talladega, and the Battles of Emuckfaw and Enotachopo Creek, where he was seriously wounded, and the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. At the latter, the American allied forces conclusively defeated the Red Sticks, traditionalists of the Creek Nation who were allied with the British.
** We are relatives of General R. Coffee and descendants of his cousin General John E. Coffee on my mother's side; from south Ga!
General John R Coffee's first cousin;
General John E. Coffee (1782–1836), who was a general in the Georgia militia and elected as the U.S. Congressman from Georgia.
John E. Coffee moved with his parents and family to a plantation near Powelton in Hancock County, Georgia, in 1800. Coffee later settled in Telfair County, Georgia in 1807, where he developed his own plantation.
Military career:
As a general in the Georgia state militia, Coffee cut a road through the state of Georgia, which would be called "Coffee Road," to carry munitions to the Florida Territory to fight the Indians during the Creek War. It is now called the "Old Coffee Road".
Political career:
John E. Coffee served as a member of the Georgia Senate from 1819 to 1827. He was elected as a Jacksonian Democrat to the Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth U.S. Congresses and served from March 4, 1833, until his death on September 25, 1836. He was reelected to the Twenty-fifth United States Congress on October 3, 1836 after his death; the announcement of his death not having been received.
Coffee died on his plantation near Jacksonville, Georgia, on September 25, 1836, and was buried there. In 1921 his remains were reinterred in McRae Cemetery, McRae, Georgia.
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