YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY LIFE OF ANDKEW JACKSON. MR. FARTON'S WORKS Life of G-eneral Jackson. — A Life of Andrew Jackson, President of the United States. 3 Vols., Octavo, with Portraits on Steel $6 00 A Library Edition of the sanM.— 3 Tola., Eoyai Octavo 7 5o Life of General Jackson, abridged.— Life of Andrew Jackson, condensed from the author's complete work in three volumes, 1 Tol, Octavo, with Portrait on Steel 1 16 Life of Burr. — The Life and Times of Aaron Burr, Lient.-Colonel in the Army of the Revolution, TJnited States Senator, Third Vice-President pf the United States, etc. 1 Vol., Crown OStavo; with Portraits on Steel, and Wood illustrations. 14th edition 2 00 Humorous Poetry. — The Humorous Poetry of the English Language, from Chaucer to Saxe. Crown Octavo ; with Steel Plate ; TOO pages 2 00 i^ju^iiisw JiM;m.s®Mo y >/.-^' LIFE J ¦-•^ ->ct-.^ N^- %..'* 1 \ v .^ -¦J' ¦-¦ ". ?: ^ ANDEEW JACKSON, IJSr THEEE VOLTJMES. BY JAMES PARTON, AtTTHOE OF THE "LIFE OF AAEOfT BUEE," " HtlMOEOUS POETRY OF THE EN"OLISH LANG-UASE," ETC. NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY MASON BROTHERS. BOSTON: MASON & HAMLIN. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. LONDON: D. APPLETON & CO., 16 LITTLE BRITAIN. 1863. Entered according to Aot of Congress, in the year 1862, BY MASON BROTHERS, Tn the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the TJnited States, for the Southern District of Ne"w York. 0. A. ALVOED. STERf.OTTPEE AND PETNTER. PREFACE. Tms volume is a condensation of the " Life of Andrew Jack son," in three volumes, octavo, which was published by the author in 1860. Nearly every thing in the way of document, letter, episode, disquisition, note, or appendix, has been omit ted ; but the story of the life has been retained, and the more interesting narratives, scenes, and anecdotes, are preserved entire. There is much in the larger work which the student of recent history, the statesman, the politician, the soldier, and the citizen who desires to understand the interior working of his country's institutions, cannot dispense with. But the present volume contains all of Jackson which young readers need know, or readers in general will care to know. It is proper to state, that a great part* of the information given in these pages respecting the childhood, the youth, the frontier experiences, the White House life, and the last years of General Jackson, was derived by the author, in the course of an extensive tour in the Southern States, from the general's surviving relations, comrades, and political associates. The events of the last two years have invested with new interest the character of the man to whom we owed the post ponement of civil war for thirty years. Mr. Webster thought the issue should have been met then, the strength of the gov ernment tested then, not postponed till the mighty spell of the Union had lost its potency over a third of the country ; and b PREFA OE. Jackson himself constantly regretted, to his dying hour, that he had not dealt to Calhoun the penalty due to one whom balked ambition alone made a disturber of his country's peace. Nevertheless, thirty years of peace was a boon for which the country is the more warmly grateful from knowing what civil war is. The reader will find the Jackson of these pages a hero with out fear, but, unhappily, not without reproach. He was a faulty man, like the rest of us, and committed, . in his life, some most grievous sins. As his virtues and his good deeds are distinctly set forth and duly extolled, so his errors and weaknesses are not concealed. New Yoee, December, 1862. COJ^TEl'fTS. Chaptee Pagw I. — Birth and Parentage 9 II. — Childhood and Education ' 13 in. — DUEING THE ReVOLUTIONAET WaR 19 rv. — He Studies Law 34 V. — Removal to Tennessee 45 VI. — Jackson Practices Law 53 VII. — Jackson in Congress 62 VIII. — Judge of the Supeejie Court 69 IX. — Jackson as a Man of Business 15 X. — Duel with' Charles Dickinson *. 82 XI. — General Jackson at Home 95 XII. — General Jackson in Sbevioe 106 XIII. — Affray with the Bentons 116 XrV. — The Massacee at Foet Mims 124 XV. — Tennessee in the Field 132 XVI. — Mutiny in the Camp 147 XVII.— The Finishing Blow 165 XVIII. — Defense of Mobile 181 XIX. — Jackson Expels the English from Pensacola 191 XX. — Jackson's Fiest Measitees at New Oeleans 197 XXI. — Appeoach of the Beitish 205 XXII. — Night Battle op December Twenty-Third 215 XXIII. — Jackson Fortifies 226 XXrV. — The Beitish Advance a Second Time 240 XXV. — The Eighth of January 253 XXVI. — End of the Campaign 'il'i XXVIL— Rest and Gloet 291 O CONTENTS. OiiAPTEE Page XXVTII.— The Seminole War : 295 XXIX. — A Governor in the Calaboose 316 - — ¦"'iXX. — A Candidate for the Presidency 330 XXXI. — Elected President. .......... 339 XXXTI. — Inauguration.— Mrs. Eaton 348 XXXIIL — Terror amoijg the 'Of'fice-Holders ; 354 XXXIV. — The Bank of the United States 359 XXXV. — Congress in Session 363 XXXVI. — Mr. Van Bueen Calls upon Mrs. Eaton SYi XXXVII. — Dissolution of the Cabinet 384 XXXVIII.— The Bank Bill Vetoed 391 XXXIX.— Nullification 39g XL. — Removal of the Deposits 420 XLI. — The French Imbeoglio 433 XLII. — Close of the Administration .—441— XLIII. — In Rbtieement 447 XLIV. — Tn* Closing Scenes 457 XLV. — Conclusion 464 LIFE OF AJ^^^l^JACKSON. ¦-iu—v Icf&MT^^Lf BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. In 1765, Andrew Jackson, the father of the Andrew Jackson whose career we are about to relate, emigr.ated, with his wife and two sons, from Carrickfergus, in the north of Ireland, to South Carolina. His sons were named Hugh and Robert ; Andrew was not yet born. In his native country he had cultivated a few hired acres, and his wife had been a weaver of linen. Like most of the inhabitants of the North of Irelaud, he was of Scottish origin ; but his ancestors had lived for five generations in the neighborhood of Carrickfergus; lowly, honest people, tillers of the soil and weavers ; radical whigs in poUtics, Presbyterians in religion. He was accompanied to America by three of his neighbors, James, Robert, and Joseph Crawford, the first-named of whom was his brother-in-law. The peace between France and England, signed two years before, which ended the " old Freuoh war" — the war in which Braddock was defeated and Canada won — had restored to mankind their highway, the ocean, an^gfven an impulse to emigration from the old world to the new. From the north of Ireland large numbers sailed away to the land of promise. Five sisters of Mrs. Jackson had gone, or were soon going. Samuel Jackson, a brother of Andrew, afterward went, and established himself in Philadelphia, where he long lived, a respectable citizen. Mrs. Suffren, a daughter of another brother, followed in later years, and settled in New York, where she has living descendants. Andrew Jackson was a poor man, and his \vife, Elizabeth Hutchinson, was a poor man's daughter. The tradition is clear among the numerous descendants of Mrs. Jackson's sisters, that their lot in Ireland was a hard one. The grandchildren of the 1* 10 LIFE OP ANDREW JACKSON. [176/. Hutchinson sisters remember hearing their mothers often say, that in Ireland some of these girls were compelled to labor half the night, and sometimes ah night, in order to produce the requisite quantity of linen. Linen-weaving was their employment both before and after marriage; the men of the families tilling small farms at high rents, and the women toiling at the loom. The members of this circle were not aU equally poor. There is reason to believe that some of them brought to America sums of money which were considerable for that day, and sufficient to enable them to buy negroes as well as lands in the southern wilderness. But all accounts concur in this : that Andrew Jackson was very poor, both in Ireland and in America. The Hutchinson sisters are remembered as among the most thrifty, industrious, and capable of a race remarkable for those qualities. There is a sraack of the North-Irish brogue still to be observed in the speech of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The party of emigrants from Carrickfergus landed at Charleston, and proceeded, without delay, to the Waxhaw settlement, a hun dred and sixty miles to the north-west of Charleston, where many of their kindred and countrymen were already estabhshed. This settlement was, or had been the seat of the Waxhaw tribe of Indians. It is the region watered by the Catawba river, since pleasantly famous for its grapes. A branch of the Catawba, called the Waxhaw Creek, a small and not oriiamental stream, much choked with logs and overgrowth to this day, runs through it, fertilizing a consider able extent of bottom land. It is a pleasant enough undulating region, an oasis of fertihty in a waste of pine woods ; much " worn" now by incessant cotton-raising, but showing still some fine and profitable plantations. The word Waxhaw, be it observed, has no geographical or political meaning. The settlement so called was partly in North Carolina and partly in South CaroUna. Many of the settlers, probably, scarcely knew in which of the two provinces they lived, nor cared to know. 'At this day, the name Waxhaw has vanished from the maps and gazetteers, but in the country round about the old settlement, the lands along the creek are stil called " the Waxhaws." Another proof of the poverty of Andrew Jackson is this : the Crawfords, who came with him from Ireland, bought lands near the center of the settlement, on the Waxhaw Creek .itself land ^ 1767.] BIHTH AND PABENTAGE. 11 which StiU attest the wisdom of their choice ; but Jackson settled seven miles away, on new land, on the banks of Twelve Mile Creek, another branch of the Catawba. The placj is now known as "Pleasant Grove Camp Ground," and the particular land once occupied by the father of General Jackson is still pointed out by the old people of the neighborhood. How large the tract was, I have not been able to ascertain ; as, since that day, there have been so many changes in the counties of that part of North Caro Una, that a search for an old land-title is attended with peculiar difficulty. The best information now .attainable confirms the tra dition which prevails in the Waxhaw country, that Andrew Jack son, the elder, never owned in America one acre of land. On Twelve Mile Creek, however, Andrew Jackson planted himself, with his family, and began to hew out of the wilderness a farm and a home. The land is in what is now called Union county. North Carolina, a few miles from Monroe, the county seat. The county was named Union, a few years ago, in honor of the Union's indomitable defender, and in rebuke of neighboring nulU- fiers. It was proposed to call the county Jackson, but Union was thought a worthier compliment ; particularly as the patriotic Uttle county juts into South Carolina. For two years Andrew Jackson and his family toiled in the Carolina woods. He had built his log-house, cleared some fields, and raised a crop. Then, the father of the family, his work all incomplete, sickened and died : his two boys being still very young, and his wife far advanced in pregnancy. This was early in the spring of 1767. In a rude farm-wagon the corpse, accompanied, as it seems, in the same vehicle by all the little family, was conveyed to the old Waxhaw church-yard, and interred. No stone marks the spot beneath which the bones have moldered; but tradition points it out. In that ancient place of burial, families sleep together, and the place where Andrew Jackson lies is known by the gravestones which record the names of his wife's relations, tibie Crawfords, the McKemeys, and others. A strange and lonely place is that old graveyard to this day. A little church (the third that has stood near that spot), having nothing whatever of the ecclesiastical in its appearance, resem bling rather a neat farm-house, stands, not in the church-yard, 12 LIFE OF AX DREW JACKSON. [l7G7. but a short distance from it. Huge trees, with smaller pines among them, rise shigly and in clumps, as they were originally left by those who first subdued the wilderness there. Great roots of trees roughen the red clay roads. Old as the settlement is, the country is but thinly inhabited, and the few houses near look like those of a just-peopled country in the Northern States. Miles and miles and miles, you may ride in the pine woods and " old fields" of that country, without meeting a vehicle or seeing a living crea ture. So that when the stranger stands in that church-yard among the old graves, though there is a house or two not far off, but not in sight, he has the feeling of one who comes upon the ancient burial-place of a race extinct. Rude old stones are there that were placed over graves when as yet a stone-cutter was not in the province ; stones upon which, coats-of-arms were once engraved, still partly decipherable ; stones which are modern compared with these, yet record the exploits of revolutionary soldiers ; stones so old that every trace of inscription is lost, and stones as new as the new year. The inscriptions on the gravestones are unusually sim ple and direct, and free from sniveling and cant. A large number of them end with Pope's line (incorrectly quoted) which declares an honest man to be the noblest work of God. The bereaved family of the Jaoksons never returned to their home on the banks of Twelve Mile Creek, but went from the church-yard to the house, not far oif, of one of Mrs. Jackson's brothers-in-law, George McKemey by name, whose remains now repose in the same old burying-ground. A few nights after, Mrs. Jackson was seized with the pains of labor. There was a swift sending of messengers to the neighbors, and a hurrying across the fields of friendly women; and before the sun rose, a son was born, the son whose career and Ibrtunes we have undertaken to relate. It was in a small log-house, in the province of North Carolina, less than a quarter of a mile from the boundary line between North and South Carolina, that the birth took place. Andrew Jackson, then, was born in Union county. North Caro lina, on the 15th of March, 1767. General Jackson always supposed himself to be a native of South CaroUna. " Fellow citizens of my native State !" he ex- clanns, at the close of his proclamation to the nuUifiers of South Carolma ; but it is as certain as any fact of the kind can be that 1767.] CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION.* 13 he was mistaken. The clear and uniform tradition of the neigh borhood, supported by a great mass of indisputable testimony, points to a spot in North Carolina,- but only a stone's throw from the line that divides it from South Carolina, as the birthplace of Andrew Jackson. In a large field, near the edge of a wide, shallow ravine, on the plantation of Mr. T. J. Cureton, there is to be seen a great clump, or natural summer-house, of grape-vines. Some remains of old fruit trees near by, and a spring a little way down the ravine, indicate that a human habitation' once stood near this spot. It is a still and solitary place, away from the road, in a red, level region, where the young pines are in haste to cover the well-worn cotton fields, and man seems half incUned to let them do it, and move to Texas. Upon looking under the masses of grape-vine, a heap of large stones showing traces of fire is discovered. These stones once formed the chimney and fireplace of the log-house, wherein .George Mckemey lived and Andrew Jackson was born. On that old yellow hearth-stone, Mrs. Jackson lulled her infant to sleep and brooded over her sad bereavement, and thought anxiously ;-espeoting the future of her fatherless boys. Sacred spot ! not so much because there a hero was born, as because there a noble mother suffered, sorrowed, and accepted her new lot, and bravely bent herself to her more thai^double weight of care and toil. Mrs. Jackson remained at this house three weeks. Then, leaving her eldest son behind to aid her brother-in-law on his farm, she removed with her second son and the new-born infant, to the residence of another brother-in-law, Mr. Crawford, with whom she had crossed the ocean, and who then lived two miles distant. Mrs. Crawford was an invalid, and Mrs. Jackson was permanently established in the family as housekeeper and poor relation. CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. In the family of his Uncle Crawford, Andy Jackson (for by this familiar name he is stiU spoken of in the neighborhood), spent the first ten or twelve years of his Ufe. Mr. Crawford was a man of 14 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1777. considerable substance for a new country, and his family was large. He Uved in South CaroUna, just over the boundary Une, near the Waxhaw Creek, and -six miles from the Cntawba River. The land there Ues weU for farming; level but not flat; undu lating, but without hills of inconvenient liight. The soil is a stiff, red clay, the stiffest of the stiff, and tbe reddest of the red ; the kind of soil which bears hard usage, and makes the very worst winter roads anywhere to be found on this planet. Except where there is an interval of fertile soil, the country round about is a boundless continuity of pine woods, wherein to this d^yi wild turkeys and deer are shot, and the farmers take their cotton to market in immense wagons of antique ])attern, a journey of half a week, and camp out every night. As evening closes in, the pass ing traveler sees the mules, the negro driver, the huge covered wagon, the farmer, and sometimes his wife with an infant, groujied in the most strikingly picturesque manner, in an opening of the forest, around a blazing fire of pine knots, that light up the scene Uke an illumination. Just so, doubtless, did the farmers in Andv's day transport their produce; and, many a time, I doubt not, he slept by the camp-fire ; for the Carolina boys Uke nothing better than to go to market with their fathers, and share in the glorious adventure of sleeping out-of-doors. In such a country as this, with horses to ride, and cows t#hunt, and journeys to make, and plenty of boys, black and white, to play with, our little friend Andy spent his early years. In due time the boy was sent to an " old-field school," an institu tion not much unUke the roadside schools in Ireland, of which we read. The northern reader is, perhaps, not aware that an " old field" is not a field at all, but a pine forest. When crop after crop of cotton, without rotation, has exhausted the soil, the fences are taken away, the land lies waste, the young pines at once spring up, and soon cover the whole field with a thick growth of wood. In one of these old fields, the rudest possible shanty of a log-house is erected, with a fireplace that extends from side to side, and occupies a tlnrd of the interior. In winter, the inter stices of the log waUs are fiUed up with clay, which the restless fingers of the boys make haste to remove, in time to admit the first warm airs of spring. An itinerant schoolmaster presents himself in a neighborhood ; the responsible farmers pledge him a 1777.] CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 15 certain number of pupils, and an old-field school is estabUshed for the season. Such schools, called by the same n.aine, exist to this day in the Carolinas, differing little from those which Andrew Jackson attended in his childhood. Reading, writing and arithmetic were all the branches taught in the early day. Among a crowd of urchins, seated on the slab benches of a school like this, fancy a tall, slender boy, with blue bright eyes, a freckled face, an abundance of long sandy hah-, and clad in coarse copperas-colored cloth, with bare feet danghng and kicking — and you have in your mind's eye a picture of -Andy, as he appeared in his old-field school days in the Waxhaw settlement. But Mrs. Jackson, it is said, had more ambitious views for her youngest son. She aimed to give him a liberal education, in the hope that he would one day become a clergyman in the Presbyte rian Church. It is probable that her condition was not one of absolute dependence. The tradition of the neighborhood is, that she was noted, the country round, for her skill in spinning flax, aud that she earned money by spinning to pay for .Andrew's schooling. It is possible, tot), that her relations in Ireland may have contributed something to her support. General Jackson had a distinct recollection of her receiving presents of linen from the old country, and, particularly, one parcel, the letter accompanying which was lost, to the sore grief of the old lady ; for, in those days, a letter from " home" was a treasure heyond price. The impression that she was not destitute of resources is strengthened by the fact, that Andrew, at an early .age, attended some of the better schools of the country — schools kept by clergymen, in which the languages were taught, and young men prepared for college and for the ministiy. The first school of this kind that he attended was an academy in the Waxhaw settlement, of which one Dr. Humphries was master. The site of the large log-house in which Dr. Humphries kept his school is still pointed out, but no traces of it remain ; nor can any information respecting the school, its master, or its pupils be now obtained. There ii also a strong tradition that young Jackson attended a school iu Charlotte, N. C. then called Queen's College, a school of renown at that day. The inhabitants of the pleasant town of Charlotte all believe this. Jackson himself once said that he went to school there. When a delegation went from 16 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1777. Charlotte to Washington to ask Congress to establish a mint in the gold region. President Jackson was told by one of them that gold had been found in the very hill on which Queen's College had once stood. To which the President replied, " Then it must have grown since I went to school there, for there was no gold there then ;" a remark which the geologists of Charlotte stUl facetiously quote when the question of the origin of gold is dis cussed among them. There are yet living several persons whose fathers were school mates of Andrew Jackson ; and though none of them can say pos itively where he went to school, nor who were his teachers, nor what he learned, yet all of them derived from their fathers some general and some particular impressions of his character and con duct as a school-boy. Such incidents and traits as have thus come down to us, wUl not be regarded, I trust, as too trivial for brief record. Andy was a wild, frolicsome, willful, mischievous, daring, reck-' less boy ; generous to a friend, but never content to submit to a stronger enemy. He was passionately fond of those sports which are mimic battles ; above all, wrestling. Being a slender boy, more active than strong, he was often thrown. " I could throw him three times out of four," an old schoolmate used to say ; " but he would never stay throwed. He was dead game, even then, and never would give up." He was exceedingly fond of running foot-races, of leaping the bar, and jumping ; and in such sports he was excelled by no one of his years. To younger boys, who never questioned his mastery, he was a generous protector ; there was nothing he would not clo to defend them. His equ£ils and superiors found him self-willed, somewhat overbearing, easily offended, very irascible, and, upon the whole, "difficult to get along with." One of them said, many years after, in the heat of controversy, that of aU the boys he had ever known, Andrew Jackson was the only buUy who was not also a coward. But the boy, it appears, had a special cause of irritation in a dis agreeable disease, name unknown, which induces a habit of ^not to put too fine a point on it — " slobbering." Woe to any boy who presumed to jest at this misfortune ! Andy was upon him incon tinently, and there waa either a fight or a drubbing. There is a 1777.] CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 17 Story, too, of some boys secretly loading a gun to the muzzle, and giving it to young Jackson to fire off, that they might have the pleasure of seeing it " kick" him over. They had that pleasure. Springing up firom the ground, the boy, in a frenzy of passion, exclaimed : " By G— d, if one of you laughs, I'U kiU him !" And no one dared to laugh. It was a swearing age, the reader will remember. The expression, " By G-~d," was almost as fa mUiar to the men of that day as mon Dieu now is to F'renchmen, or mein Gott to Germans. It was used commonly by fox-hunting clergymen, there is reason to believe. So, at least, we may infer from the comedies and novels of the period. FroUc, however, not fight, was the ruling interest of Jackson's childhood. He pursued his sports with the zeal and energy of his nature. No boy ever lived who liked fun better than he, and his fun, at that day, was of an innocent and rustic character, such as strengthens the constitution, and gives a cheery tone to the feel ings ever after. « I can only add a second-hand reminiscence of a rainy-day de bate between Andy and one of his uncles, related to me by a son of that uncle. The subject of the discussion was. What makes the gentleman ? The boy said. Education ; the uncle. Good Prin ciples. The question was earnestly debated between them, with out either being able to convince the other. If our knowledge of the school-life of Jackson is scanty, we are at no loss to say what he learned and what he failed to learn at school. He learned to read, to write, and cast accounts-r-little more. If he began, as he may have done, to learn by heart, in the old-fashioned way, the Latin grammar, he never acquired enough of it to leave any traces of classical knowledge in his mind or his writings. In some of his later letters there may be found, it is true, an occasional Latin phrase of two or three words, but so quoted as to show ignorance rather than knowledge. He was never a well-informed man. He never was addicted to books. He never learned to write the EngUsh language correctly, though he often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. He never learned to speU correctly, though he was a better speller than. Frederic IL, Marlborough, Napoleon, or Washington. Few men of his day, and go women, were correct spellers. And, indeed, we may 18 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSOX. [l777. say that aU the most iUustrious men have been bad spellers, ex cept those who could not spell at all. The scrupulous exactness in that respect, which is now so common, was scarcely known three generations ago. The schools, then, contributed little to the equipment of this eager boy for the battle of life. He derived much fi'Oin the honest and pure people among whom he was brought up. Their instinct of honesty was strong within him always. He imbibed a rever ence for the character of woman, and a love of purity, which, amid all his wild ways, kept him stainless. In this particular, I believe he was without reproach ,froni youth to old age. He deeply loved his mother, and held her memory sacred to the end of his Ufa. He used often to speak of the courage she had displayed when left without a protector in the wilderness, and would some times cUnch a remark or an argument by saying, '¦'•That I learned from my good old mother." He was nine years old ^vhen the Declaration of Independence was signed. By the time the war .approached the Waxhaw settle ment, bringing blood and terror with it, leaving desolation behind it, closing all school-houses, and putting a stop to the peaceful labors of the people, Andrew Jackson was little more than thir teen. His brother Hugh, a man of stature, if not in years, had not waited for the war to come near his home, but had mounted his horse a year before, and ridden southward to meet it. He was one of the troopers of that famous regiment, to raise and equip which, its colonel, William Richardson Davie, spent the last guinea of his inherited estate. Under Colonel Davie, Hugh Jackson fought in the ranks of the battle of Stono,' and died, after the action, of heat and fatigue. His brother Robert was a strapping lad, but too young for a soldier, and was still at home with his mother and Andrew, when Tarleton and his dragoons thundered along the red roads of the Waxhaws, and dyed them a deeper red with the blood of the surprised militia. 1780.] DURING THE REVOLUTIONAET WAR. 19 CHAPTER III. DURING THE REVOLTITIONART WAR. I , It was on the 29th of May, 1780, that Tarleton, with three hun dred horsemen, surprised a detachmeiit of militia in the Waxhaw settlement, and killed one hundred and thirteen of them, and wound ed a hundred and fifty. The wounded, abandoned to the care of the settlers, were quartered in the houses of the vicinity ; the old log Waxhaw meeting-house itself being converted into a hospital for the most desperate cases. Mrs. Jackson was one of the ' kind women who ministered to the wounded soldiers in the church, and ' under that roof her boys first saw what war was. The men were dreadfully mangled. Some had received as many as thirteen wounds, and none less than three. For many days Andrew and his brother assisted their mother iti waiting upon the sick men ; Andrew, more in rage than pity, burning to avenge their wounds and his brother's death. Tarleton had fallen upon the Waxhaws like a summer storm, which bursts upon us unawares, does its destructive work, and rolls thundering away. The families who had fled returned soon to their homes, and the wounded men recovered, or found rest in the old church-yard. Then came rumors of the approach of a larger body of royal troops under Lord Rawdon, who soon arrived in the Wa.xhaw country, demanding of every one a formal promise not to take part in the war thereafter. Mrs. Jackson, her boys, the Crawfords, and a majority of their neigh bors, abandoned their homes and retired a few miles to the north, rather than enter into a covenant so abhorrent to their feelings. A few days later, Rawdon was compeUed to retrace his steps, and the Waxhaw people returned to their farms again. Once more that summer they were alarmed by a hostile assemblage a few miles distant, and prepared for a third flight ; but the " murderous tories " were dispersed in time, and our friends still clung to their homes. The men who were able to bear arms were generally away with their companies, and the women, chil dren, and old men passed their days ^nd nights in fear, ready at any moment for flight. 20 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1780. Tarleton's massacre at the Waxhaws kindled the flames of war in ah that region of the Carolinas. Many notable actions were fought, and some striking though unimportant advantages were gained by the patriot forces. Andrew Jackson and his brother Robert were present at Sumpter's gaUant blundering attack upon the British post of Hanging Rock, near AYaxhaw, where the patriots half gained the day,,.and lost it by beginning too soon to drink the rum they captured from the enemy. The Jackson boys rode on this expedition with Colonel Davie, a most brave, self-sacrificing officer, who, as we have said, commanded the troop of which Hugh Jackson was a member when he died, after the battle of Stono. Neither of the boys were attached to Davie's company, nor is it likely that Andrew, a boy of thirteen did more than witness the affair at the Hanging Rock. If he was in a position to observe the movements of the troops, or if he overheard the comments of Colonel Davie upon the battle, he received a lesson in the art of war. Colonel Davie attributed the failure of the attack to the circumstance that the men dismounted a hundred yards too late. " Dismounting under fire is aft' operation that tasks the discipline of the best troops, and is sure to discompose notilitia," maintained Colonel Davie in the council. Sumpter thought it best to dash in on horseback to a point near the enemy's works ; then dismount, and rush upon them on foot. This was attempted, but the attempt was only half successful, "owing to the confusion caused by dismounting under fire. The rurrranished what error began, and the affair ended in a debauch instead of a victory. This Colonel Da^¦ie, Hugh Jackson's old commander, was the man, above all others who led Carolina troops in the Revolution, that the Jackson boys admired. He was a man after'' Andrew's own heart ; swift, but wary ; bold in planning enterprises, but 'most cautious in execution ; sleeplessly vigilant ; untiringly active • one of those cool, quick men who apply mother-wit to the art of war; who are good soldiers because they are earnest ahd clear sighted men. So far as any man was General Jackson'-s model soldier, WiUiam Richardson Davie, of North Carolina, #was the individual. Davie, it is worth mentioning, was a native of England, and lived there till he was five years old. ' The boys rejoined their mother at the Waxhaw settlement. On the 16th of August, 1780, occurred the great disaster of the war in 1780.] DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 21 the South, the defeat of General Gates. The victor, Cornwallis, moved three weeks after, with his whole army, toward the Wax haws ; which induced Mrs. Jackson and her boys once more to abandon their home for a safer retreat north of the scene of war. How Mrs. Jackson and her son Robert performed this journey in those terrible days, there is no information. But through the excellent memory of a lady who died only a very few years ago, the reader can have a clear glimpse of Andrew, as he appeared to mortal view while he was on his northward journey, just after the defeat of Gates. The lady referred to was Mrs. Susan Smart, to whose high respectabiUty and careful veracity all the people of Charlotte, North CaroUna, near which she lived for four score years, wiU cheerfully testify. Her single-reminiscence of Andrew Jackson I obtained from her intimate friends in Charlotte, to whom she was in the« habit of telling it. Time — ^late in the afternoon of a hot, dusty September day in 1 780. Place — the high road, five miles below Charlotte, where Mrs. Smart then lived, a saucy girl of fourteen, at the home of her parents. The news of Gates' defeat had flown over the country, but every one was gasping for details, especiaUy those who had fathers and brothers in the patriot army. The father and brother of Mrs. Smart were in that army, and the family, as yet, knew nothing of their fate ; a condition of suspense to which the women of the Carolinas were well used during the revolutionary war. It was the business of Susan, during those days, to take post at one of the windows, and there watch for travelers coming from the South ; and, upon spying one, to fly out upon him and ask him for news of the army, and of the corps to which her father and brother were attached. Thus posted, she descried, on the afternoon to which we have referi-ed, riding rapidly on a " grass pony" (one of the ponies of the South Carolina swamps, rough, Shetlandi«h,wild),a tall, slender, "gangling fellow;" legs long enough to meet under the pony almost ; damaged, wide- brimmed hat flapping down over his face, which was yellow and worn ; the figure covered with dust ; tired-looking, as though the youth had ridden tiU he could scarcely sit on his pony ; the forlorn- est apparition that ever revealed itself to the eyes of Mrs. Susan Smart during the whole of her long life. She ran out to the road and hailed him. He reined in his pony, when the following brief conversation ensued between them : — 22 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1781. She. — " Where are you from ?" He.—" From below." She.— " Where are you going?" He.—" Above." She.—" Who are you for ?" He.—" The Congress." She. — " What are you doing below ?" He. — "Oh, we are popping them stiU." She (to herself). — " It's mighty poor popping such as you wiU do, any how." (Aloud). — " What's your name ?" He. — " Andrew Jackson." She asked him respecting her father's regiment, and he gave her what information he possessed. He then galloped away toward Charlotte, and Susan returned to the house to teU his news and ridi cule the figure he had cut — the gangling fellow on the grass pony. Years after she used to laugh as she told the story ; and later, when the most thrilling news of the time used to come to remote Char lotte associated with the name of Andrew Jackson, stUl she would bring out her Uttle tale, until, at last, she made it get votes for him for the presidency. Good fortune gave me the acquaintance, in Charlotte, of a gentle man who is the grandson of the lady to whose house Andrew was going on this occasion. He was bound to Mrs. Wilson's, a few miles above Charlotte, where he spent several weeks. Mrs. Wilson, a distant connection of Mi-s. Jackson, was the mother of an eminent clergyman of North Carolina, Rev. Dr. Wilson, who was a boy when Andrew Jackson rode to his mother's house on the grass pony. The two boys soon became friends and playmates, though the rough ways and wUd words of Andrew rather astonished the staid son of Mrs. Whson, as he used many a time to relate. The gentleman referred to above is a son of Dr. ^V^lson, and remembers two or three interesting things which his father and grandmother were accus tomed to report of the boy. At Mrs. "Wilson's, Andrew paid for his board by doing what New England people caU " chores." He brought in wood, " pulled fod der," picked beans, drove cattle, went to mill, and took the farinino- utensils to be mended. Respecting the last named duty there is "a striking reminiscence. " Never," Dr. Wilson- would say, " did An drew come home from the shops without bringing with him some 1781.] DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY V,' A R . 23 new weapon with which to kill the enemy. Sometimes it was a rude spear, which he would forge whUe waiting for the blacksmith to finish his job. Sometimes it was a club or a tomahawk. Once he fastened the blade of a scythe to a pole, and, on reaching home, began to cut down the weeds with it that grew about the house, assaUing them with extreme fury, and occasionally uttering words Uke these : " ' Oh, if I were a man, how I would sweep down the British with my grass blade !' " Dr. Wilson remembered saying to his mother when they were talking of Andrew one day, "Mother, Andy wiU fight his way in the world." The doctor Uved to see his prediction fulfilled, and, though he would never vote for his old companion, he rejoiced exceedingly when he heard, sixty years after, that this swearing, roystering lad had come to be a contrite old man. In February, 1781, the country about the Waxhaws being tranquU, because subdued, Mrs. Jackson, her sons and many of. her neighbors, returned to their ravaged homes. Andrew soon after passed his fourteenth birthday, an overgrown youth, as tall as' a man, but weakly from having grown too fast. Then ensued a spring and summer of smaU, fierce, intestine warfare ; a war of whig and tory, neighbor against neighbor, brother against broth er, and even father against son. General Jackson used to give, among other instances of the madness that prevailed, the case of a whig, who, having found a friend murdered and mutilated, de voted himself to the slaying of tories. He hunted and lay in wait for thein, and before the war ended, had killed twenty ; and then, recovering from that insanity, lived the rest of his days a con science-stricken wretch. The story of Mrs. Motte, who assisted to fire her own house — the finest house in all the country round — rather than it should serve as a British post, was another which the General remembered of this period. Without detaining the reader with a detail of the revolutionary history of ,the Carolinas, I yet desire to show what a war-charged atmosphere it was that young Andrew breathed during this form ing period of his life, especiaUy toward the close of the war, after the great operations ceased. The reader shall, at least, have a glimpse or two of the Carolinas during the Revolution. 24 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1/81. The people m the upper country of the Carolinas little expected that the war would ever reach settlements so remote, so ob scure, so scattered as theirs. And it did not for some years. When at last the storm of war drew near their borders, it found them a divided people. The old sentiment of loyalty was stiU rooted in many minds. There were many who had taken a recent and special oath of allegiance to the king, which they considered binding in aU circumstances. They were Highlanders, clannish and religiously loyal, who pointed to the text, "Fear God and honor the king," and overlooked the fact that the biblical narrative con demns the Jews for desiring a kingly government. There were Moravians and Quakers, who conscientiously opposed all war. There were Catholic Irish, many of whom sided with the king. There were Protestant Scotch-Irish, whigs and agitators in the old country, whigs and fervent patriots in the new. There were place- • holders, who adhered to their official bread and dignity. There were trimmers, who espoused the side that chanced to be strongest. The approach and collision of hostile forces converted most of these factions into belligerents, who waged a most fierce and deadly war upon one another, renewing on this new theater the border wars of another age and country. It was a war of chiefs rather than gen erals, of banditti rather than armies ; a war of exploits, expeditions, surprises, sudden devastation, fierce and long pursuits ; a war half Indian and half Scotch-clannish. Such warfare intensely excites the feelings, and allows no interval of serenity. Who can imagine the state of things when such an occurrence - as this could take place, and be thought quite regular and cor rect ? "A few days afterward (1780), in Rutherford county, N. C. (a hundred miles from Waxhaw), the principal officers held a court-martial over some of the most audacious and murderous tories, and selected thirty-two as victims for destruction, and commenced hanging three at a time, until they hung nine, and respited the rest." This is mentioned without remark in a matter- of-fact account of the battle of King's Mountain, by an officer who fought in that battle. No boy of the least spirit, could escape the contagion of an animosity so intense and general. There was certainly one who did not. There were others, also, as we may infer from one of Mr. Lossing's anecdotes: — "The British officers were hospitaBlv 1781.J - DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 25 entertained by Dr. Anthony Newrnan, notwdthstanding he was a whig. There, in the presence of Tarleton" and others. Dr. New man's two little sons were engaged in playing the game of the battle of the Cowpens with grains of corn, a red grain repre senting the British officers, and a white one the Americans. Washington and Tarleton were particularly represented, and as one pursued the other, as in a real battle, the little fellows shouted, ' Hurrah^ for Washington, Tarleton runs ! Hurrah for Washing ton !' Tarleton looked on for awhUe, but becoming irritated, he exclaimed, ' See the cursed Uttle rebels !' " How often must our fiery Andrew have drunk, with greedy ear, the bloody tales that were current then, and how they must have . nourished in him those feelings which are akin to war and strife ! ,1 wonder if he chanced to hear, that at Charleston, in the early period of the war cotton bales were used in the construction of a fort. I wonder if he heard of the servants of the British officers, thickening their masters' soup with hair powder, in the scarcity of flour', of Marion splitting saws into sword-blades ; of the patriot miUtia going to battle with more men than muskets, and the un armed ones watching the strife tUl a comrade fell, and then running in to seize his weapon, and to use it. It is likely. In his inflamed imagination, the mild CornwaUis figured as a relentless savage ; Tarleton as a devU incarnate, and aU red-coated sons of Britain, as the natural enemies of man. "*0h, if I were a man, how I would sweep down the British with my grass blade !" WeU, the time came, when Andrew and his brother began to play men's parts in the drama. Without enUsting in any organ ized coi-ps, they joined small parties that went out on single enter prises of retaliation, mounted on their own horses, and carrying their own weapons. Let us see what befell them while serving.thus. In that fierce, Scotch-Indian warfare, the absence of a father from home was often a better protection to his family than his presence, because his presence invited attack. The main object of both parties was to kill the fighting men, and to avenge the slaying of partisans. And thus it came to pass, that when a whig soldier of any note desired to spend a night with his family, his neighbors were accustomed to turn out, and serve as a guard to his house while he slept. Behold Robert and Andrew Jackson, with six Others, thus employed one night in the spring of 1781, at the domi- 2 2g LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1782. cile of a neighbor. Captain Sands. The guard on this occasion was more a friendly tribute to an active partisan than a service consid ered necessary to his safety. In short, the night was not far ad vanced, before the whole party were snugly housed and stretched upon the floor, aU sound asleep, except one, a British deserter, who was restless, and dozed at intervals. Danger was near. A band of tories, bent on taking the life of Captain Sands, approached the house in two divisions ; qne party moving toward the front door, the other toward the back. The wakeful soldier, hearing a suspicious noise, rose, went out of doors to learn its cause, and saw the foe stealthily nearing the house. He ran in in terror, and seizing Andrew Jackson, who lay next the door, by the hair, exclaimed, " The tories are upon us !" Andrew sprang up, and ran out. Seeing a body of men in the distance, he placed the end of his gun in the low fork of a tree near the door, and hailed them. No reply. He hailed them a second time. No reply. They quickened their ^ace, and had come within a few rods of the do9r. By this time, too, the guard in the house had been roused, and were gathered in a group behind the boy. Andrew discharged his musket ; upon which the tories fired a volley, which kUled the hapless deserter who had given the alarm. The other party of tories, who were approach ing the house from the other side, hearing this discharge, and the rush of bullets above their heads, supposed that the firing proceeded from a party that had issued from the house. They now fired a volley, which sent a shower of balls whistling about the heads of their friends on the other side. Both parties hesitated, and then halted. Andrew having thus, by his single discharge, puzzled aud stopped the enemy, retired to the house, where he and his comrades kept up a brisk fire from the windows. One of the guard fell mortally wounded by his side, and another received a wound less severe. In the midst of this singular contest, a bugle was heard some distance off, sounding the cavalry charge ; whereupon the tories, concluding that they had come upon au ambush of whio-s and were about to be assailed by horse and foot, fled to where thev had left their horses, mounted, dashed pell-meU into the woods and were seen no more. It appeared afterward, that the bui>le charge was sounded by a neighbor, who judging from the noise'of 1781.J DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 27 musketry that Captain Sands was attacked, and having not a man with him in his house, gave the blast upon the trumpet, thinking that even a trick so stale, aided by the darkness of the night, might have some effect in alarming the assailants. The next time the Jackson boys smelt powder, they were not so fortunate. The activity and zeal of the Waxhaw whigs coming to the ears of Lord Rawdon, whom Cornwallis had left in command, he dispatched a small body of dragoons to aid the tories of that infected ngighborhood. The Waxhaw people, hearing of the ap proach of this hostile force, resolved upon resisting it in open fight, and named the Waxhaw meeting-house as the rendezvous. Forty whigs assembled on the appointed day, mounted and armed ; and among them were Robert and Andrew Jackson. In the grove about the old church, these forty were waiting for the arrival — hourly expected — of another company of whigs from a neighboring settlement. The British officer in command of the dragoons, ap prised of the rendezvous by a tory of the neighborhood, detei'mined to surprise the patriot party before the two companies had united. Before coming in sight of the church, he placed a body of tories, wearing the dress of the country, far in advance of his soldiers, and so marched upon the devoted band. The Waxhaw party saw a company of armed men approaching, but concluding them to be their expected friends, made no preparations for defense. Too late the error was discovered. Eleven of the forty were taken prison ers, and the rest sought safety in fiight, fiercely pursued by the dragoons. The brothers were separated. Andrew found himself gaUoping for life and hberty by the side of his cousin. Lieutenant Thomas Crawford ; a dragoon close behind them, and others com ing rapidly on. They tore along the road awhile, and then took to a swampy field, where they came soon to a wide slough of water and mire, into which they plunged their horses. Andrew floundered across, and on reaching dry land again, looked round for his com panion, whose horse had sunk into the mire and fallen. He saw him entangled, and trying vainly to ward off the blows of his pursuers with his sword. Before Andrew could turn to assist him, the lieutenant received a severe wound in the head, which compelled him to give up the contest and surrender. The youth put spurs to his horse and succeeded in eluding pursuit. Robert, too, escaped unhurt, and in the course of the day the brothers were reunited. 28 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1781. and took refuge in a thicket, in which they passed a hungry and anxious night. The next morning, the pangs of hunger compeUed them to leave their safe retreat and go in quest of food. The nearest house was that of Lieutenant Crawford. Leaving their horses and arms in the thicket, the lads crept toward the house, which they reached in safety. MeanwhUe, a tory-traitor of the nejghborhood had scented out their lurking-place, found their horses and weapons, and set a party of dragoons upon their track. Before the family Jiad a sus picion of danger, the house was surrounded, the doors were secur ed, and the boys were prisoners. A scene ensfled which left an impression upon the mind of one of the boys which time never effaced. Regardless of the fact that the house was occupied by the defenseless wife and young children of a wounded soldier, the dragoons, brutaUzed by this mean parti san warfare, began to destroy, with wild riot and noise, the con tents of the house. Crockery, glass, and furniture, were dashed to pieces ; beds emptied ; the clothing of the family torn to rags ; even the clothes of the infant that Mrs. Crawford carried in her arms were not spared. While this destruction was going on, the officer in command of the party ordered Andrew to clean his high jack-boots, which were well splashed and crusted with mud. The boy replied, not angrily, though with a certain flrmness and deci sion, in something like these words : " Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and claim to be treated as such." The officer glared at him like a wild beast, and aimed a despe rate blow at the boy's head with his sword. Andrew broke the force of the blow with his left hand, and thus received two wounds — one deep gash on his head, and another on his hand, the marks of both of which he carried to his grave. The officer, after achieving this gallant feat, turned to Robei-t Jackson, and ordered him to clean the boots. Robert also refused. The valiant Briton struck the young man so violent a sword-blow upon the head, as to pros trate and disable him. Those who were intimately acquainted with Andrew Jackson, and they alone, can know something of the feelings of the youth while the events of this morning were transpiring; what paroxysms of contemptuous rage shook his slender frame, when he saw his cousin's wife insulted, her house profaned, his brother gashed- 1781.] DURING T^E REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 29 himself as powerless to avenge as to protect. '¦'TU warrant Andy thought of it at New Orleans^'' said an aged relative of all the parties to me in an old farm-house, not far from the scene of this morning's dastardly work. To horse. Andrew was ordered to mount, and to guide some of the party to the house of a noted whig of the vicinity, named Thompson. Threatened with instant death if he failed to guide them aright, the youth" submitted, and led the party in the right . direction. A timely thought enabled him to be the deliverer of his neighbor, instead of his captor. Instead of approaching the house by the usual road, he conducted the party by a circuitous route, which brought them in sight of the house half a mile before they reached it. Andrew well knew that if Thompson was at home, he would be sure to have some one on the look-out, and a horse ready for the road. On coming in sight of the house, he saw Thompson's horse saddled and bridled, standing at a rack in the yard; which informed him both that the master was there, and that he was prepared for flight. The dragoons dashed for\«rd to ^seize their prey. While they were still some hundreds of yards from the house, Andrew had the keen deUght of seeing Thompson burst from his door, run to his horse, mount, and plunge into a foaming swollen creek that rushed by his house. He gained the opposite shore, and seeing that the dragoons dared not attempt the stream, gave a shout of defiance and galloped into the woods. The elation caused by the success of his stratagem, was soon swallowed up in misery. Andrew and Robert Jackson, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, and twenty other prisoners, all the victims of this raid of the dragoons into the Waxhaws, were placed on horses stolen in the same settlement, and marched toward Camden, South Carolina, a great British depot at the time, forty miles distant. It was a long and agonizing journey, especially to the wounded, among whom were the Jacksons and their cousin. Not an atom of food, nor a drop of water was allowed them on the way. Such was the brutality of the soldiers, that when these miserable lads tried to scoop up a little water from the streams which they forded, to appease their raging thirst, they were ordered to desist. At Camden their situation was one of utter wretchedness. Two hundred and fifty prisoners in a contracted inclosure drawn .around the jail; no beds of any description; no medicine; no medical at- 30 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1781. tendance, nor means of dressing the wounds; their only food a scanty supply of bad bread. They were robbed even of part of their clothing, besides being subject to the taunts and threats of every passing tory. The three relatives, it is said, were separated as soon as their relationship was discovered. Miserable among the miserable ; gaunt, yellow, hungry, and sick ; robbed- of his jacket and shoes; ignorant of his brother's fate; chafing with suppressed fury, Andrew passed now some of the most wretched days of his life. Ere long, the small-pox, a disease unspeakably terrible at that day, more terrible than cholera or plague has ever been, broke out among the prisoners, and raged unchecked by medicine, and unal- leviated by any kind of attendance or nursing. The sick and the well, the dying and the dead ; those shuddering at the first symp toms, and those putrid with the disease, were mingled together; and all but the dead were equally miserable. For some time Andrew escaped the contagion. He was reclin ing one day in the sun, near the entrance of the prison, when the officer^ of the guard, attracted^ as it seemed, by the youthfulness of his appearance, entered into conversation with him. The lad soon began to speak of that of which his heart was full — the condition of the prisoners and the bad quality of their" food. He remonstrated against their treatment with such energy and feeling that the offi cer seemed to be moved and shocked, and, what was far more im portant, he was induced to ferret out the villainy of the contractors who had been robbing the prisoners of their rations. From the day of Andrew's remonstrance the condition of the prisoners was ameliorated ; they were supplied with meat and better bread, and were otherwise better cared for. What a thrill of joy ran through the prisoners' quarters one day at the rumor that General Greene was coming to their deliverance ! He came with a brave little army of twelve hundred men. He ap proached within a mile of Camden'; but, having outstripped his artUlery, he deemed it best to encamp upon an eminence there and wait for the guns to come up before attacking the place. To this conclusion he was the more inclined, as Lord Rawdon's force in Camden, was inferior to his own. What excitement amono- the prisoners during the six days of General Greene's halt upon Hob kirk's Hill ! On the arrival of General Greene's army, they were hurried out of the redoubt about the jail, which was exposed to 1781.] DURING THE H E V O L U T I O N A E Y WAR. 31 the cannon of an attacking enemy ; but, upon the British general discovering that Greene had no cannon, they were permitted to re turn. The American army remaining inactive. Lord Rawdon re solved, inferior as his force was, to attack General Greene's camp before his artillery should arrive ; a bold design and boldly exe cuted. On th* 24th of April the prisoners more than suspected, from the movements of the troops in the town and from the flying whispers which wUl precede a battle, that Greene was to be attacked the very next morning. The battle would decide their fate as well as that of one of the hostUe armies. The inclosure in which the prisoners were confined would have commanded a perfect view of General Greene's position but for a board fence which had been recently erected on the summit of the wall. On the afternoon of the 24th, Andrew looked for a crevice in the fence, but not one could he find. In the course of the night, however, he managed, with the aid of an old razor-blade which had been generously bestowed upon the prisoners as a meat-knife, to hack out a knot from the fence. The morning light found him spy ing out the American position with eager eye. What he saw that morning through the knot-hole of his prison was his second lesson in the art of war. An impressive lesson it proved, and one he never forgot. There was the American en campment spread out in full view before him at the distance of a mile. General Greene, being weU assured of Rawdon's weakness, and anticipating nothing so little as an attack from a man whom he supposed to be trembUng for his own safety, neglected precautions against surprise. At ten in the morning, when Rawdon led ost his nine hundred men to the attack, Andrew, mad with yexation, saw Greene's men scattered over the hill, cleaning their arms, washing their clothes, and playing games, totaUy unprepared to resist. Rawdon, by taking a circuitous route, was enabled to break upon Greene's left with all the effect of a surprise. From his knot-hole the excited youth saw the sudden smoke of musketry, the rush of the Americans for their arms, the hasty falling in, the opening of Greene's fire, the fine dash of American horse upon Rawdon's rear, which .almost turned the tide of fortune, and made every heart in the prison leap for joy as Andrew described it to the listening throng be low him ; then the wild flight of horses running riderless about the hiU, the fire slacking, and, alas ! receding, till Rawdon's army swept 32 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1781. over the hiU and vanished on the other side, Greene in fuU retreat before him. The prisoners were in despair. Andrew's spirits sank under this accumulation of miseries, and he began to sicken with the first symptoms of the small-pox. Robert was in a condition still worse. The wound in his-*head had never been dressed, andlfe,d not healed. He, too, reduced as he was, began to shiver and burn with the fever that announces the dread disease. Another M'eek of prison life would have probably consigned both these boys to the grave. But they £ad a friend outside the prison — their mother, who, at this crisis of their fate, strove with the might of love for their deliv erance. Learning their forlorn condition, this heroic woman went to Camden, and succeeded, .after a time, in effecting an exchange of prisoners between a Waxhaw captain and the British general. The whig captain gave up thirteen soldiers, whom he had captured in the rear of the British army, and received in return the two sons of Mrs. Jackson and five of her neighbors. When the little family were reunited in the town of Camden, the mother could but gaze upon her boys with astonishment and horror — so worn and wasted were they with hunger, wounds, and disease. Robert could not stand nor even sit on horseback without support. The mother, however, had no choice but to get them home imme diately. Two horses were procured. One she rode herself. Rob ert was placed upon the other, and held in his seat by the returning prisoners, to whom Mrs. Jackson had just given liberty. Behind the sad procession, poor Andrew dragged his weak and weary limbs, bare-headed, bare-footed, without a jacket ; his only two gannents torn and dirty. The forty miles of lonely wilderness that lay be tween Camden and Waxhaw were nearly traversed, and tbe fevered lads were expecting in two hours more to enjoy the bUss of repose, when a chilly, drenching, merciless r.ain set in. When this occurred, the smaU-pox had reached that stage of development, when, after hav ing ragted within the system, it was about to break out in those loath some sores which give vent to the disease. Balk that effort of nature to throw off the poison, and it is nearly certain to strike in and kill • and nothing is so sure to do this as a cold bath. The boys reached home, and went to bed. In two days Robert Jackson was a corpse, and his brother Andrew a raving maniac. A mother's nursing, medical skUl, and a constitution sound at the 1781.] DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 33 core, brought the youth out of this peril, and set him upon the way to slow recovery. He was an invalid for several months. In the summer of 1781, a great cry of anguish and despair came up to Waxhaw from the Charleston prison-ships, wherein, among many hundreds of other prisoners, were confined some of the sons of Mrs. Jackson's sisters, and other friends and neighbors of hers from the Waxhaw country. Mrs. Jackson had seen at Camden what pris oners of war may suffer, when officers disdain their duty and con- tract<^s are scoundrels. She had also seen what a little vigor and tact can effect in the deliverance of prisoners. Andrew was no sooner quite out of danger than his brave mother resolved to go to Charles ton (distant one hundred and sixty miles), and do what she could for the comfort of the prisoners there. The tradition of the neighbor hood now is, that she performed the entire journey on foot, in com pany with two other women of like mind and purpose. It is more probable, however, and so thought General Jackson, that these gaUant women rode on horseback, carrying with them a precious store of gifts and rural luxuries and medicines for the solace of their imprisoned relatives, and bearing whole hearts full of tender mes sages and precious news from home. Protected, by being unpro tected, they reached Charleston in safety, and gained admission to the ships, and emptied their hearts and saddle-bags, and brought such joy to the haggard prisoners as only prisoners know,, when angel women from home visit them. And there the history of this blessed expedition ends. This only is further known of it, or wUl ever be : WhUe stopping at the house of a relative, WiUiam Barton by name, who lived two miles and a half from Charleston, Mrs. Jackson was seized with the ship fever, and, after a short illness, died, and was buried on the open plain near by. I have conversed with the daughter of WiUiam Barton, who is now Mrs. Tholnas Faulkner, of Waxhaw ; but she was not born when Mrs. Jackson died in her father's house, and she is able to add nothing to our knowledge of that event. One Uttle fact she has heard her mother mention, which shows the careful honesty of this race. The clothes of Mrs. Jackson, a sorry bundle, were sent back from Charleston aU the way to her sorrowing son at Waxhaw. It was not in the nature of Andrew Jackson not to mourn deeply the loss of such a mother ; and as he lay recovering by imperceptible degrees from his illness, he had leisure to dweU upon her virtues 34 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1782. and his own unhappiness. It was always a grief to him that he did not know where her remains were laid. As late in his life as during his presidency, he set on foot some inquiries respecting the place of her burial, with the design of having her sacred dust con veyed to the old church-yard at Waxhaw, where he wished to erect a monument in. honor of both his parents. It was too late. No exact information could then be obtained, and- the project was given up. No stone marks the burial place either of his father, mother, or brothers. 0 And so Andrew, before reaching his fifteenth birthday, was an orphan ; a sick and sorrowful orphan ; a homeless and dependent orphan ; an orphan of the Revolution. CHAPTER IV. HE STUDIES LA"W. Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, on the 19th of October, 1781. Savannah remained in the enemy's hands nine months, and Charleston fourteen months after that event ; but the war, in effect, terminated then. North and South. The Waxhaw people who sur vived returned to their homes, and resumed the avocations which the war had interrupted. The first event of any importance in young Jackson's life, after peace was restored to his neighborhood, was a quarrel. He was living, then, at the house of Major Thomas Crawford, where, also, one Captain Galbr.aith had his quarters, a commissary of the Amer ican army. Galbraith having taken dire offense at Andrew^ for some cause unknown, threatened to chastise him, upon which the lad told the irate officer that, before lifting his hand, to execute his threat he had better prepare for eternity. Galbraith forbore to strike ; but such iU feeling existed between the two that, soon after, Andrew went to live at the house of Mr. Joseph White, a relative of Mrs. Cr.awford, and a resident of the Waxhaw region. A son of this gentleman was a saddler. For six months, while Andrew Uved with the famUy, he worked in the saddler's shop as regularly as 1782.] HE STUDIES LAW. 35 the state of his health permitted. A low fever, similar to the fe^er and ague, hung about him long after his recovery from the smaU- pox, and kept him weak and dispirited. His short experience as a saddler's boy seems to have given him a predilection for that trade; at least he apprenticed a protege to it forty years " after. With returning health returned the frolicsome ^irit of the youth, which now began to seek gratification in modes less innocent than Ijie sportive feats of his school-boy days. Several Charleston fami lies, of wealth and social eminence, were hving in the neighborhood, waiting for the evacuation of their city. With the /oung men of these families Jackson became acquainted, and led a life with them, in the summer and autumn of 1782, that was more merry than wise. He was betrayed by their example and his own pride into habits of expose, which wasted his small resources. That passion for horses, which never left him, began to show itself. He ran races and rode races, gambled a little, drank a little, fought cocks occasionally, and comported hunself in the style usuaUy affected by dissipated young fools of that day. His aunts and uncles, no doubt, shook their heads and predicted that Andy would come to no good with his fine friends ; and perhaps they said as much to the youth, and said it too often, or in the wrong way, for Andrew seems not to have warmly loved his Carolina relations. He struck down no roots into the soU of his birth, and never revisited it nor held much communication with its inhabitants after he left it. But he left it young, and vast regions of wilderness stretched between him and his native State. He felt that he had no Uving kindred, and said so at a time when he had many cousins and second cousins living in North and South Carolina. I suppose there was little sympathy be tween this wild, irascible, aspiring youth and his staid, orderly elders. He was probably regarded as the scapegrace of the famUy. In December, 1782, to the joy and exultation of all the southern country, Charleston was evacuated, and its scattered whig famUies were free to return to their homes. Andrew, finding the country dull after the departure of his gay companions, suddenly resolved to foUow them to the city. He mounted his horse, a fine and valu able animal that he had contrived to possess, and rode to Charles ton through the wUderness. There, it appears, he remained long enough to expend his slender stock of money and run up a long bUl 36 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1782. ¦with his landloi-d. He was saved from total ruin by a curious inci dent, which is thus related by one who heard it from himself: " He had strolled one evening down the street, and was carried into a place whore some persons were amusing themselves at a game of dice, and much betting was in progress. He was challenged for a game by a person present, by whom a proposal was made to stake two hundred dollars against a fine horse on which Jackson had come to Charleston. After some deliberation, he accepted the chaUenge. Fortune was on his side ; the wager was won and paid. He forthwith departed, settled his biU next morning, and returned to his home. ' My calculation,' said he, speaking of this little inci dent, ' was that, if a loser in the game, I would give the landlord my saddle and bridle, as far as they would go toward the payment of his bill, ask a credit for the balance, and walk away from the city ; but being successful, I had new spirits infused into me, left the table, and from that moment to tbe present time I have never thrown dice for a wager.'" His solit.ary ride home through the woods, after this narrow escape, gave him an opportunity for reflection, which he improved. He came to the conclusion that he had passed the year 1782 very foolishly, and that if he meant to achieve, or be any thing in this world, he must alter his way of life. In some degree he did so ; not that he eschewed sport, or even gambling, as has been alleged. He was a keen lover of sport for many and many a year after this Charleston adventure ; and some of the sports then in vogue, and in which he delighted, were such as are shocking to the better feel ings of this generation. Cock-fighting, for example. Upon the return of the young man to the home of his childhood, he evidently took hold of life more earnestly than he had done be fore. He made some attempts, it is said, to continue his studies. Three entirely credible informants testify that Andrew Jaekson was a schoolmaster at this period of his life. One of these infor mants is Mr. John Porter, aged seventy-seven, still living nejtr the birth-place of General Jaekson; " a man so strictly honest," says Gen eral S. H. Walkup, " that any statement he may make will be cer tainly correct." Nothing is more certain than that part of the small cash capital upon which Andrew Jackson started in his career earned amid the hum and bustle of an old-field school. It is th more certain, as the uniform tradition of the Waxhaw country is 1784.] HE STUDIES LAW. 37 that he was a very poor young man, who inherited nothing from his father, because his father had nothing to leave. The old people there scout the idea of " old man Andrew" having owned the land on which he lived. The tradition at Charlotte is, that when young Andrew attended Queen's College, on the hill where the gold grew, he often passed along down the street to school, with his trowsers too ragged to keep his shirt from fiying in the wind. The fact of his possessilig u horse worth two hundred doUars seems, at first, irreconcilable with these traditions of his poverty. At the North it woidd be so ; but not at the South. No boy in the rural parts of the South, with so many uncles around him as young Jackson had, could get far on toward manhood without re ceiving the gift of a colt. At the South a man without a horse is only less unfortunate than a man without legs. Every youth of respectable connections has one, as a matter of course. Thus we find Hugh Jackson, though without property, mounting his own horse to go with Colonel Davie's troop to the war. Robert, too, was mounted, as well as Andrew, as soon as the boys were old enough to serve in the 'field. The South may be defined as the region wher^ every thing is a long way off,' where you go five miles to see your next-door neighbor, seven miles to church, fifteen mUes to a store, thirty miles to court, a three days' journey to mar ket. What can a man do in such a country with no legs but his own? For a year certainly, and, probably, for two years, after Andrew's return from Charleston, he remained in the Waxhaw country, em ployed either in teaching school, or in some less worthy occupation. . Peace was formaUy proclaimed in April, 1783. Some time between the proclamation of peace and the winter of 1784-5, Andrew Jackson resolved upon studying law. In that winter he gathered together his earnings and whatever property he may have possessed, mounted his horse again, and set his face north ward in quest of a master in the law under whom to pursue his studies. He rode to SaUsbuiy, North Carolma, a distance of seventy-five mUes from the Waxhaws. Either because he met no encourage ment at that place, or for some other reason beyond our guess, he then joiu-neyed sixty iniles westward, to Morganton, Burke county. North CaroUna, where Uved Colonel WaightstiU Avery, a famous 38 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1784. lawyer of that day, and the owner of the best law library in that part of the country. He applied to Colonel Avery for instruction, and for board in his house. It was a new and wild region of country, and the house of Colonel Avery, like all others in the vicinity, was a log-house of the usual limited size. He was, there fore, much against his wUl, compeUed to decUne receiving the appli cant into his house ; and as there was no other boarding-place to be found in the neighborhood, the young man had no choice but to return to Salisbury.* At SaUsbury he entered the law office of Mr. Spruce McCay, an eminent lawyer at that time, and, in later days, a judge of high distinction, who is still remembered with honor in North Carohna. Andrew was not quite eighteen years of age when he found him. self installed as a student of law. He thus had the »tart of most of the distinguished men with whom, and against whom, he after ward acte^. Henry Clay was then a fatherless boy of seven, living with his mother in the Slashes of Hanover county, "Virginia. Daniel Webster was toddling about his father's farm in New Hampshire, a sickly child of four. Calhoun was an infant not two years old at his father's farm-house in South Carolina. John Quincy Adams was a young man of seventeen, about returning home from Europe to enter Harvard College. Martin Van Buren, a child two years old, might have been seen, on fine days, playing on the steps of his father's tavern in Kinderhook. Crawford — once so famous, now reduced to twelve lines in a biographical dictionary — was a Georgia school-boy of twelve. Aaron Burr was just getting into full practice as a New York lawyer, amiable, happy, fortunate, the future all bright before him. Benton, Biddle, Taney, Cass, Buchanan, Blair, Kendall, Lewis, Woodbury, Eaton and the rest, were not born. SaUsbury, the capital of Rowan county, is a pleasant old town in the midst of that undulating, red-clayed region of North Carolina the products of which are wheat, cotton, turpentine and gold as well as the worst roads and the most obUging people in the world. It was an old town, for America, when the Revolution began. The * These facta I learn from Colonel Isaac T. Avery, of Burke county, North Caro hna, a son of the Colonel Avery to whom Jackson applied on this occasion The present Colonel Avery lives on or near the site o' the log-house wherein his father lived when young Jackson rode up to his gate "u the winter of 1784. 1785.] HBSTUDIESLAW. ^39 public weUs, in the middle of the streets, have not yet been provi ded with pumps, but exhibit the sheds, wheels, and buckets of generations past, and there is one, near, the tavern where Jackson used to Uve, so extremely ancient in appearance that he may have stopped at it on his way home from " the office " to quench his thirst. In one of the back streets of this old town, on the lawn in front of one of its largest and handsomest mansions, close to the street and to the left of the gate, stands a little box of a house fifteen feet by sixteen, and one story high. It is built of shingles, several of which have decayed and faUen off. It is too small for a wood-shed or a corn-crib, and is in the wrong place for a hen-house or a negro cabin ; so that, if a stranger's eye should chance to be arrested by so insignificant an object, he would be puzzled, to decide its pur pose. If he should push open the door, he would be still more at a -loss. The inside waUs are ceUed. There are remains of old wainscoting on one side. Some stout, dark-green shelving remains. The floor is Uttered and heaped high, and the fireplace is filled, and the shelves covered with old moldy books, pamphlets. Con gressional documents (fuH of Jackson), speeches franked by the au thors thereof, old letters and law papers, Philadelphia magazines of forty years ago, odd volumes of poetry, and other reUcs of a busy, cultivated life long past. This little decaying house of shingles was the law-office of Spruce McCay, when Andrew Jackson studied law under him at Salisbury, in 1785 and 1786. The mansion behind it stands on the site of the house in which Mr. McCay lived at the time, and the property is StiU owned and occupied by a near connection of his, who has pre served the old office from regard to his memory. In that office, along with two fellow-students, McNairy and Crawford, Andrew Jackson studied law, copied papers, and did whatever else fell to the lot of law students at that day, for nearly two years. In one of the main streets of the town, a few yards from the office, stUl stands the Rowan House, the t.avern in which the three students boarded and caroused — a rambling old place, composed of many buildings, after the southern fashion, with vast fireplaces, high mantels, and curious, low, unceiled rooms. The landlord shows a little apartment which young Jackson is said to have occupied ; and it may have been that one, as well as another. But there is 40 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON, [1785. no doubt that the huge and lofty fireplace in the office of the hotel, is the fireplace round which these three merry young blades often quaffed their landlord's punch, and tossed up to decide who should pay for it. Salisbury teems with traditions respecting the residence there of Andrew Jackson as a student of law. Their general tenor may be expressed in the language of the first old resident of the town, to whom I applied for information : " Andrew Jackson was the most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, horse-racing, card-playing, mis chievous feUow that ever Uved in Salisbury." Add to this such expressions as these : " He did not trouble the law-books much ;" " he was more in the stable than iu the office ;" " he was the head of all the rowdies hereabouts." That is the substance of what the Salisbury of 1859 has to say of the Andrew Jackson of 1785. Nothing is more likely than that he was a roaring, rollicking fel low, overflowing with life and spirits, and rejoicing to engage in all the fun that was going ; but I do not believe that he neglected his duties at the office to the extent to which Salisbury says he did. There are good reasons for doubting it. At no part of Jackson's career, when we can get a look at him through a pair of trust worthy eyes, do we find him triffing with life. We find him often wrong, but always earnest. He never so much as raised, a field of cotton which he did not have done in the best manner known to him. It was not in the nature of this young man to take a great deal of trouble to get a chance to study law, and then entirely to throw away that chance. Of course he never became, in any proper sense of the word, a lawyer; but that he was not -diligent and eager in picking up the little legal knowledge necessary for practice at that day, will become less credible to the reader the more he knows of him. Once, in the White House, forty-five years after this period, when some one from Salisbury reminded him of his residence in that town, he said, with a smile, and a look of retrospection on his aged face : " Yes, I lived at old Salisbury. I was but a raw lad then, but I did my best." Among the most respectable ladies in Salisbury, are the Misses , whose ancestors were old residents of the town when Lord Cornwallis had his quarters near their»father's house. Their par ents, aunts and uncles were living in the town when Jackson lived there. One of their uncles, George Dunn by name, was in Jack- 1785.] HE STUDIES LAW. 41 son's own roystering set, «nd afterward went with him to Tennes see, and hved long in his family. These ladies, therefore, are well informed respecting the life of Jackson in their native town ; and the more so, as their mother was much in the habit of talking of him in their hearing after he became famous. They fully confirm the current tradition of the town with regard to the young stu dent's sportive habits. He played cards, fought cocks, ran horses, threw the " long^ bullet " (cannon-ball, slung in a strap, and thrown as a trial of strength), carried off gates, moved out-houses to remote fields, and occasionaUy indulged in a downright drunken debauch. Foot-races were much in vogue at that time — a sport in which the long-limbed Jackson was formed to excel. Among the runners was one Hugh Montgomery, a man of some note in revolutionary annals, who was as remarkable for strength and bulk as Jackson was for agiUty. To equalize the two in a foot-race, Montgomery once proposed to run a quarter of a mile on these conditions:, Montgomery to carry a man on his back, Jackson to give Montgo- nfery a start of half the distance. Jackson accepted the challenge, and the absurd race was run amid the frantic laughter of half the town ; Jackson winning by two or three yards. AU came into the winning-post in good condition, except the man whom Montgomery had carried. In his eagerness to win, Montgomery had clutched and shaken him with such violence, that the man was more damaged and breathless than either of the two competitors. Oue other Salisbury story, from the same most trustworthy source : Once upon a time, the three law-students and their friends celebrated some event, how forgotten, by a banquet at the tavern. The evening passed off most hilariously. Toward midnight, it was agreed that glasses and decanters which had witnessed and promoted the happiness of such an evening, ought never to be profaned to any baser use. They were smashed accordingly. And if the glasses, why not the table ? The table was teoken to splinters. Then the chairs were destroyed, and every othff article of furniture. There was a bed in the room, and the destroying spirit being stiU unsatia- ted, the clothes and curtains were seized and torn ilto ribbons. Lastly, the combustible part of the fragments was heaped upon the fire and consumed. WUd doings these. Most young men have taken part in some such madness once ; only, it is not generally mentioned in their biographies. 42 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [l786. A leaf of the Rowan House book, on which the landlord kept his account with Jackson, is said to be still in existence, but not visible to mortal eye. Those who profess to have seen the leaf, describe it to have contained three kinds of entries : first, the regular charges for board ; secondly, charges for pints, quarts, and gaUons of whisky; thirdly, aU account, per contra, in which the landlord acknowledges his indebtedness to Jackson for certain sums won by the latter at cards, or by betting upon races. But enough of this. From these traditions and stories we learn merely that, when Jackson studied law at Salisbury, he was exceed ingly fond of the sports of the time, and indulged in tliern, perhaps, to excess. Salisbury, at that period, was noted for the gayety of its inhabitants, and continued to be until about thirty years ago- The old race-course, upon which young Jackson so often ran his horses and ran lumself, where he beat the huge Hugh Montgomery with a man on his back, and where he enjoyed the happiest days of the happiest part of his youth, is now grown over with wood and almost forgotten. The young men lounge on the street corners,- silently consuming their energies with their tobacco, waiting for the time to come when the honest old games shaU return freed from the vices which drove them into disgraceful exile. The good people of SaUsbury think their town is more moral now than it was in young Jackson's day. It is certainly more quiet. Our student completed his preparation for the bar in the office of Colonel John Stokes, a brave soldier of the Revolution, and after ward a lawyer of high repute, from whom Stokes county. North Carolina, took its name. Colonel Stokes was one of those who fell covered with wounds, at the Waxhaw massacre in 1780, and may have been nursed in the old meeting-house by Mrs. Jackson and her sons. Before the spring of 1787, about two years after beginning the study of the law, Andrew Jackson was licensed to practice in the courts of North Carolina. Br He was twenty years of age when he completed the preliminary part of his education at SaUsbury. He had grown to be a tall fellow. He stood six feet and an inch in his stockings. He was remarkably slender for that robust age of the world, but he was also remarkably erect ; so that his form had the effect of symmetry without beinff symmetrical. His movements and carriage were singularly graceful 1787.] HE STUDIES LAW. 43 and dignified. In the accomplishments of his day and sphere he excelled the young men of his own circle, and was regarded by them as their chief and model. He was an exquisite horseman, as all will agree who ever saw him on horseback. Jefferson teUs us that Gene ral Washington was the best horseman of his time, but he could scarcely have been a more graceful, or a more daring rider than Jack son. Young Jackson towec? a horse. From early boyhood to extreme old age he was the master and friend of horses. He was one of those who must own a horse, if they do not a house, an acre or- a coat. Horses may be expected to play a leading part in the career of this tall young barrister. Into the secrets of forest and frontier life, Jackson was early initiated. He was used to camping out, and knew how to make it the most luxurious mode of passing a night known to man. He was a capital shot, and became a better one by and hj. " George," Jois favorite servant in after years, used to point out the tree, in which he had often seen his master put two successive balls into the same hole. His bodily activity, as we have seen, was unusual. He was a young man, of a quick, brisk, springy step, with not a lazy bone in his body ; and though his constitution was notirobust, it was tough and enduring beyond that of any man of whom history gives account. He was far fi-om handsome. His face was long, thin, and fair ; his forehead high and somewhat narrow; his hair, reddish-sandy in color, was exceedingly abundant, and feU down low over his fore head. The bristling hair of the ordinary portraits belongs to the latter half of his life. There was but one feature of his face that was not common-place — his eyes, which were of a deep blue, and capable of blazing with great expression when he was roused. Yet, as his form seemed fine without being so, so Im face, owing to the quick, direct glance of the man, and his look of eager intel- hgenc^ produced on others more than the effect of beauty. To hear the old people of Tennessee, and particularly the ladies, talk of him, you would think he must have been an ApoUo in form and feature. The truth is, this young man was gifted with that mysterious, omnipotent something, which we caU a presence. He was one of those who convey to strangers the impression that they are " some body ;" who naturaUy, and without thinking of it, take the lead; 44 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1787. who are invited or permitted to take it as a matter of course. It was said of him, that if he should join a party of travelers in the wUderness, and remain with them an hour, and the party should then be attacked by Indians, he would instinctively take the com mand, and the company would, as instinctively, look to him for orders. i This young lawyer, like most of those who had seen and felt what liberty had cost, was a very warm lover of his country. He remembered — ^how vividly he remembered ! — the scenes of the recent Revolution ; his mother's sad fate, and its cause ; the misery and needless death of his brother ; his own painful captivity : the Waxhaw massacre ; the ravaged homes of his relatives and neigh bors ; Tarleton's unsparing onslaughts ; and all the wild and shock ing ferocities of the war, as it was waged in the border counties of North Carolina. These things made the deepest imagin,able im pression upon his mind. He could scarcely place other citizen|| upon the same level as the soldiers of thre Revolution ; whom he regarded as a kind of republican aristocracy, entitled, before all others, to honor and office. At this age, and long after, he cher- ished that intense antipathy to Great Britain which distinguished the survivors of the Revolution ; some traces- of which could be discerned in the less enlightened parts of the country until within these few years. In these, respects he was the most American of Americans — an embodied Declaration-of-Independence — the Fourth- of'July incarnate ! But we must not linger too long on the threshold. Our young friend has a very long and most eventful journey before him. The rest of his equipment is sufficiently known. From the schools he has derived little L^oui the law-books not much ; from fortune nothing. He mounts ; Tie is away. He leaves Salisbury possessing little beside the horse'he rides, his lawyer's license, a law-book or two, youthful energies and youthful hopes. • A year now goes by, in which he is nearly lost to view. He used to say that, after being admitted to the bar, he lived awhile at Martinsville, GuUford county. North Carolina, where two inti mate friends of his, Henderson and Searcy, kept a store. That vil lage has long ago disappeared ; there is but one old, uninhabited house now to be seen where it stood.. There is a tradition in the State, that he accepted a constable's commission this year an 1788.] REMOVAL TO TENNESSEE. 45 office of more consequence then than now. The strong. probabUity is, that he assisted his friends in their store, and so gained an insight into the mystery of frontier store-keeping, which he afterward turned to account. CHAPTER V. REMOVAL TO TENNESSEE. Finding no opportunity to practice his profession in the old set tlements, young Jackson resolved to join a large party of emigrants bound for that part of the western country which is now the State of Tennessee, but which was then Washington county. North Car olina. John McNairy, a friend' of Jackson's, had been appointed judge of the Superior Court for that vast region, and Jackson was invested with the office of solicitor, or public prosecutor, for the same district. This office was not in request, nor desirable. It was, in fact, difficult to get a suitable person to accept an appoint ment of the kind, which was to be exercised in a wilderness five hundred mUes distant from the populous parts of North Carolina, and where the office of prosecutor was sure to be unpopular, diffi cult and dangerous. Thomas Searcy, another of Jackson's friends, received the appointment of clerk of the court. Three or four more of his young acquaintances, lawyers and others, resolved to go with him, and seek their fortune in the new^nd vaunted country of the West. The party rendezvoused at Morganton in the spring or early summer of 1788, mounted and equipped for a ride over the moun tains to Jonesboro', then the chief settlement of East Tennessee, and the first halting-place of companies bound to the lands on the Cum berland River. There was but one mode of traversing the wilderness. " A poor man," says Ramsey, " with seldom more than a single pack-horse, on which the wife and infant were carried, wdth a few clothes and bed-quUts, a skillet and a small sack of meal, was often seen wend ing his way along the narrow mountain trace, with a rifle on his 46 LIFE OF AJIDEEW JACKSON. [1788. shoulder, the elder sons carrying an ax, a hoe, sometimes an auger and a saw, and the elder daughters leading or carrying the smaller chUdren." Our cavalcade of judge, solicitor, clerk and lawyers, wended their way in double file along the same road, each riding his own horse ; a pack-horse or two carrying the effects of the learn ed judge. Every horseman had in his saddle-bags a small wallet, iu which he carried letters from citizens in the old States to settlers in the new — a service most cheerfully and punctiliously performed in those days, Mr. Ramsey tells us. At night, of course, there was no choice but to camp out in the open air by the side of the path. Between Morganton and Jonesboro' there were then no hostile In dians, and the first stage of tbe journey was performed without dif ficulty and without adventure. Indeed, the trace between these towns had become a road, safe for wagons of a rough frontier con struction. The judge and his party remained several weeks at Jonesboro', waiting for the assembling of a sufficient number of emigrants, and for the arrival of a guard from Nashville to escort them. Nashville is one hundred and eighty-three miles from Jonesboro'. The road ran through a gap in the Cumberland mountains, and thence enter ed a wilderness more dangerously infested with hostUe Indians than any other portion of the western country — not even excepting the dark and bloody land of Kentucky. Of Jackson's journey through the"'wilderness on this occasion, but one authentic incident is now remembered ; which comes to me, in a direct line, by trustworthy channels, from the lips of Thomas Searcy, the clerk of the Superior Court, who rode by Jackson's side. It was a night scene. The company, nearly a hundred in number, among whom were women and children, had just passed through what was considered the most dangerous part of the wil derness. They had inarched thirty-six hours, a night and two days, without halting longer than an hour; the object being to reach a certain point, which was thought to be safe camping- ground. The place was reached soon after dark, and the tired travelers hastened to encamp. Earlier in the ev^ing than usual, the exhausted women and children of the party crept into their Uttle tents and went to sleep. The men, except those who were to stand sentinel the first half of the night, wrapped then- blankets round them, and lay down 1788.] REMOVAL TO TENNESSEE. 47 under the lee of sheltering logs, with^heir feet toward the fii-e. Silence feU upon the camp. All slept save the sentinels, and one of the party who was not inclined to sleep, tired as he was, Andrew Jackson by name. This young gentleman sat on the ground, with his back against a tree, smoking a corn-cob pipe, for an hour after his companions had srmk into sleep; whether because he enjoyed his pipe or suspected danger, tradition saith not. About ten o'clock, as he was beginning to doze, he feU to observing the various notes of the owls that were hooting- in the forest round him. A remark able country this for owls, he thought, as he was falling asleep. Just then, an owl that he had heard at a considerable distance, startled him by setting up a louder hoot than usual nearer the camp. Something pecuUar in the note struck his attention. In an instant he was the widest awake man in Tennessee. All his mind was in his ears, and his ears were intent on the hooting of the owls. He grasped his rifle, and crept cautiously to where his friend Searcy was sleeping, and woke him. " Searcy," said Jackson, " raise your head and make no noise." " What's the matter ?" asked Searcy. " The owls — listen — there — -there again. Isn't that a little too natural ?" " Do you think so ?" asked Searcy. " I know it," replied Jackson. " There are Indians all around us. I have heard them in every direction. They me^n to attack before daybreak." The more experienced woodsmen were roused, and confirmed the young lawyer's surmise. Jackson advised that the camp be instantly but quietly broken up, and the march resumed. His advice was adopted, and the company neither heard nor saw any further signs of the presence of an enemy duruig the remainder of the night. A party of hunters, who reached their camping ground .an hour after it had been abandoned, lay down by their fires and slept. Before the day dawned, the Indians were upon them, and kiUed all but one of the party. Near the same spot, in the foUowing spring, when Judge McNairy was returning to Jonesboro', and had no Jackson in his retinue, his party was surprised in the night by Indians, and narrowly escaped destruction. One white man was kUled, besides one friendly chief and his son. The judge and his companions were put to total rout, fled, swam the river upon 48 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1788. which they had encamped aud left their horses, camp equipage, and clothing in the hands of the savages. Before the end of October, 1788, the long train of emigrants, among whom was Mr. Solicitor Jackson, reached Nashville, to the great joy of the settlers there, to whom the annual arrival of such a train was all that an arrival can be— a thrilUng event, news from home, reunion wdth friends, increase of wealth, additional pro tection against a foe powerful and resolute to destroy. Ramsey says : " The new comer, on his arrival in the settlements, was everywhere and at all times greeted with a cordial welcome. Was he without a family ? He was at once taken in as a cropper or a farming hand, and found a home in the kind family of some settler. Had he a wife and children ? They were asked, in back woods phrase, ' to camp with us till the neighbors can put up a cabin for you.' " Great news reached Nashville by this tr.ain ; news that all was right with the new national constitution, a majority of the states having accepted it ; news that the legislatures of the states were about choosing presidential electors, who would undoiibtedly elect General Washington the first president of the republic. Washing ton was inaugurated in the AprU foUowing the arrival of Jackson at his new home. There is no region better adapted to the purposes of man than that of whi^ Nashville is the center and capital. A gently undu lating and most fertile country ; a land of hard wood, with the beautiful river Cumberland winding through the midst thereof. It happens that the country which is best for the civUized man is best for the savage also. The vaUey of the Cumberland was a hunting- ground so keenly coveted by surrounding tribes that the race which originaUy held it, worn out by the incessant wars, abandoned it in despair*; so that when French M. CharlviUe, in 1714, estabUshed himself on the site of Nashville, he found the country almost de populated, and, consequently, abounding in the wild beasts whose skins he came to trap and trade for. In an old deserted Shawnee fort on the rocky bluffs of the Ciimberland, M. CharlviUe and his French trappers stored their goods and furs. The Frenchmen, it seems, trapped and traded in peace for many years ; Indian instinct not discerning m them the possible subduers and masters of the country. Boone passed westward in 1769. A 1788.] REMOVAL TO TENNESSEE. 49 party of nine or ten hunters penetrated the Cumberland wilderness in 1771, but remained not. In 1779 a little company of pioneers, nine in number, headed by Captain James Robertson, pitched their camp upon the site of Charlville's abandoned settlement, with the ' design of settling there. Not another-white man within a hundred mUes. No effective succor nearer than three hundred. Twenty thousand Indians, the most warlike and inteUigent of their race, within a week's run. Captain James Robertson left the " settlements" about Jones boro' with the understanding that his friend. Colonel John Donel son, a brave and wealthy old Virginia • surveyor, was at once to follow him to the banks of the Cumberland with a party of emi grants. Robertson and his party were only pioneers, who were- to buUd huts and plant corn against the arrival of the rnain body under Donelson. Robertson's party consisted of men ; Donelson's of famUies, among whom was the famUy of Robertson himself. To avoid the toil and perU of the route through the wilderness, then Uttle known and unbroken, Colonel Donelson conceived the idea of attempting to reach the new settlement by water ; down the river Holston to the Tennessee, down the Tennessee to the Ohio, up the Ohio to the Cumberland, up the Cumberland to Captain Robertson and a New Home. The whole distance was considerably more than two thousand miles. No man, white or red, had ever at tempted the voyage. The greater part of the route»was infested by Indians. The project, in short, was worthy, for its boldness, of the destined father-in-law of General Jackson. Among those who shared the dangers of this voyage was Rachel Donelson, the lead- . er's daughter, a black-eyed, black-haired brunette, as gay, bold and handsome a lass as ever danced on the deck of a flat boat, or took the helm while her father took a shot at the Indians. We shaU meet this young lady often in the course of our narrative. The voyage lasted four months. Colonel Donelson kept a jour nal, in which he entered whatever occurred that was unusual, but with such brevity, that the history of that long voyage, as written by Donelson, could be printed on six of these pages. The manu script is still preserved in the famUy of one of his grandchUdren, entitled, "Journal of a Voyage, intended by God's Permission, in the good boat Adventure, from Patrick Henry on Holston river to the French Salt Springs on Cumberland river; kept by John Donaldson." 8 50 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1788. Starting in the depth of a winter long remembered for its severity, the " good boat" was often delayed by the fall of water and " most excessive hard frost ;" so that two months passed before it began to make good progress. Joined by other boats in the spring, the Adventure floated down the winding, rippling, beautiful Tennessee, in company with a considerable fleet, bojmd for the lower country. Many and dire were the mishaps that befell them. Sometimes a boat would run upon a shoal, and remain immovable till its entire contents were landed. Sometimes a boat was whirled around a bend and dashed against a projecting point, and sunk. Once a young man went hunting, and did not return. They fired their four-pounder and searched the woods, but in vain. The fleet sailed away, but the old father of the lost hunter stayed behind, alone in the wilderness, to continue the search. Both were rescued at length. One man died of his frozen limbs. Two children were born. On board one boat, containing twenty-eight persons, the smaU-pox was raging, and it was agreed that this boat should al ways sail a certain distance behind the rest, but within hearing of a horn. The wily Indians pounced upon the infected boat, kUled the fighting men, took prisoners the women and children, carried off the contents of the boat into the woods, and nothing further was seen of either. " Their cries were distinctly heard," says the jour nal, " by those boats in the rear ;" and it was a great grief to the whole company, " uncertain how soon they might share the same fate." The Indians caught the smallpox, of which hundreds died before the disease had spent its force. The leader of the expedition made the last entry into his journal on the 24th of AprU, 1780 : " This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big Salt Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Captain Robertson and his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to restore to him and others their families and friends who were intrusted to our care, and who, sometime since perhaps, despaired of ever meeting again. Though our prospects at present are dreary, we have found a few log-cabins, which have been buUt on a cedar bluff above the Lick, by Cai ain Robertson and his company." And so the colony was planted. This was but eight years before the arrival of Judge McNairy and his party of young la-wyers. Durmg the whole of that period, the settlei-s had to battle for exist^ 1788.] REMOVAL TO TENNESSEE. 51 ence. The first spring they nearly starved"; for the extraordinary winter had exhausted the corn and thinned the game. In "the settlements," that is, in East Tennessee and Kentucky, corn sold that season at one hundred and sixty-five dollars per bushel. The Indians always hovering round, made it dangerous to go a hundred yards from the station. Never were a people so beset. While some planted corn, others had to watch against the skulking foe. When the girls went blackberrying, a guard invariably turned out to escort them, and stand guard over the surrounding thickets. Nay, if a man went to a spring to drink, another stood on the watch with his rifle cocked and poised. Whenever four or five men, says the annalist of Tennessee, were assembled at a spring or elsewhere, they held their guns in their hands, and stood, not face to face, as they conversed, but with their backs turned to each other, all facing different ways, watching for a lurking or a creeping Indian. With aU their precautions, not a month passed in which some one did not faU before the rifle of the sleepless enemy. It was a wonder the little band -w^as not driven away or exterminated. On one occasion, indeed, it required all of Captain Robertson's influ ence and eloquence to induce the settlers not to abandon the spot, as its old proprietors, the Shawnees, had done before them, and, more recently, the bands of traders and trappers under CharlviUe. There were times, when even Robertson and his friends might haye fled, if to fly had not been more perilous than to stay. The settlement grew apace, however. When Jackson arrived, in 1788, the stations along the Cumberland may have contained five thousand souls or more. But the place was stUl an outpost of civ- ' Uization, and so exposed to Indian hostility, that it was not safe to live five mUes from the central stockade — a circumstance that in fluenced the whole career and Ufe of our young friend, the newly- arrived solicitor ; for whom let us delay no longer to find lodgings. Colonel John Donelson took root in the country and flourished greatly. Lands, negroes, cattle, horses, whatever was wealth in the settlemen :;he had in greater abundance than any other man. They " oint o.,t still, near NashvUle, the field he first tilled, and the spot where he made his wonderfid escape from the Indians ; a story I had the pleasure of hearing one of his grandsons tell, but have not the space here to repeat. During one of the long winters. 52 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1788. when an unexpected mflux of emigrants had reduced the stock of corn alarmingly low. Colonel Donelson mercifuUy moved off, with all his corn-consuming host, to Kentucky, and there lived untU the season of plenty returned. During this residence in Kentucky, his daughter Rachel gave her heart and hand to Lewis Robards, and the brave old man returned to the Cumberland without her. Many were the adventures and the exploits of this sturdy pioneer, — this hero, who never suspected that he was a hero. Yet after so many hair-breadth escapes, by flood and field, his time came at last. He was in the woods surveying, far from home. Two young men who had been with him came along and found him near a creek, pierced by bullets ; whether the bullets of the lurking savage or the white robber was never, known. It was only known that he met a violent death from some ambushed, cowardly villains, white or red ; his daughter Rachel always thought the former. She thought no Indians could iill her father, who knew tEeir ways too well to be caught by them. When young Jackson arrived at the settlement, he found the widow Donelson living there in a block-house, somewhat more commodious than any other dwelling in the place ; for she was a notable housekeeper, as well as a woman of property. With her then lived her daughter Rachel and her Kentucky husband, Lewis Robards. Robards had bought land five miles from the Lick, and was living with his mother-in-law until the Indians should be suffi ciently subdued or pacified to render it safe to live so far from the settlement. Jackson, soon after his arrival, went also to live with Mrs. Donelson as a boarder — an arrangement no less satisfactory to her than to him. It was a piece of good fortune to her to have another man in her spare cabin as a protector against the Indians ; whUe he had found the best boarding j^lace in the settlement — not the least pleasant feature of it being the presence of the gay and lively Mrs. Robards, the best story-teller, the best dancer the sprightliest companion, the most dashing horsewoman in the western country. 1789.] JACKSON PRACTICES LAW. 53 CHAPTER VI. JACKSON PRACTICES LAW. The arrival of the young lawyer at NashviUe was most opportune. The only licensed lawyer in West Tennessee was engaged exclu sively in the service of debtors, who, it seems, made common cause against the common enemy, their creditors. Jackson came not as a lawyer merely, but as the public prosecutor, and there was that in his bearing which gave assurance that he was the man to issue un popular writs and give them effect. The merchants and others, who could not coUect their debts, came to him for help. He undertook their business, and executed it with a promptitude that secured his career at the bar of Tennessee. ' Before he hafti been a month in NashviUe, he had issued, it is said, seventy writs to delinquent debtors. He was the man wanted. And this was the first instance of a certain good fortune that attended him all through his life : he was continually finding himself placed in circumstances calculated to call into conspicuous exercise the very qualities in which he excelled all mankind. Such of the old court records of West Tennessee as have escaped time, fire and vermin, contain just enough about Andrew Jackson to show that he jumped immediately into a large practice. It was customary then for a lawyer to attend every court held in the State. Two months after his arrival in the western country we find him attending court in Sumner county, near the Kentucky border, a day's ride from Nashville. The tattered records of Sumner county con tain this entry: — "January 12th, 1789. Andrew Jackson, Esq., produced his license as an attorney-at-law in court, and took the oath required by law." Another entry from the same records is this : — "October 6th, 1790. Andrew Jackson, Esq!, proved a bill of sale from Hugh McGary to Caspar Mansker, for a negro man, which was O. K." [A common western mistake for O. R., which means Ordered Recorded. Hence, perhaps, the saying " O. K."] The records of the quarter sessions court of Davidson county, the county of which NashvUle is the capital, show, that at the April term, 1790, there were one hundred and ninety-two cases on the two dockets (Appearance docket and Trial docket) ; and that Andrew 54 LIFE O.F ANDREW JACKSON. [1789. Jackson was employed as counsel in forty-two of them. On one leaf of the record of the January term, 1793, there are thirteen suits entered, mostly for debt, in every one of which Andrew Jackson was employed. At the AprU term of the same year, he was coun sel in seventy-two out of one hundred and fifty-five cases. In most of these he was -counsel for the defence. At the July term of the same year, he was employed in siity cases out of one hundred and thirty-five ; and at the October term, in sixty-one cases out of one hundred and thirty-two. In the -four terms of ] 794, there were three hundred and ninety-seven cases before the same court, in two hundred and twenty-eight of which Jackson acted as counsel. And during these and later years, he practiced at the courts of Jonesboro', and other towns in East Tennessee. What, with his extensive practice and his long journeys, he was the busiest of men; Half his time, as I conjecture, must have been spent in traveling. During the first seven years of his residence in Tennessee, he performed the journey through the mountain wUder ness that lay between Jonesboro' and Nashville, a distance of nearly two hundred miles, twenty-two times ; and this at a time when a man was in peril of his life from the Indians at his own front door. He had rare adventures during those long horseback rides from court-house to court-house — journeys that sometimes kept him camp ing out in the woods twenty successive nights. The shorter jour neys he occasionally performed alone, protected only by the keen ness of his eye and ear, passing through regions where he dared not kill a deer or light a fire for fear the smoke or the report of his rifle should convey the knowledge of his presence to some hidden savage. The journeys, from the Cumberland to Jonesboro' and KnoxviUe, he often made in, company wdth the guard that turned out to conduct parties of emigrants to the western settlements, and sometimes with a smaUer party of lawyers and clients. One lonely night passed in the woods was very vividly remem bered by him. He came, soon after dark, to a creek that had been swollen by the rains into a roaring torrent. The night was as dark as pitch, and the rain fell heavily. To have attempted the ford would have been suicidal, nor did he dare to light a fire, nor even let his horse move about to browse. So he took off the saddle and placing it at the foot of a tree, sat upon it, wrapped in his blanket and holding his rifle in One hand and his bridle in the other. All 1789.] JACKSON PRACTICES LAW. 55 through the night he sat motionless and silent, listenhig to the noise of the flood and the pattering of the rain-drops upon the leaves. When the day dawned, he saddled his horse again, mounted, swam the creek, and continued his journey. Once, as he was about to cross the wilderness, he reached the rendezvous too late, and found that his party had started. It was evening, and he had ridden hard, but there was no hope of catch ing up, unless he started immediately and traveled all night. With a single guide he took the road, and came up to the camp-fires just before dayUght ; but his friends had already marched. Continuing his journey, he was startled, when dayUght came, to discover the tracks of Indians in the road, who were evidently following the travelers. Equally evident was it to the practiced eyes of these men of the woods, that the Indians outnumbered the whites. They pressed forward, and paused not till the tracks showed that the enemy weie but a few minutes in advance of them. Then, the guide refusing to proceed, Jackson divided the stock of provisions equaUy with him, saw him take his way homeward, and kept on himself toward the Indians, resolved, at all hazards, to save or succor his friends. At length he came to a place where the Indians had left the path, and taken to the woods, with the design, as Jackson thought, of getting ahead of the white party, and lying in ambush for them. He pushed on with all speed, and reached his friends before dark, just after they had crossed a deep, half-frozen river, and were drying their clothes by their camp-fires. He told his news. The march was instantly resumed. AU that night and the next day they kept on their way, not daring to rest or halt, and reached, toward evening, the cabins of a company of hunters, of whom they asked shelter for the night. The boon was churUshly refused, and they marched on in the teeth of a driving storm of wind and snow. They ventured to encamp at length. Jackson, who had not closed his eyes for sixty hours, wrapped himself in his blanket, and slept soundly till daylight, when he awoke to find himself buried in snow to the depth of six inches. The party of Indians, meanwhile, had pursued unrelentingly, until, reaching the huts of the inhospitable hunters, they murdered every man of them, and, satisfied with this exploit, left the travelers to complete their journey unmolested. History records that no less a person than General Robert- 56 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1791. son, the wise and heroic founder of the Cumberland settlements, was attacked and wounded, in his own fields, by the Indians. Jackson was one of the party who pursued the s.avages on that occasion into their fastnesses. With fourteen companions, he went ten mUes iuto a trackless canebrake, fell upon the Indian camp at break of day, put them to flight without the loss of a man, and cap tured their weapons. This it was to be a pioneer lawyer in Tennessee. Two years passed after Jackson's arrival at Nashville before any thing of great importance occurred to him. He performed his journeys, attended his courts, gained and lost his causes, grew in the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and struck down various and vig orous roots into his adopted soil. In the year 1791, the prosperous young sohcitor, after a court ship of an extraordin.ary character, was married to Mrs. Rachel Robards, the daughter of that brave old pioneer, John Donelson. We have already recorded that Andrew Jackson, upon reach ing Nashville, took board with the widow of th,at heroic man, with whom, also, resided her daughter Rachel and her husband, Lewis Robards. Mr. Robards, a man of a jealous and quarrelsome disposition, had already been separated from his wife, had rejoined her, and was living unhajapily with her, when the youthful Jackson came to reside with Mrs. Donelson. The attentions of the j'oung lawyer .to his wife, innocent and ordinary though they were, kin dled the jealous anger of Robards to such a degree, that the whole family were rendered miserable by his violence and ill-temper. Terrible scenes occurred between the ill-matched pair, and between Robards and Jackson ; and, at length, to the great relief of the en tire circle, Robards returned to his former home in Kentucky, leaving his wife with her mother. For some months she lived in peace. At length, a rumor reached Nashville that Robards was about to return, and take his wife to Kentucky. To avoid a calamity so much dreaded, she resolved to accomiDauy a party that was preparing to descend the ri\'ers to Natchez, and there to re main untU she was no longer in danger of molestation from her husband. To assist in protecting her from the Indians Jackson accompanied the party, and having seen her safe at Natchez re turned to his practice at Nashville. Soon after these events, Robards began proceedino-s for 1791.] JACKSON PRACTICES LAW. 57 divorce, accusing his wife of the grossest infidelity, and implicat ing Jackson in the crime ; and, ere long, the news was brought to NashviUe that he had actually obtained a divorce from the legis lature of Virginia, a state of which Kentucky was then a part. Upon receiving this inteUigence Jackson descended once more to Natchez, offered his hand to the injured woman, who accepted it, and they were married at Natchez by a priest of the Catholic Church. Two years later, information was obtained that, at the time of this marriage, the divorce claimed by Robards, had not been legaUy completed. It was not until Jackson and Mrs. Robards had been married two years, that the divorce was really granted in a Kentucky court. Upon asceJrtaining this, Jackson had the marriage ceremony performed a second time, by a Protestant clergyman in the neighborhood of Nashville. The reader need scarcely be reminded that, at that day, many months might pass without the inhabitants of a settlement, so remote as NashviUe, re ceiving news from the older towns, and that, in the absence of certain intelUgence, rumor is busy with all her thousand tongues. Extraordinary as were the circumstances in which this marriage was contracted, it proved to be one of the happiest. Husband and wife loved each other dearly, and continued to testify the love and respect they entertained for one another by those polite atten tions which lovers cannot but exchange before marriage and after marriage. Their love grew as their years increased, and became warmer as their blood became colder. No one ever heard either address to the other a disrespectful, an irritating, or unsympathiz- ing word. They were not as familiar as is now the fashion. He remained " Mr. Jackson" to her always ; never " General ;" still less " Andrew." And he never caUed her " Rachel," but " Mrs. Jackson," or " wife." The reader may become better acquainted with their domestic life by and by. Meanwhile, let it be under stood, that our hero has now a Home, where lives a Friend, true .and fond, to welcpme his return from wilderness courts ; to cheer ' his stay ; to lament his departure, yet give him a motive for going forth ; a Home wherein — whatever manner of man he might be else-where- — ^he was always gentle, kind, and patient ! He was most prompt to defend his wife's good name. The pecu liar circumstances attending his marriage made him touchy on this point. His temper, with regard to other causes of offense, w;',;j 58 LIFE OF ANDRE W JACKSON. [1795. tinder ; with respect to this, it was gunpowder. His worst quarrels arose from this cause, or were greatly aggravated by it. He became sore on the subject; so that, at last, I think he could scarcely hate any one very heartUy without fancying that the obnoxious person had said something, or caused something to be said, which reflected on the character of Mrs. Jackson. For the man who dared breathe her name except in honor, he kept pistols in perfect condition for thirty-seven years. The social standing of Jackson at NashviUe wa,s not, in the slightest degree, affected unfavorably by his marriage. One proof of it is this: in October of this very year he was elected one of the trustees of the Davidson Academy, a body composed of the first men and clergymen of the place. The original record of his election is StUl legible in the following terms : — "1'791. October Sth. — Board met at Spring Hill. Adjourned to meet at Mr. Clarke's, in NashviUe, at 10 o'clock, Monday, 10th inst. " Met accordingly. " Ordered, that Mr. Andrew Jcickson he appointed a Trustee, in the room of Colonel "Wiinam Polk, removed," As Tennessee prospered (and it prospered rajsidly after the Indians were subdued, in 1794), the district attorney could not but prosper with it. He was a prospering man by nature. The land records of 1794, 1795, 1796, and 1797, show that it was during those years that Jackson laid the foundation of the large estate which he sub sequently acquired. Those were the days iu which a lawyer's fee for conducting a suit of no great importance might be a square mile of land, or, in western phrase, "a six-forty." The circulating medium of Europe, says some witty writer, is gold ; of Africa, men ; of Asia, women ; of America, land. Jackson appears fre quently in the records of the years named as the purchaser and assignee of sections of land. He bought si.x hundred' and fifty acres of the fine tract which afterward formed the Hermitage farm for eight liundred dollars — a high price for that d.ay. By the time * that Tennessee entered the Union, in 1796, Jackson was a very extensive land-owner, and a man of fair estate for a frontier's man. The office of public prosecutor, held by Andrew Jackson during the first seven or eight years of his residence in Tennessee, was one that a man of only ordinary nerve and courage, could not have 1795.] J ACKSON PR ACTICES L A W. 59 filled. It set in array against him all the scoundrels iu the territory. Those were the times when a notorious criminal would defy the officers of justice, and keep them at bay for years at a time; when a district attorne)- who made himself too officious, was liable to a shot in the back as he rode to court ; when two men, not satisfied with the court's award, would come out of the court-house into the pubhc square, and fight it out in the presence of the whole popula tion, judge and jury, perhaps, looking on ; when the public prose cutor was apt to be regarded as the man whose office it was to spoil good sport, and interfere between gentlemen. Jackson had his share of " personal difficulties," as rough-and-tumble fights are poUtely termed in that country to this day. One of these, which occurred when he was young in his office, I can relate in very nearly his own words. He told the story, one day, in the White House, to a very intimate friend, who expected to be assailed in the streets for his ardent support of the administration. "Now, Mr., Blair," said the general, "if any one attacks you, I know how you'll fight with that big stick of yours. You'll aim right for his head. WeU, sir, ten chances to one he'll ward it off; and if you do hit him, you won't bring him down. No, sir" (taking the stick into his own hands), "you hold the stick so, and punch him in the stomach, and you'll drop him. I'll tell you how I found that out. When I was a young man practicing law in Tennessee, there was a big bullying fellow that wanted. to pick a quarrel with me, and so trod on my toes. Supposing it accidental, I said nothing. Soon after he did it again, and I began to suspect his object. In a few minutes he came by a third time, pushing against me violently, and evidently meaning fight. He was a man of immense size, one of the very biggest men I ever saw. As quick as a flash, I snatched a small rail from the top of the fence, and gave hira the point of it full in the stomach. Sir, it doubled him up. He fell at my feet and I stamped on him. Soon he got up savage, and was about to fly at me like a tiger. The bystanders made as though they would interfere. Says I, 'Gentlemen, stand back, give me room, that's all I ask, and PU manage him.' With that I stood ready with the raU pointed. He gave me one look, and turned away, a whipped man, sir, and feeUng like one. So, sir, I say to you, if any vUlain assaults you, give him the pint in his belly." 60 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1795 The effect of such a victory in giving a man influence aud status in a frontier country can be imagined. Another stick story is current in Tennessee. The ferry across the Cumberiand having been leased for the sum of one hundred doUars per annum. General Daniel Smith remarked, at a meeting of the trustees of the Academy : " Why, that is enough to pay the ferriage of all the trustees over the river Styx." "Sticks?" replied Jackson. "I want but one stick to make my way." O, those were wild times ! Jackson had not been long at the bar before he fought a duel. His antagonist was that Colonel W^aightstiU Avery, of Morgantown, North Carolina, to whom he had once applied for instruction in the law, and with whom he after ward practiced at the Jonesboro' court. The present Colonel Isaac T. Avery, of Morganton, is a son of that gentleman. Upon applying to him for information, I was gratified to receive, not only an account of the duel, but also some other anecdotes and reminiscences of great interest, throwing light upon our subject, where it needed light most. " In the trial of a suit one afternoon at Jonesboro," writes Colonel Avery, " General Jackson and my father were opposing counsel. The general always esiDOUsed the cause of his clients warmly, and seemed to make it his own. On this occasion, the cause was going against him, and he became irritable. My father rather exultingly ridiculed some legal position taken by Jackson ; using, as he after ward admitted, language more sarcastic than was called for. It stung Jackson, who snatched up a pen, and on the blank leaf of a law-book wrote a peremptory chaUenge, which he delivered there and then. It was as promptly accepted. My father was no duel ist ; in fact he was opposed to the principle, but with his antece dents, in that age and country, to have declined would have been to have lost caste. The occurrence was not noticed or known in the court-house. They remained until the cause was put to jury, when my father went into the street to look for a friend. After some Uttle time he fomid General John Adair, who consented to act. The arrangements occupied some further time, and when the parties met, in a hoUow north of Jonesboro', it was after sundown. The ground was measured, and the parties were placed. Thev 1795.] JACKSON PRACTICES LAW. 61 fired. Fortunately, neither was hit. General Jackson acknowl edged himself satisfied. .They shook hands, and were friendly ever after. " In my twelfth year I was taken to a grammar-school kept by the Rev. Mr. Doak, eight miles from Jonesboro'. My father per mitted me to stay with him during those fifteen-day courts, and I saw much of G-eneral Jackson then and subsequently. I will give you a characteristic incident which I witnessed. " I was at Jonesboro' court, at one time, when every house in the town was crowded. About twelve o'clock at night, a fire broke out in the stables of the principal hotel-keeper of the place. There was a large quantity of hay in the stables, which stood ih dangerous proximity to the tavern, court-house, and business part of the town. The alarm filled the streets with lawyers, judges, ladies in their night dresses, and a concourse of strangers and citizens. General Jackson no sooner entered the street than he assumed the command. It seemed to be conceded to him. He shouted for buckets, and formed two Unes of men reaching from the fire to a stream that ran through the town ; one line to pass the empty buckets to the stream, and the other to return them full to the fire. He ordered the roofs of the tavern and of the houses most exposed to be covered with wet blankets, and stationed men onthe roofs to keep them wet. Amidst the shrieks of the women, and the frightful neighing of the burning horses, every order was distinctly heard and obeyed. In the line up which the full buckets passed, the bank of the stream soon became so slippery that it was difficult to stand. While General Jackson was strengthening that part of the line, a drunken coppersmith, named Boyd, who said he had seen fires at Baltimore, began to give orders and annoy persons in the line. " 'FaU into Une !' shouted the general. " The man continued jabbering. Jackson seized a bucket by the handle, knocked him down, and walked along the line giviug his orders as cooUy as before. He saved the town !" 62 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1796. CHAPTER VII. JACKSON IN CONGRESS. In November, 1795, the governor of the territory announced, as the result of a census ordered by the legislature, that Tennessee contained seventy-seven thousand two hundred and sixty-tAvo inhabitants, of whom ten thousand six hundred and thirteen were slaves. He therefore called upon the people to elect delegates to a conventicTn for making a constitution, and named January 11th, 1796, as the day for their assembling at KnoxviUe. The con vention met accordingly, fifty-five members in all, five from each of the '.eleven counties. The five members sent from Davidson county were -John McNairy, Andrew Jackson, James Robertson, Thomas H.ardeman, and Joel Lewis. Thus we find our young ad'yentiirer, after seven years' residence in the territory, associated drf equal terms,* ill a mi^^t hpnofeble trust, -^ith the judge of the Superior Court and with the rather of the^Cum'beriand'feettlenJfents. To one of them, at least, he ivas superior in literary attainments; for General Robertson was taught to read by his wife after his marriage. The convention met in a small building, which afterward served as a school-house, standing in the outskirts of the new town of Knoxville, surrounded by tall trees of the primeval wUderness. The building was fitted up for the reception of the important assembly at an expense of twelve dollars and sixty-two cents — ten dollars for seats, and the rest for " three and a half yards of oil cloth," for the covering of the table. But the early proceedings of the convention exhibited a still more remarkable example of economy. The legislature had fixed the compensation of the members at two dollars and a half a day, but had forgotten to appropriate any compensation for the secretary, pirinter and door keeper. The convention, therefore, with curious and quaint disin terestedness, resolved that, inasmuch as " economy is an amiable trait in any government, and, in fixing the salaries of the officers thei-eof, the situation and resources of the country should bo attended to," therefore, one doUar and a half per diem is enou;ee. Upon hearing this report. 1806.] DUEL WITH CHARLES DICKINSON. 85 General Jackson called on Dickinson and asked him if he had used the language attributed to him. Dickinson replied that if he had, it must have been when he was drunk. Further explanations and denials removed all ill feeling from General Jackson's muid, and they separated in a friendly manner. A second time, it is said, Dickinson uttered offensive words re specting Mrs. Jackson in a tavern at NashvUle, which were duly conveyed by some meddling parasite to General Jackson. Jack son, I am told, then went to Captain Ervin, and advised him to ex ert his influence over his son-in-law, and induce him to restrain his tongue, and comport himself like a gentleman in his cups. " I wish no quarrel with hhn," said Jackson ; " he is 2tsed by my ene mies in NashvUle, who are urging him on to pick a quarrel with me. Advise him to stop in time." It appears, however, that enmity grew between these two men. In January, 1806, when the events occurred that are now to be related, there was thfe worst possible feeUng between them. I give this account of the origin of the enmity as I have received it from General Jackson's surviving associates. Not that they re ceived it from hiyn. General Jackson was so averse to talking of a finished quarrel, that many of his most intimate friends — friends of years' standing — never heard hira once allude to this sad business. Deadly enmity existing between Jackson and Dickinson, a very trivial event was sufficient to bring them into collision. A young lawyer of NashviUe, named Swann, misled by false information, circulated a report that Jackson had accused the owners of Plow boy of paying their forfeit in notes other than those which had been agreed upon ; notes less valuable, because not due at the date of settling. The starting of this report led to a most angry and indecent correspondence bet'ween Jackson and Swann, and, at length, to Jackson assulting Swann in a bar-room with a walkuig stick. Into this quarrel, as into a vortex, all the friends of both parties were drawn, and a duel between General Coffee and a young man named Nathaniel McNairy grew out of it, in which Coffee was wounded. General Jackson, in one of his letters to Mr._ Swann, went out of his way to assaU Charles Dickinson, by name, calling him " a base poltroon and cowardly tale-bearer," requesting Swann to show Dickinson these offensive words, and offering to meet him in the field if he desired satisfaction for the same. 86 LIFE OP ANDREW JACKSON. [1806. Mr. Swann showed Dickinson this insulting letter, to which Dickinson replied in language far more moderate than that em ployed by General Jackson. He denied that he was a tale-bearer, and, as to the charge of cowardice, "I think," said he, "it is as ap pUcable to yourself as any one I know." He concluded by saying that he was quite wUUng, when opportunity served, to exchange shots with Jackson. Having penned this epistle, he started down the river toward New Orleans, and was ab.sent from tho scene of contention for some months, during which the quarrel raged on, and the whole correspondence was published in the Nashville newspaper. Dickinson returned, and read all these bitter effusions. One of Jackson's letters spoke of Dickinson as a " worthless, drunk en, lying scoundrel." Upon reading the letters, Dickinson pub lished a card, which contained these words : " I declare him, notwithstanding he is a nia-jor-general of the militia of Mere district, to be a worthless scoundrel, ' a poltroon and a coward ' — a man who, by frivolous and evasive pretexts, avoided giving the satisfaction which -was due to a gentleman whom he had injured. This has preveuted gje from calling on him in the manner I should otherwise have done, for I am well convinced that he is too great a coward to administer any of those anodynes he promised me in his letter to Mr. Swann." Jackson instantly challenged Dickinson. The challenge was prompjy accepted. Friday, May 30th, 1806, was the day .appoint ed for the meeting ; the weapons, pistols ; the place, a spot on the banks of the Red River, in Kentucky. The following rules were agreed upon by the seconds : " It is agreed that the distance shall be twenty-four feet ; the parties to st.and facing each other, with their pistols down perpendicularly. When they are ready, the single word, fire, to be given ; at which they are to fire as soon as they please. Should either fire before the word is given, we pledge ourselves to shoot him down instantly. The parson to give the word to be determined by lot, as also the choice of position. We mutually agree that the above regulations shall be observed iu the .affair of honor depending between General Andrew Jackson and Charles Dickinson, Esq." These preUminaries were completed on Saturday, May 24th. The duel was not to take place till the Friday following. The quarrel thus far had excited intense interest in NashviUe, and the succes- ISOS.] DUEL WITH CHARLES DICKINSON. 87 sive numbers of the Impartial Review had been read with avidity. The coming duel was no secret, tlieugh the time and place were not known to any but the friends of the parties. Bets, I am informed, were laid upon the result of the meeting, the odds being against Jackson. Dickinson himself is said to have bet five hundred dol lars that he would bring his antagonist down at the first fire. An other informant says three thousand. The place appointed for the meeting- was a long day's ride from NashviUe. Thursday morning, before the dawn of day, Dickinson stole from the side of his young and beautiful wife, and began silently to prepare for the journey. She awoke, and asked him why he was up so earlj^. He replied, that he had business in Kentucky across the Red River, but it would not detain him long. Before leaving the room he went up to his wife, kissed her with pecuUar tenderness and said: " Good-by, darling ; I shaU be sure to be at home to-morrow night." He mounted his horse and repaired to the rendezvous, where his second and half a dozen of the gay blades of Nashville were waiting to escort him on his journey. Away they rode, in the highest spirits, as though they were upon a party of pleasure. Indeed, they made a party of pleasure of it. When they stopped for rest or refreshment, Dickinson is said to have amused the company by displaying his wonderful skill with the pistol. Once, at a distance of twenty-four feet, he fired four balls, each at the word of command, into a space that could be covered by a sUver dollar. Several times he cut a string with his bullet from the same distance. It is said that he left a severed string hanging near a tavern, and said to the landlord as he rode away, " If General Jackson comes along this road, show him that !" It is also said, that he laid a wager of five hundred dollars that he would hit his antagonist within hah" an inch of a certain button on his coat. I neither believe nor deny any of these stories ; but so many of the same kind are still told in the neighborhood, that it is safe to conclude that, on this fatal ride, Dickinson did affect much of that recklessness of manner which was once supposed to be .an evidence of high courage. The party went frisking .and gaUoping along the lonely forest roads, makuig short cuts that cautious travelers never attempted, dashing- across creeks and rivers, and making the woods ring aud eclio v/ith their shouts and laughter. 88 LIFE OP ANDREW JACKSOX. * [1806. Very different was the demeanor of General Jackson and the party that accompanied him. His second. General Thomas Overton, an old revolutionary soldier, -^-ersed in the science, and familiar with the practice of dueling, had reflected deeply upon the condi tions ,of the coming combat, with the view to conclude upon the tactics most likely to sa've his friend from Dickinson's unerring bullet. For this duel was not to be the amusing mockery that some modern duels have been. This duel was to be real. It was to be an affair in which each man was to strive with his utmost skill to effect the purpose of the occasion — -disable his antagonist and save his own life. As the principal and the second rode apart from the rest, they discussed all the chances and probabilities with the single aim to decide upon a course which should result in the disabling of Dickinson and the saving of Jackson. The mode of fighting which had been agreed upon was somewhat peculiar. The pistols were to be held downward until the word was given to fire ; then each man was to fire as soon as he pleased. With such an arrangement it was scarcely possible that both the pistols should bedischarged at the same moment. There was a chance, even, that by extreme quickness. of movement, one man could bring down his antagonist without himself receiving a shot. The question anxiously discussed between Jack son and Overton was this : Shall we try to get the first shot, or shaU we permit Dickinson to have it ? They agreed, at length, that it wonld be decidedly better to let Dickinson fire first. In the first place, Dickinson, like all miraculous shots, required no time to take aim, and would have a far better chance than Jackson in a quick shot, even if both fired at once. Aud in spite of any thing Jackson could do, Dickinson would be almost sure to get the first fire. Moreover, Jackson was certain he would be hit ; and he was unwilling to subject his own aim to the chance of its being totaUy destroyed by the shock of the blow. For J.ackson was resolved on hitting Dickinson. His feelings toward his adversary were embittered by what he had heard of his public practicings and boastful wagers. " I should have hit him, if he had shot me through the brain," said Jackson once. In pleasant discourse of this kind the two men wiled away the hours of the long journey. A tavern kept by one David Miller, soraewhat noted in the neighborhood, stood on the banks of the Red Eiver near the ground appointed for the duel. Late in the afternoon of Thursday 1806.] DUEL WITH CHARLES DICKINSON 89 the 29th of May, the inmates of this tavern were surprised hj the arrival of a party of seven or eight horsemen. Jacob Smith, then employed by MUler as an oversefer, but no-w himself a planter in the vicinity, was standing before the house when this unexpected company rode up. One of these horsemen asked him if they could be accommodated with lodgings for the night. They could. The party dismounted, gave their horses to the attendant negroes, and entered the tavern. No sooner had .they done so, than honest Jacob was perplexed by the arrival- of a second cavalcade — Dickin son and his friends, who also asked for lodgings. The manager told them the house was fuU ; but that he never turned travelers away, and if they chose to remain, he would do the best he could for them. Dickinson then asked where was the next house of enter tainment. He was directed to a house two miles lower down the river, kept by William Harrison. The house is still standing. The room in which Dickinson slept that night, and slept the night fol lowing, is the one npw used by the occupants as ai»dining-room. Jackson ate heartily at supper that night, conversing in a lively, pleasant manner, ana smoked his evening pipe as usual. Jacob Smith remembers being exceedingly pleased with his guest, and, on learning the cause of his visit, heartily wishing him a safe de- hverance. Before breakfast on the next morning the whole party niounted and rode down the road that wound close along the picturesque banks of the stream. About the same hour, the overseer and his gang of negroes went to the fields to begin their daily toil ; he, longing to venture with in sight of what he knew was about to take place. The horsemen rode about a mUe along the river ; then turned down toward the river to a point on the bank where they had expected to find a ferryman. No ferryman appearing, Jackson spurred his horse into the stream and dashed across, followed by all his party. They rode into the poplar forest, two hundred yards* or less, to a spot near the center of a level platform or river bottom, then covered with forest, now smiling with cultivated fields. The horsemen halted and dismounted just before reaching the appointed placft. Jackson, Overton, and a surgeon who had come with them from home, walked on together, and the rest led their horses a short distance in an opposite direction. 90 L I F E O F A N D E B W J A C K S O N . [l 806. " How do you feel about it now. General ?" asked one of the party, as Jackson turned to go. " Oh, all right," replied Jackson, gayly ; " I shaU wing him, never fear." Dickinson's second won the choice of position, and Jackson's the office of giving the word. The astute Overton considered this giv ing of the word a matter of great importance, and he had already determined how he would give it, if the lot feU to him. The eight paces were measured off, and -the men placed. Both were per fectly coUected. All the politenesses of such occasions were very strictly and elegantly performed. Jackson was dressed in a lopse frock-coat, buttoned carelessly over his chest, aud concealing in some degree the extreme slenderness of his figure. Dickinson was the younger and handsomer man of the two. But Jackson's tall, erect figure, and the still intensity of his demeanor, it is said, gave him a most superior and commanding air, as he stood under the tall poplars on this bright May morning, sUently awaiting the mo ment of doom. " Are you ready ?" said Overton. " I am ready," rephed Dickinson. " I am ready," said Jackson. The words were no sooner pronounced than Overton, with a sud den shout, cried, using his old country pronunciation, "Fere!" Dickinson raised his pistol quickly and fired. Overton, who was looking with anxiety and dread at Jackson, saw a puff of dust fly from the breast of his co.at, and saw him raise his left arm and place it tightly across his chest. He is surely hit, thought Overton, and in a bad place, too : but no ; he does not fall. Erect and grim as Fate he stood, his teeth clenched. He raised his pistol. Overton ' glanced at Dickinson. Amazed at the unwonted failure of his aim, and apparently appalled at the awful figure and face before him, T)ickinson had unconsciously recoiled a pace or two. ' " Great God !" he faltered, " have I missed him ?" "..Back to the mark, sir !" shrieked Overton, with his hand upon his pistol. Dickinson recovered his composure, stepped forward to the, peg and stood with his eyes averted from his antagonist. All this was the work of a moment, though it require'v many words to tell it. ISOO.] DUEL WITH C HAK LES DICKINSON. 91 General Jackson took deliberate aim, and pulled the trigger. The pistol neither snapped nor went off. He looked at the trigger, and discovered that it had stopped at half-cock. He drew it back to its place, aud took aim a second time. He fired. Dickmson's face blanched ; he reeled ; his friends rushed toward him, caught him in their arms, and gently seated him on the ground, leaning against , a bush. His trowsers reddened. They stripped off his clothes. The blood was gushing from his side in a torrent. And, here is the ball, not near the wound, but above the opposite hip, just under the skin. The baU had passed through the body, below the ribs. Such a wound could not but be fatal. Overton went forward and learned the condition of the wounded man. Rejoining his principal, he said, " He won't want any thing more of you. General," and conducted him from the ground. They had gone a hundred yards, Overton walking on one side of Jack son, the surgeon on the other, and neither speaking a word, when the surgeon observed that one of Jackson's shoes was fuU of blood. . " My God ! General Jackson, are you hit ?" he exclaimed, point ing to the blood. " Oh ! I believe," repUed Jackson, " that he has pinked me a Uttle. Let's look at it. But say nothing about it there," poiuting to the house. He opened his coat. Dickinson's aim had been perfect. He had sent the ball precisely where he supposed Jackson's heart Avas beating. But the thinness of his body and the looseness of his coat combining to deceive Dickinson, the ball had only broken a rib or two, and raked the breast-bone. It was a somewhat painful, bad-looking wound, but neither severe nor dangerous, and he was able to ride to the tavern without much inconvenience. Upon ap proaching the house, he went up to one of the negro women who was churning, and asked her if the butter had come. She said it was just coming. He asked for some buttermilk. While she was getting it for him, she observed him furtiVely open his coat and look within it. She saw that his shirt was soaked with blood, and she stood gazing in blank horror at the sight, dipper in hand. He caught her eye, and hastUy buttoned his coat again. She dipped out a quart measure full of butterraUk, and gave it to him. He drank it off at a draught ; then went in, took off his coat, and had 92 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1806. his wound carefully examined and dressed. That done, he dis patched one of his retinue to Dr. Catlett, to inquire respecting the condition of Dickinson, and to say that the surgeon attending him self would be glad to contribute his aid toward Mr. Dickinson's relief. Polite reply was returned that Mr. Dickinson's case was past surgery. In the course of the day. General Jackson sent a bottle of wine to Dr. Catlett for the use of his patient. But there was one gratification which Jackson could not, even in such circumstances, grant him. A very old friend of General Jackson writes to me thus : " Although the general had been wounded, he did not desire it should be known until he had left the neighborhood, and had therefore concealed it at first from his own friends. His reason for this, as he once stated to me, was, that as Dickinson considered himself the best shot in the world, and was certain of killing him at the first fire, he did not luant him to have the gratification even of knowing that he had touched him." Poor Dickinson bled to death. The flowing of blood was stanched, but could not be stopped. Jle was conveyed to the house in which he had passed the night, and placed upon a mattrass, which was soon drenched with blood. He suffered extreme agony, and uttered horrible cries all that long day. At nine o'clock in the evening he suddenly asked why they had put out the lights. The doctor knew then that the end was at hand ; that the wife, who had been sent for in the morning, would not ai-rive in time to close her husband's eyes. He died five minutes after, cursing, it is said, with his last breath, the ball that had entered his body. The poor wife hurried a'vvay on hearing- that her husband was " dangerously wounded," .and met, as she rode toward the scene of the duel, a procession of silent horsemen escoi-ting a rough emigrant wagon that contained her husband's remains. The news created iu Nashville the most profound sensation. " On Tuesday evening (afternoon) last," said the Impartial Review of the foUowing week, " the remains of Mr. Charles Dickinson were committed to the grave, at the residence of Mr. Joseph Ervin, at tended by a large number of citizens of Nashville and its neighbor hood. There have been few occasions on which stronger impres sions of sorrow or testimonies of greater respect were evinced thau on the one we have the unwelcome task to record. In the prime of life, and blessed in domestic circumstances with almost every valu- 1806.] DUEL WITH CHARLES DICKINSON, 93 able enjoyment, he fell a victim to the barbarous and pernicious practice of dueling. By his untimely fate the community is deprived of an amiable man and a virtuous citizen. His friends will long la ment with particular sensibility the deplorable event. Mr. Dickin son was a native of Maryland, where he was highly valued by the discriminating- and good ; and those who knew him best respected him most. With a consort that has to bear with this, the severest of afflictions, and an infant child, his friends and acquaintances will cordially sympathize. Their loss is above calculation. May Heaven assuage their anguish by administering such consolations as are be yond the power of human accident or change." But the matter did not rest here. Charles Dickinson had many fi-iends in Nashville, and Andrew Jackson many enemies. The events preceding, and the circufhstances attending the duel, were such as to excite horror and disgust in many minds. An informal ¦meeting of citizens was held, who could hit upon no better way of expressing their feelings than sending the following memorial to the proprietors of the Impartial Review : — " The subscribers, citizens of NashvUle and its vicinity, respectfully request Mr. Bradford and Mr. Eastin to put the next number of their paper in mourning as a tribute of respect for the memory, and regret for the untimely death of Mr. Charles Dickinson." Seventy-three names, many of which were of tbe highest respect abiUty, were appended to this document. Mr. Eastin had no hesi tation in promising to comply with the request. Upon his couch at the Hermitage General Jackson heard of this movement. With his usual promptitude he dispatched to the editor the following letter : — Mr. Eastin : — I am informed that at the re quest of sundry citizens of NashviUe and vicinity, you are about to dress your paper in mourning ' as a tribute of respect for the mem ory and regret for the untimely death of Charles Dickinson.' Your paper is the public vehicle, and is always taken as the public will, unless the contrary appears. Presuming that the public is not in mourning for this event, in justice to that public, it is only fair and right to set forth the names of those citizens who have made the request. The thing is so novel that names ought to appear that the public might judge whether the true motives of the signers were ' a tribute of respect for the deceased,' or something else that at first sight does not appear." 94 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1806. The editor, with equal complaisance and ingenuity, contrived to obUge aU parties. He placed his paper in mourning, he published the memorial, he pubUshed General Jackson's letter, and he added to the whole the following remarks : " In answer to the request of General Jackson, I can only observe that, previously, the request of some of the citizens of NashvUle and its vicinity had been put to type, and as soon as it had transphed that the above request had been made, a number of the subscribers, to the amount of twenty- six, caUed and erased their names. Always willing to support, hy my acts, the title of my paper — always willing to attend to the re quest of any portion of our citizens when they will take the respon sibility on themselves, induced me to comply with the petition of those requesting citizens, and place my paper in mourning.' Impar tiality induces me also to attend to 'the request of General Jaekson." A week or two later. Captain Ervin, the father-in-law of the un fortunate Dickinson, published a brief i-ecapitulation of the quarrel from the beginning, incorporating with his .article a final statement by Mr. Thomas Swann. Swann exculpated Dickinson wholly. " 1 do avow," said he, "that neither Mr. Dickinson nor any other per son urged me forward to quarrel with Jackson." He asserted in the most solemn manner that every thing had occurred just as in the pubhshed correspondence and affidavits it had appeared to oc cur. He admitted, however, that there was enmity between Jack son and Dickinson before his own quarrel with Jackson began. General Jackson's wound proved to be more severe and trouble some than was at first anticipated. It was nearly a month before he could move about without inconvenience, and when the wound healed, it healed falsely ; that is, some of the viscera were sUghtly displaced, and so remained. Twenty years after, this forgotten wound forced itself upon his remembrance, and kept itself there for many a year. It was Dickinson's bullet that killed Andrew Jack son at last. The reader is now in possession of all the attainable information which could assist him in forming a judgment of this sad, this de plorable, this shocking, this wicked affair. Unfortunately, the evi dence which makes against Jackson is indubitable, while the exten uating circumstances rest upon tradition only. It is evident that he wa^,^, f,ly imbittered against Dickinson before the affair with Swann bF':i.,,i. No man is competent to pronounce decisively upon Jack- 1806.] GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. 95 son's conduct in this business, who does not know precisely and completely thq cause of that original enmity. A very slight obser vation of life is sufficient to show that the party most injured is the one that often appears to be most in the wrong. A chronic grind ing wrong extorts, at length, the wrathful word or the avenging blow. The bystander hears the imprecation, sees the stroke, and knowing nothing that has gone before, condemns the victim and pities the guilty. That Jackson was singularly morbid upon the subject of his peculiar marriage, we shaU often observe. It is not true, as has been alleged, that this duel did not affect General Jackson's popularity in Tennessee. It foUowed quick upon his feud with Governor Sevier ; and both quarrels told against him in many quarters of the state. Aud though there were large num bers whom the nerve and courage which he had displayed in the duel bUnded to all considerations of civilization and morality, yet it is certain that at no time between the years 1806 and 1812, could General Jackson have been elected to any office in Tennessee that required a majority of the voters of the whole state. Almost any well-informed Tennesseean, old enough to remember those years, will support me in this assertion. Beyond the circle of his own friends, which was large, there existed a very general impression that he was a violent, arbitrary, overbearing, passionate man. CHAPTER XI. GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. Between the fighting of this bloody duel and the beginning of the war of 1812, there is not much to relate of the public life of General Jackson. A few incidents and anecdotes of his private life may detain us a moment frorn the stirring scenes of Jiis miUtary career. He removed, as we have before related, from Hunter's HiU, about the year 1804, to the adjoining estate, which he named the Hermit age. The spacious mansion now standing on that estate, li '^'ch he resided during the last twenty-five years of his life, was not k ''¦ 96 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1806. untU about the year 1819. .A: square, two story block-house was General Jackson's first dwelling-place on the Hermitage farm. This house, like many others of its class, contained three rooms ; one on the ground floor, and two up-stairs. To this house was soon added a smaUer one, which stood about twenty feet from the principal structure, and was connected with it by a covered passage. This was General Jackson's estabUshment from 1804 to 1819. These houses are stUl standing at the Hermitage, though not so close together as tbey were formerly. The larger block-house stands where it stood when occupied by General Jackson ; but has been cut down into a one-story house, and used for the last thirty years as a negro cabin. It does not differ, in any respect, from the ordinary block negro cabins of the South. The interior, never ceUed, is now as black as ebony with the smoke of sixty years. There is the usual trap-door in the middle of the floor for the convenience of stowage under the house, for cellar there is none. There is the usual vast fireplace, capable of a cord of wood ; from which Jaclc- son went forth to the wars, haggard and anxious ; to which he returned, still haggard, but with the light of victory in his face. The smaller house has been drawn up near the present Hermitage ; where it also serves as a negro cabin, and shows its ring of little «bony faces round the generous fire as the stranger peeps in. The building which formerly connected these two • stands near by, and is used as a store house. " There is nothing but plunder in it," ex plained one of the negro women. In an establishment so restricted. General Jackson and his good- hearted wife continued to dispense a most generous hospitaUty. A lady of NashvUle tells me that she has often been at the Hermitage in those simple old times, when there was in each of the four avail able rooms, not a guest merely, but a. family ; whUe the young men aud solitary travelers who chanced to drop iu disposed of them selves on the piazza, or any other half shelter about the house. " Put down in your book," said one of General Jackson's oldest neighbors, "that the general was the prince of hospitality ; not be cause he entertained a great many people ; but because the poor, be lated peddler, was as welcome as the president of the United States, and made so much at his ease that he felt as though he had got home." May 29th, 1805, Colonel Burr, then making his first tour of the western country, visited the thriving frontier town of NashvUle. 1806.] GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. 97 Throughout the West, Burr was r^-^eived as the great man, and nowhere with such distinction as at ^fashvUle. People poured in from the adjacent country to see and welcome so renowned a per sonage. Flags, cannons, and martial music contributed to the eclat of his reception. An extemporized but superabundant dinner con cluded the ceremonies, in the course of which Burr addressed the multitude with the serious grace that usually marked his demeanor in public. Could Jackson be absent from such an ovation — Jack son, who had been with the great man in Congress, and worked in concert with him for Tennessee ? Impossible! On the morning of this bright day General Jackson mounted one of his finest horses, and rode to Nash-yille attended by a servant leading a milk-white mare. In the course of the dinner General Jackson gave a toast : " MUlions for defense, but not one cent for tribute ;" and when Colonel Burr retired from the apartment. General Overton proposed his health to the company. General Jackson returned home at the close of the day accompanied by Colonel Burr, who was to be his guest during his stay in that vicinity. Burr remained' only five days at the Hermitage, but promised to make a longer visit on his return. In the hasty outUne of a journal which he kept for the amusement of his daughter, he made this entry concerning his first visit to N ashvUle :^" Arrived at NashviUe on the 29th of May. One is astonished at the number of sensible, well-informed and weU-behaved people found here. I have been received with much hospitality and kindness, and could stay a month with pleasure ; but General Andrew Jackson having provided us a boat, we shall set off on Sunday, the 2d of June, to na-yigate down the Cumberland, either to Smithland,.at its mouth, or to Eddyville, sixty or eighty mUes above ; at one of which places we expect to find our boat, with which we intend to make a rapid voyage down the Mississippi to Natchez and Orleans. Left Nashville, on the 3d of June, in an open boat." August the 6th, 1805, Burr visited the Hermitage again, on his return from New Orleans, as he had promised. Of this visit, which lasted eight days, we have no knowledge except that derived from Burr's too brief diary : — " Arrived at NashviUe on the 6th August. For a week I have been lounging at the house of General Jackson, once a lawyer, after a judge, now a planter ; a man of inteUigence, and one of those prompt, frank, ardent souls whom I lo-ye to meet. Tie general has no chUdren, but two lovely nieces raade a visit of 98 LIFE OF ANDEEW JACKSON. [1806. some days, contributed greatly to my amusement, and have cured me of aU the evils of my wilderness jaunt. If I had time I would describe to you these two girls, for they deserve it. To-morrow I move on toward Lexington." There is no doubt as to the topic upon which Colonel Burr and Gen eral Jackson chiefly conversed on this occasion. There was but one topic then in the western country — the threatened war with Spain. Antipathy to Spaniards had been for twenty years a ruling pas sion with that portion of the western people whose prosperity depended upon their possessing free access to the mouth of the i\lis- sissippi. The Spanish authorities on the gre.at river comported them selves so as to keep alive this ill feeling. They were arrogant, mean, and dishonest. A long course of irritating behavior had, at length, brought Spain and the United States to the verge of war. The whole country expected it. The West longed for it. And, perhaps, no man then residing in the vaUey of the Mississippi looked forward to it with such intensity of desire as Andrew Jackson. No news iwould have been more welcome at the Hermitage than that General WUkinson had marched into Texas and begun war. Meanwhile, between Burr and Jackson, as between every other two men that found themselves together, the question was stiU renewed : ShaU we have war with Spain ? Colonel Burr returned to the East. Months passed during which Jackson and Burr occasionally corresponded. In Sej)tember, 1 806, three months after the duel with Dickinson, Colonel Burr was again the guest of General Jackson. On this occasion he had brought to the western country, and left on Blen- nerhasset Island, his daughter, Theodosia ; intending never again to return to the eastern states. He was in the full tide of prepara tion for descending to the lower country. The morning after his arrival at the Hermitage, General Jackson, on hospitable thoughts intent, wrote to a friend in Nashville the following note : " Colonel Burr is with me ; he arrived last night. I would be happy if you would call and see the colonel before you return. Say to General O. that I shall expect to see him here on to-morrow with you. Would it not be weU for us to do something as a mark of attention to the colonel ? He has always and is stiU a true and trusty friend to Tennessee. If General Robertson is with you when you receive this, be good enough to say to him that Colonel Burr is in the 1806.] GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. 99 country. I know that General Robertson will be happy in joinhig in any thing that will tend, to show a mark of respect to this worthy visitant." The note produced all the effects desired. General Robertson, General Overton, Major W. P. Anderson, and many others of the leading men at NashviUe, rode out to the Hermitage to pay their respects to Colonel Burr, and to invite him to their houses. To private attentions was added the honor of an invitation to a public baU. Already, however, some rumors were afloat, attributing to Burr unlawful designs ; and there were not wanting those who questioned the propriety of this invitation. But the popularity of Burr and the influence of General Jackson prevailed, and the invita tion was given. -There are stUl a few persons living at NashvUle who remember this famous ball ; remember the hush and thrill attending the entrance of Colonel Burr, accompanied by General Jackson in the uniform of a major-general ; and how the company fined the sides of the room, and looked intensely x>n whUe the two courtliest men in the world made the circuit of the apartment, General Jackson introducing his guest with singular grace and emphasis. It was a question with the ladies which of the two was the finer gentleman. After a stay of a few days. Colonel Burr left Tennessee to take up the threads of his enterprise in Kentucky and Ohio. October passed by. On the 3d of November, General Jackson, in his character of business man, received from Burr some important orders ; one for the buUding, on Stone's River at Clover Bottom, of five large boats, such as were then used for descending the western rivers, and another for the gradual purchase of a large quantity of provisions for transportation in those boats. A sum of money, in Kentucky bank-notes, amounting to three thousand five hundred dollars, accompanied the orders. General Jackson, nothing doubting, and never reluctant to do business, took Burr's letter of directions and the money to his partner, John Coffee, and requested him to contract at once for the boats, and prepare for the purchase of the provisions. Coffee proceeded forthwith to transact the business. I notice, also, that Patton Anderson, one of Jackson's special intimates, was all activity in raising a company of young men to accompany Burr down the river. I observe, too, that Anderson's expenses were paid out of the money sent by Burr to Jackson; at least in 100 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1806. the account rendered to Burr by Jackson and Coff'ee at the final settlement, there is an item of seven hundred dollars cash paid to Anderson. Anderson succeeded in getting seventy-five young men to enlist in his company. What with the mustering of recruits, the buUding of boats and the accumulation of provisions. Clover Bottom — so silent and deserted now, its old wooden bridge across the deep ravine of a river seldom thundering under a vehicle, Jackson's old store stand ing lone and desolate in a field — must have presented a lively scene in the autumn of 1806. It was not until the 10th of November, a week after the receipt of Burr's orders and money, that General Jackson, according to his own account, began to think there might be some truth in the re ports which attributed to Burr unlawful designs ; reports which he had previously regarded only as new evidences of the malice of Burr's political enemies and his own. To Jackson, as" to all others in Nashville, Burr had represented that his first object was the settlement of a great tract of land on the Washita river ; but that, if war broke out between Spain and the United States, it was his intention to head an expedition into Texas and Mexico. For his own part, he said, he had little doubt that war was impending ; it might be expected at any moment ; it might already have began. The administration, he would insinu ate, knew perfectly well where he was, what he was doing and what he intended, though, for reasons of pohay, they would not yet suffer their hand to appear. He said nothing about the means he had employed to precipitate the war ; nothing of Samuel Swart- wout's secret mission to General Wilkinson's camp ; nothing of the letters in cipher designed to act upon Wilkinson's cupidity and fears ; nothing, in fact, of any part of his plans that could excite distrust in the minds of these honest and patriotic pioneers. But about the 10th of November, whUe General Jackson arid his partners were full of Burr's business, a friend of Jackson's visited the Hermitage, who succeeded in convincing him that some gigantic scheme of iniquity was on foot in the United States ; a consphacy for the dismemberment of the Union ; and that it was possible, nay, almost probable, that Colonel Burr's extensive preparations of boats, provisions and men had some connection with this neferi- ous plan. 1806.] GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. 101 He took the proper measures without loss of time. He told Coffee that the boats contracted for and begun must be finished, • and the provisions bought must bepaid for ; but that no new trans- , action must be entered into by their firm for Aaron Burr untU these suspicions were completely removed. He wrote to Burr, acquainting him with what he had heard, and demanding to know the truth. Having been informed by his friend that New Orleans was the preliminary object of the conspirators, he wrote a warningr letter to William C. C. Claiborne, the governor of the Orleans territory ; he wrote a letter to President Jefferson, offering the services of his division of militia. To other friends and officials he communicated his suspicions with- outreserve; particidarly to General Overton and General Robertson. A month went by ; during which occurred Burr's arrest in Ken tucky, his defence by Henry Clay, and his triumphant acquittal. December 14th Burr was once more in Nashville, intending there to load his boats, and drop down the Cumberland to its mouth, where he was to meet his flotilla from Blennerhasset Island. Thence they were all to float down together to Natchez — to Wil kinson — ^to Texas — to the halls of the Montezumas — to the throne of Spanish_America — to an empire bounded, if bounded at all, by the limits of the vaUey of the Mississippi ; New Orleans its capital, Aaron the First its emperor, the brUUant Theodosia and her boy to succeed him ! Colonel Burr caUed at the Hermitage ; its master was absent. He found Mrs. Jackson cool and constrained. Returning to Clover Bottom he mentioned this unwonted coolness to Coffee, and asked him the reason of it. Coffee explained. "At Clover Bottom," says Coffee, in a formal statement of these affairs, " there was a tavern ; and to this place Colonel Burr ca;ne and remained about a week, until he had got every thing in readiness for his departure down the river. On his first arrival General Jackson was absent from home ; having returned within a few days afterward, the general came, in company with General Overton, to the Clover Bottom, where Colonel Burr resided. An interview took place between them and Colonel Burr, at v/hich they informed him of the suspicions and distrust that were entertained against him. Burr repelled them, and expressed deep regret that there should be any such ; and re marked, that he could and would be able to satisfy every dispassion- 102 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1806. ate mind, that his views and objects -Vere friendly to the government, and such as he had repi-c-:onted thom to be." ' On the 22d of December, iu two unarmed boats. Burr and hiy few foUowers left Clover Bottom. Ho had not been gone many. hours before the President's proclamation denouncing him reached Nashville, and threw th.at peaceful town, and all the country round about, into a delirium of excitement. Burr w^as immediately' burnt in effigy in the public square. There was contention which man should surpass all others in the fury of his patriotic zeal. It fell to the lot of General Jackson, as commanding officer of mi litia, to take the load in the measures designed to in'ocure the arrest of Burr and his confederates. The general raade great exertions to accomplish this object, but Burr had gone beyond pursuit. It was widely believed at the time that General Jackson was in volved in the unlawful part of Burr's schemes, but there was not the sUghtest ground for such a belief, and nothing can he more complete than the chain of testimony that establishes his innocence. Indeed, General .Jackson was far from believing that Burr had any unlaw ful schemes. A fe'w months later we find him at Richmond, whither he had been summoned as a witness in the trial of Burr. There he harangued the crowd in the Capitol square, defending Burr, and angrily denouncing Jefferson as a persecutor. There are those living who heard him do this. He made himself so conspicu ous as Burr's ch.ampion at Richmond, that Mr. Madison, the secre tary of state, took offense at it, and remembered it to Jackson's disadvantage five years later, when he was president of thfe United States, with a war on his hands. For the same reason, I presume, it was that Jackson was not called upon to give testimony upon the trial. Burr, it seems, was equaUy satisfied with Jackson. > Blen nerhasset, in that part of his diary which records his prison inter views with Burr, s.ays: " We passed to the topics of our late adven tures on the Mississippi, in which Burr said Uttle, but declared he did not know of any reason to blame General Jackson, of Tennes see, for any thing he had done or omitted. But he declares he wiU not lose a day after the favorable issue at the capitol (his acquittal), ( f which he has no doubt, to direct his entire attention to setting up his projects (which have only been suspended) on a better model, ' in which work,' he says, ' he has even here made some progress.' " Jackson, on his part, went aU lengths in defense of Burr • nor 1806.] GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. 103 was it possible for him to support any man in any other -svay. To- ¦Ward WUkinson, whom he regarded as the betrayer of Burr, his «,iger burned with such fury that if the two men had met in a Jplace convenient, the meeting could hardly have had any other re sult than a — =" difficulty." An incident which actually did occur at Richmond, during the trial, suggested this remark. Samuel Swart- wout. Burr's confidential secretary, aid-de-oamp, embassador, and factotum, was walking, one day, in a street of Richmond, of which the pavement was too narrow to adinit of the convenient passing of two persons. What should he encounter there but the portly per son of General James Wilkinson ! Swartwout not only refused to give way to the general, but, on finding himself in close proximity to him, feU into a paroxysm of disgust and rage, and shouldered the great Wilkrason into the middle of the street. Jackson was ¦wUd with delight when he heard of it. There was no man out of his own circle of Tennessee friends, that General Jackson was more affectionately devoted to than he was to Samuel Swartwout ; and this peculiar fondness, sustained as it was by Mr. Swartwout's win ning cast of character, dated from that push. A lucky push it proved for Swartwout twenty years after. The Hermitage was more a hermitage than ever after these events. The enemies of the Hermit had gained a certain triumph over him. I observe in the list of those* who assisted in the burn ing of Burr's effigy at Nashville, the name of Thomas Swann ; which favors the conjecture that the zeal against Burr was, in some de gree, a manifestation of enmity to the man who had been so con spicuously his friend. Ill-affected toward his former political asso ciates, an object of distrust or aversion, or both, to the administra tion, his home enemies cowed, perhaps, by the late duel, but in no degree conciliated. General Jackson now withdrew from commercial business, and devoted himself exclusively to the affairs of his fine plantation ; happy in a vocation of which he was master, and which kept him always where alone he was ever contented — at home. He had, as -we have said, a very happy home. Mrs. Jackson, be sides being an exceUent manager and mistress, was also a kind and jovial soul. She had a wonderful memory, which contained a great store of anecdotes and tales. She could renrember the Cumberland settlements from their infancy ; had shared the perils of her father's famous river voyage ; had lived through that eventful period when 104 LIFE OF ANDEEW JACKSON. [1810. the day was exceptional in which there was no alarm, and the week fortunate when no one was slain by Indians ; had heard her father, and his friend, Daniel Boone, and the other heroes of the wilderr ness, recount their adventures and escapes. All these things it was lier delight to tell to the younger guests of the Herrait.age, whose delight it was to hear her. Nor was she so entirely illiterate as has been alleged. I have nine of her letters in my collection, one of which is eight foolscap pages long. The spelling of these epistles is bad, of course, and the grammar not faultless; but their exist ence is at least sufficient to refute a common opinion in Tennessee, that Mrs. Jackson Could not write. Unlearned, however, she was, in the lore of the schools, though not so in that of the woods, the dairy, the kitchen and the cabin. Children only were w.anting to complete their Iiome. But chU dren were denied them ; a sore grief to both, for both loved chUdren, and desired ever to have them in their house. The circle of Mrs. Jackson's relatives was so extensive that some of her young nephews and nieces were almost always at the Hermitage ; and all her rela tives were his. He counted it among the chief circumstances of his happiness that, separated as he was from his own kindred by distiiuce, he found in hers all that his heart and home required. About the year 1809 it chanced that twins were born to one of Mrs. Jackson's brothers, Savern Donelson. The mother, not in perfect health, was scarcely able to sustain both these new comers. Mrs. Jackson, partly to relieve her sister, and partly with the wish to provide a son and heir for her husband, took one of the infants, when it was but a few days old, home to the Hermitage. The general soon became extremely fond of the boy, gave him his own name, adopted him, and treated him thenceforth, to the last hour of his life, not as a son merely, but as an only son. This boy is the present Andrew Jackson, Esq., of Louisiana, inheritor of the gen- erafs estate and name, master of the Hermitage until it recently became the property of the state of Tennessee. A few years later .another Uttle nephew of Mrs. Jackson' s, the well-known Andrew Jackson Donelson, became an inmate of the Hermitage, and was educated by General Jackson. The visitor then could often see the general seated in his rockino--chair with a chubby boy wedged in on each side of him, and a third, perhaps, in his lap, while he was trying to read the newspaper. This man. 1810.] GENERAL JACKSON AT HOME. 105 so irascible sometimes, and sometimes so savage, was never so much as impatient, with children, wife or servants. This was very re markable. It used to astonish people who came for the first time to the Hermitage to find that its master, of whose fierce ways and words they had heard so much, was, indeed, the gentlest and ten derest of men. They discovered, in fact, that there were two Jack- sons : Jackson raiUtant and Jackson triumphant ; Jackson crossed and Jackson having his own way ; Jackson, his mastership unques tioned, and Jackson with a rival near the throne. That curious tobacco-box story, still often told in Tennessee, and probably founded in truth, if not wholly true, illustrates this trait. The incident occurred at Clover Bottom, on the great day of the races, when the ground was crowded with men and horses. It was customary for the landlord of the tavern there to prepare a table in the open air, two hundred feet long, for the accommodar tion of the multitude attending. On the day alluded to, several races having been run, there was a-pause for dinner, which pause was duly improved. The long table was full of eager diners ; Gen eral Jackson presiding at one end ; a large number of men stand ing along the sides of the table waiting for a chance to sit down ; and .all the negroes of the neighborhood employed as waiters who could look at a plate without its breaking itself A roaring tor nado of horse-talk half drowned^ the mighty clatter of knives and forks. After the dinner had proceeded awhile, it was observed by General Jackson and those who sat near him, that something was the matter near the other end of the table — a fight, probably. There was a 'rushing together of men, and evident excitement. Now, " difficulties" of this kind -were so common at that day, whenever large numbers of men were gathered together, that the disturbance was little more than mentioned, if alluded to at all, at Jackson's end of the table, where sat the magnates' of the race. At length, some one, in passing by, was heard to say, in evident allusion to the difficulty : ".They'll finish Patten Anderson this time, I do expect." The whole truth flashed upon Jackson, and he sprang up like a man galvanized. How to get to the instant rescue of his friend ! To force a path through the crowd along the sides of the table would have taken time. • A moment later and the tall general might have been seen striding toward the scene of danger on the 5* 106 LIFE OP ANDREW JACKSON. [l8I2. top of the table, wading through the dishes, and causmg hungry men to pause astounded, with morsels suspended in. air. As he neared the crowd, putting his hand behind hhn mto his coat pocket — an ominous movement in those days, and susceptible of but one interpretation — he opened his tobacco-box, and shut it with a click so loud that it was heard by some of tlic bystanders. "I'm coming. Patten!" reared the general. " Don't fire," cried some of the spectators. The cry of do7i'tfire caught the ears of the hostile crowd, who looked up, and saw a mad Colossus striding toward them, with his right hand behind him, and slaughter depicted in every lineament of his countenance. They scattered instantaneously, leaving An derson alone and unharmed ! CHAPTER XII. GENERAL JACKSON IN SERVICE. At the beginning of the war of 1812, there was not a mUitia general in the western country less likely to receive a commission from the general government than Andrew Jackson. There were unpleasant traditions aud recollections connected with his name in Mr. Madison's cabinet, as we know. Mr. Madison had not forgot ten how General Jackson had mounteil the stump in Richmond, and denounced the last administration, of which himself was pre mier, for its " persecution" of Aaron Burr. StUl less could he have forgotten that when it was still an open question who should suc ceed Mr. Jefferson, General Jackson had given his voice for James Monroe, instead of James Madison. There were those, however, who were strongly convinced that General Jackson was the very man, of all who li\-cd in tho valley of the Mississippi, to be intrusted with its defense. Aaron Burr thought so for one. He had just returned to New York, after his four years' exUe, when the war broke out. " There was in Con gress with me," says Mr. C. J. IngersoU, " a member from New York (Dr. John Sage, of Long Island), who said that on his way 1812.] GENERAL JACKSON IN SERVICE. 107 home, after voting for the declaration of war in the Twelfth Con gress, he met that extraordinary man, Aaron Burr, in the city of New York, who conversed freely with him on the subject, particularly respecting the gentlemen appointed generals in the army ; not one of whom. Burr said, would answer public expectation. Dr. Sage told him that the president thought it best, and in fact indispensa ble, to select those with some mUitary character from service in the Revolution. I know, said Colonel Burr, that my word is not worth much with Madison ; but you may teU him from me that there is an unknown rafm in the West, named Andrew Jackson, who will do credit to a commission in the army if conferred on him. This remarkable prediction of what was soon verified, and proof of Burr's knowledge of the then obscure individual he recommended to notice, occurred before General Jackson had, probably, ever heard a voUey of musket balls, or performed any part to indicate his future miUtary distinction." Burr uttered this opinion to aU his friends at the time. He gave it strong exijression at the house of Mr. Martin Van Buren, a ris ing man at Albany, who had then scarcely heard the name of An drew Jackson, and was himself little known beyond his own state. " rU tell you why they don't employ Jackson," said Burr ; " it's be cause he is a friend of mine." It wa's General Jackson's promptitude in tendering his services, aud the services of his division, and that alone, which softened the repugnance of the president and his cabinet. Whatever may have been the feeUngs of the administration toward him, its conduct was just and courteous. It accepted him as promptly as he offered him self; employed him the moment there was any thing for him to do ; promoted him as soon as he had given fair evidence of capacity ; be stowed upon each of his achievements its due of applause. It could have done more, but it was not bound to do more. It could have given him a commission at the commencement of hostilities. But what had General Jackson done to deserve or invite a distinction so marked ? Besides, is it not the fate of all nations (except the French) to lose the first campaign .of every war, lose a fine army or two, squander some milUons of money, throw away some thousands of lives, tarnish the old honors and lessen the ancient prestige, all for the sake of sparing the feelings of certain generals, who have proved their unfitness to command to-day by having distinguished 108 LIFE OP ANDREW JACKSON. [1812. themselves in a war of twenty years ago ? Every war develops its own hero. * The war was declared on the 12th of June. Such news is not carried, but flies ; and so may have reached Nashville by the 20th. On the 25th, General Jackson offered to the President, through Governor Blount, his own services and those of twenty-flve hundred volunteers of his division. A response to the declaration of war so timely and practical, could not but have been extremely gratifying to an administration (never too confident in itself) that was then entering upon a contest to which a powerful minority was opposed ; and with a presidential election only four months distant. The reply of the Secretary of War, dated July 11th, was as cordial as a com munication of the kind could be. The President, he said, had received the tender of service by General Jackson and the volun teers undei* his command " with peculiar satisfaction." " In accept ing their seiwices," added the Secretary, " the President can not withhold an expression of his admiration of the zeal and ardor by which they are animated." Governor Blount was evidently more than satisfied with the result of the offer ; he publicly thanked Gen eral Jackson and the volunteers for the honor they had done the State of Tennessee by making it. Thus, we find General Jackson's services accepted by the Presi dent before hostilities could have seriously begun. The "summer passed, however, and the autumn came, and stUl he was at home upon his farm. After Hull's failure in Canada, fears were entertained that the British would direct their released forces against the ports of the Gulf of Mexico, particularly New Orleans, where General James WUkinson stUl commanded. October 21st, the Governor of Ten nessee was requested to dispatch fifteen hundred of the Tennessee troops to the reenforcement of General Wilkinson. Ncs^embcr 1st, Governor Blount issued the requisite orders to General Jackson, who entered at once upon the task of preparing for the descent of the river with his volunteers. The tenth of December was the day appointed for the troops to rendezvous at NashvUle. The climate of Tennessee, generaUy so pleasant, is liable to brief periods of severe cold. Twice within the memory of Uving persons, the Cumberiand has been frozen over at NashvUle • and as often snqw has fallen there to the depth of a 1812.J GENERAL JACKSON IN SERVICE. 109 foot. It so chanced that the day named for the assembling of the woops was the coldest that had been known at NashvUle for many years, and there was deep snow on the ground. Such was the en- thiKiasm, however, of the volunteers, that more tb^n two thousand presented themselves on the appointed day. The general was no less puzzled than pleased by this alacrity. NashvUle was stUl little more than a large vUlage, not capable of affording the merest shel ter to such a concourse of soldiers ; who, in any weather not extra ordinary, would have disdained a roof There was no resource for the mass of the troops but to camp out. Fortunately, the efficient quarter-master, Major William B. Lewis, had provided a thousand cords of wood for the use of the men ; a quantity that was suppos ed to be sufficient to last tiU they embarked. Every stick of the wood was burnt the first. night in keeping the men from freezing. From dark imtil nearly daylight the general and the quarter-mas ter were out among the troops, employed in providing for this un expected and perilous exigency; seeing that drunken men were brought within reach of a fire, and that no drowsy sentinel slept the sleep of death. The e.xtreme cold soon passed away, however, and the organiza tion of the troops proceeded. In a few days the little army was in readiness ; one regiment of cavalry, commanded by Colonel John Coffee, six hundred and seventy in number ; two regiments of in fantry fourteen hundred men in aU, one regiment commanded by Colonel WiUiam Hall, the other by Colonel Thoraas H. Benton. Major WiUiam B. Lewis, the general's neighbor and friend, was the quarter-master. William Carroll, a young man from Pennsyl vania, a newfavorite of the general's; was the brigade inspector. The general's aid and secretary was John Reid, long his companion in the field, afterward his biogr.apher. The troops were of the very best material the state afforded: planters, business men, their sons and grandsons — a large proportion of them descended from revolution ary soldiers who had settled in great numbers in the beautiful val ley of the Cumberland. John Coffee was a host in himself; a plain, brave, modest, stalwart man, devoted to his chief, to Tennessee and to the Union. He had been recently married to Polly Donelson, the daughter of Captain John Donelson, who had given them the farm on which they lived. On the 7th of January, all wa? ready. The infantry embarked, 110 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1812.X and the flotilla dropped down the river. Colonel Coffee and .tiJK mounted men raarched across the country, and were to rejoil'thfe general at Natchez. "I have the pleasure to iiiforin you,",wi'"ote Jackson to the Secretary of War, just before leaving home; '^(frirft I am now at the head of 2,070 volunteers, the choicest of olirciti- zens, who go at the call of their country to execute the will of tho government, who have no constitutional scruples ; and if the gov ernment orders, 'will rejoice at the opportunity of placing tho Amer ican eagle on the ramparts of Mouile, Pensacola, and Fort St. Augustine, effectually banishing from the southern coasts all British influence." • Not yet, general, not yet. Two years later, perhaps. Down the Cumberland to the Ohio ; down the Ohio to the Mis sissippi ; down the Mississippi toward New Orleans ; stopping here and there for sujjjjlies ; delayed for days at a time by the ice in the S'ivift Ohio ; grounding a boat now and then ; losing one altogether ; — the fleet pursued its course, crunching through the floating masses, but making fair progress, for the space of thirty-nine days. The weather was often very cold and tempestuous, and the frail boats afforded only an imperfect shelter. But all the little array, from tho general to the privates, were in the highest spirits, and burned with the desire to do their part in restoring the diminished prestige of the American arms ; to atone for the shocking fiiilures of the North by making new conquests at the South. On the 15th of February, at dawn of day, they had left a thousand miles of winding stream behind them, and saw before them the little town of Natchez. The fleet came to. The men were rejoiced to hear that Colonel Coffee and his mounted regiment had already arrived in the vicinity. Here General Jackson received a dispatch from General Wilkinson, requesting- him to halt at Natchez, as neither quarters nor provisions were ready for them at New Orleans ; nor had an enemy yet made his appearance in the southern waters. WUkinson added, that he had received no orders respecting the Tennesseeans, knew not their destination, and should not think of yielding his command, " until regularly relieved by superior authority." .Jackson assented to the poUcy of remaining at Natchez for further instructions ; but, with regard to General WUkinson's uneasiness on the question of rank, he said, in his reply, " I have inarched with the true spirit of a sol dier to serve my country at any and every point where service can 1812.] general JACKSON IN SERVICE. Ill rendered," and " the detachment under my command shall be ^pt in complete readiness to move to any point at which au enemy may appear, at the shortest notice." So, at Natchez, the troops disembarked, and, encamping in a pleasant and salubrious place, a few miles from the town, passed their days in learning the duties of the soldier. The month of February passed away and still tho army was in camp, employed in nothing more serious than the daily drUl. No one knew when they were to move, where they were to -go, nor what they were to do. The commanding general was not a little impatient, and even the more placid Colonel Coffee longed to be in action. At length, on a Sunday morning, toward the end of March, an express from Washington reached the camp, and a letter from the war department was placed in the general's hands. We can imagine the intensity of feeling with which he tore it open and gath ered its purport, and the fever of excitement which the news of its aiTival kindled throughout the camp. The communication was signed, " J. Armstrong." Eustis, then, was out of office. Yes ; he left the department February 4th, and this letter was written by the new secretary two days after. But its contents ? Was it the perusal of this astounding letter that caused the general's hair to Stand on end, and remain for ever after erect and bristling, unlike the quiUs upon the fretful porcupine ? Fancy, if you can, the de meanor, attitude, countenance, of this fiery and generous soldier, as he read, and re-read, with ever-growing wonder and wrath, the fol lowing epistle : — "Wak DepAetment, February 6, 1813. "Sir: — The causes of embodying and marching to New Orleans tho corps under your command having'ceased to exist, you will, on the receipt of this letter, con sider it as dismissed from public service, and take measures to have delivered over to Major-Seneral 'Wilkinson all the articles of pubUo property which may have been put into its possession. "Tou will accept for yourself and the corps the thanks of the President of the United States. " I have the honor, etc., "j. asmsteong. "Majoe-Gexeeal Andeew Jacksox." Could he believe his eyes ? I ismissed-? Dismissed where ? 112 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [l812. Here ? Five hundred miles from home ? Dismissed without pay, without means of transport, without provision for the sick ? How could he dismiss men so far from home, to whom, on receiving them from their parents, he had promised to be a father, and either to restore them in honor to their arms, or give them a soldier's burial ? His resolution was taken on the instant never to disband, his troops till he had led thein back to the borders of their own state ! The very day on which the order arrived, the general issued the requisite directions for the preparation of wagons, provisions and ammunition. On the next day, he dispatched letters, indignant and explanatory, to the secretary of war, to Governor Blount, to the president, and to General Wilkinson. He attributed th? strange conduct of the government to every cause but the right one — its own inexperience, and the difficulty of directing operations at places so remote from the seat of government. Armstrong averred that he had dispatched the obnoxious order in the confident expectation of its reaching General Jackson before he had gone far from home ; as the extreme severity of the winter, he thought, would inevita bly detain the flotilla at the mouth of the Cumberland. There is no good reason now to doubt this explanation ; though, at the time, it did not look probable. The general thought he saw .the sly hand of Wilkinson in the busmess. " You have it still in your power," wrote Wilkinson, " to render a most acceptable service to our government, by encouraging the recruiting service from the patriotic soldiers you command in an appropriate general order." Aha ! thought General Hotspur ; it's all a scheme, then, of this in sidious villain to swell his own force with my gallant Tennesseeans. But, by the Eternal, " I'll keep them all I By Heaven I he shall not have a Soot of them. No ; if a Scot would save his soul, he shaU not. I'U keep them, by this hand I" And so he did. When a recruiting officer was detected hanging about the camp, the general notified him that if he attempted to seduce one of his volunteers into the regular army, he should be drummed out of the camp in the presence of the enthe corps. At the last moment came the orders of the government (which ought to have accompanied the order to disband), directing the 1812.J GENERAL JACKSON IN s"e R V I C E . ' 113 fOTce under Gener.al Jackson to be paid off, and allowed pay and rations for the journey home. It was too late. The general was resolved, whatever might betide, to conduct the men back to their homes, in person, as an organized body. "I shall commence the line of march," he wrote to Wilkinson, " on Thursday, the 25th. Should the contractor not feel himself justified in sending on pro visions for my infantry, or the quarter-master wagons for the trans portation of my sick, I shall dismount the cavalry, carry thera on, and provide the means for their support out of my private funds. If that should fail, I thank my God we have plenty of horses to feed my troops to the Tennessee, where I know my country will meet me with ample supplies. These brave men, at the call of their country, voluntarily rallied round its insulted standard. They followed me to the field ; I shall carefuUy march them back to their homes. It is for the agents of the government.to account to the state of Tennessee and the whole world for their singular and unu sual conduct to this detachment." It was on this homeward march that the nickname of " Old Hickory" was bestowed on the general. From the time of leaving NashriUe, General Jackson had constantly grown in the confidence and affection of the troops. The man was in his element at last, and his great qualities began to make themselves manifest. Many of the volunteers had heard so much of his violent and hasty tem per that they had joined the corps with a certain dread and hesita^ tion, fearing not the enemy, nor the march, nor the diseases of the lower country, so much as the swift wrath of. their commander. Some, indeed, refused to go for that reason alone. How surprised were those who entered the service with such feelings to find in Gen eral Jackson a father as well as a chief! Jackson had the faculty, which all successful soldiers possess, of completely identifying him self with the men he commanded ; investing every soldier, as it were, with a portion of his own personality, and feeling a wrong done to the least of them as done to himself Soldiers are quick to perceive a trait of this kind. They saw, indeed, that there was a whole volcano of wrath in their general, but they observed that, to the men of his command, so. long as they did their duty, and longer, he was the most gentle, patient, considerate, and generous of friends. This resolve of his to disobey his government for their sakes, 114 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1810. and the manner in which he executed that resolve, raised liis popu larity to the highest point. When the little array set out from Natchez for a march of five hundred iniles through tho wilderiies.s, there were a hundred and fifty men on tho sick list, of whom fiftj-- six could not raise their heads from the pillow. There were but eleven wagons for the conveyance of these. The rest of tlie sick were mounted on the horses of the officers. The general had three excellent horses, and ga-\'e them all up to the sick men, himself trudging .along on foot with the brisk pace that was usual with him. Day after day he tramped gayly along the miry forest roads, never tired, and always ready with a cheering word for the others. They marched with extraordinary speed, averaging eighteen raUcs a day, and performing the whole journey in less than a month ; and yet the sick men rapidly recovered under the reviving influ ences of a homeward march. " Where am I ?" asked oue young feUow who had been lifted to his place in a w.agon when insensible and apparently dying. " On your way home /" cried the general, merrily ; and the young soldier began to improve from that hour, and re.ached home in good health. The name of " Old Hickory" was not an instant.aneous inspirar tion, but a growth. First of all, the remark wn,'^ made by some soldier, who was struck with his commander's pedestrian powers, that the general was " tough." Next it was observed of him that he was as " tough as hickory." Then . he was called Hickory. Lastly, the affectionate adjectiAC " old" vra.s prefixed, and the gen eral thenceforth rejoiced in the completed nickname, usuaUy the first-won honor of a great commander. On approaching the borders of the state, the general again offered his services to the government to aid in, or conduct, a neiv inva sion of Canada. His force, he said, could be increased, if neces sary ; and he had a few standards wearing the American eagle, that he should be happy to place upon tJje eneray's ramparts. But the desired response came not ; and so, on the 22d of May, the last of his army was drawn up on the pubhc square of Nash-yille waiting only for the word of command to disperse to their homes. The troops were dismissed, exidting in their commander, and spreading wide the fame of his gaUant and graceful conduct. " Long wUl their general five in the memory of the volunteers of West Tennessee," said the NasJiville WJiig, a day or two after the 1812.] GENERAL JACKSON IN SERVICE. 115 troops were disbanded, " for his benevolent, humane, and fatherly treatment to his soldiers ; if gr.atitude and love can reward him. General Jackson has them. It affords us pleasure to say, that we beUeve there is not a man belonging to the detachment but w^hat loves him. His fellow-citizens at home are not less pleased with his conduct. We fondly hope his merited worth wUl not be over looked by the government." The government, quotha ?* These events were not regarded at Washington in the Ught they were at NashviUe. Far from it. The " government " came very near making up its mind to let the gen eral hear the responsibilities which he had incurred. Colonel Benton says: "We aU returned; were discharged; dispersed among our homes, and the fine chance on which we had so much counted was all gone. And npw came a blow upon Jackson himself — ^the fruit of the rnoneyed responsibility which he had assumed. His transportation drafts were all protested — returned upon him for pay ment, which was impossible, and directions to bring suit. This was the month of May. I was coming on to Washington on my own account, and cordially took charge of Jackson's case. Suits were delayed until the result of his application for relief could be heard. I arrived at this city ; Congress was in session — the extra session of the spring and s-ammer of 181.3. I applied to the members of Congress from Tennessee ; they could do nothing. I applied to the secretary of war ; he did nothing. " Weeks had passed away, and the time for delay was expiring at NashvUle. Ruin seemed to be hovering over "the head of Jack son, and I felt the necessity of some decisive movement. I was young, then, and had some material in me — perhaps some boldness ; and the occasion brought it out. I resolved to take a step, charac terized in the letter which I wrote to the general as ' an appeal from the justice to the fears of the administration.^ I remember the words, though I have never seen the letter since. I drew up a memoir, addressed to the secretary of war, representing to him that these volunteers were drawn from the bosoms of almost every substantial family in Tennessee — tliat the whole state stood by Jack son in bringing them home — -and that the state would be lost to the administration if he was left to suffer. It was upon this last argu ment that I reUed — all those founded in justice having failed. "It was of a Saturday morning, 12th of June, that I carried this 116 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1813, memoir to the war office, and delivered it. Monday morning I came back early to learn the result of my argument. The secretary was not yet in. I spoke to the chief clerk (who was afterward Adjutant-General Parker), and inquired if the secretary had left any answer for me before he left the office on Saturday. He said no ; but that he had put the memoir in his side pocket — the breast- 'pocket — and carried it home with him, saying he would take it for bis Sunday's consideration. That encouraged uie — gave a gleam of hope and a feeUng of satisfaction. I thought it a good subject for his Sunday's meditation. Presently he arrived. I stepped in before anybody to his office. " He told me quickly and kindly that there was much reason in • what I had said, but that there was no way for him to do it ; that Congress wouldhavetogive the relief. I answered him that Ithought there was a way for him to do it ; it was to give an order to General Wilkinson, quarter-master general in the southern department, to pay for so much transportation as General Jackson's command would have been entitled to if it had returned under regular orders. Upon the instant he took up a pen, wrote down the very words I had spoken, directed a clerk to put them into form ; and the work was done. The order went off immediately, and Jackson was relieved from irarainent impending ruin, and Tennessee remained firm to the administration ." And so ended this fruitless expedition to Natchez. Fruitless it was of immediate military results. It was more productive, how ever, of reputation to the general in command than if it had been, in any ordinary degree, successful. It left him a private citizen, indeed ; but, for the time, the most.beloved and esteemed of private citizens in western Tennessee. CHAPTER Xm. APERAT"WTTH THE BENTONS. It was through an act of good nature that General Jackson was drawn into this disgraceful business. WUliam CarroU (afterward General Carroll), who went down the river with the exoedition, ' i 1813.] AFFRAY WITH THE BENTONS. 117 the capacity of brigade 'inspector, had but recently come to Nash vUle from Pittsburgh, where he had been a clerk or partner in a hard ware store. He was a tall, well-formed man, much given to military affairs, and thus attracted the notice of General Jackson ; who ad vanced him so rapidly and paid him such marked attentions, as to procure for the young stranger a great many enemies. Carroll, moreover, was not a genuine son of the wUderness. With all his powerful frame and superior stature, there was an expression of deUcacy in his smooth, fair countenance that found small favor in the eyes of the rougher pioneers. Perhaps, too, in those days, there was a touch of dandyism in his attire and demeanor. Far diflerent was he from the giant Coffee, man of the mighty arm and massive fist, and thundering voice, and face of bronze, and heart of oak ; the backwoodsman's beau ideal of a colonel of hunting-shirted dra goons. Enough. Captain Wilham Carroll had his enemies among the young officers of General Jackson's division. At length, the foes of CarroU succeeded in their object so far as to embroU the young man with Mr. Jesse Benton, a brother of Colonel Thomas H. Benton, who was away in Washington, saving General Jackson from bankruptcy. Jesse Benton, for many years a resident of Nashville, had a good deal of his brother's fire and fluency, without much of his talent and discretion. He was a well- intentioned, eccentric, excitable man, prone to get himself into awk ward scrapes, and to get out of them awkwardly. He challenged Carroll. His social standing was such that his challenge could not be declined, and Carroll was compelled to prepare for a fight. Unable, it is said, to procure a suitable second in NashviUe, Carroll rode out to the Hermitage, stated his perplexity to General Jackson, and asked him to act as his " friend." The general was astonished at the proposal. "Why, Captain Carroll," said he, "I am not the man for such an affair. I am too old. The time has been wshen I should have gone out with pleasure ; but, at my time of life, it would be ex tremely injudicious. You must get a man nearer your own age." Carroll replied that if this had been a quarrel of an ordinary nature he would not have asked General Jackson's assistance. Biit it was not an ordinary quarrel. There was a conspiracy, he said, among certain young men, to "run him out of the country." 118 LIFE OF .ANDREW JACKSON.' [1813, They wanted his commission, and were jealous of his standing with General Jackson. At the words, " run me out of the country," tho general's man ner changed. " Well, CarroU," said he, " you may make your mind easy on om point : they sha'n't run you out of the country as long as Andrew Jackson lives in it. I'll ride with you to NashviUe, and inquire into this business myself." Upon inquiry. General Jackson was convinced that Jesse Ben ton's fiery jjassions had been played upon by the enemies of Carroll for their own purposes, and that tho challenge of that gentleman was something not in the least degree called for by the "laws of honor." He personally remonstrated with Benton, and, as he thought, with good effect. But others gained his ear and confi dence, after the general had returned to the tavern, and the result was, that he persisted in fighting. Upon learning this determinor tion. General Jackson declared his purpose to stand by his young friend, Carroll, and to go with him to the field as his second. The incidents of the duel were so ridiculous that they are stUl a standing joke in Tennessee. The men were placed back to back, at the usual distance ajiart. At the word, they -svere to wheel and fire. The general, on placing his man, said, pointing to Benton, " You needn't fear him, Carroll ; he'd never hit you, if you were as broad as a barn-door." Benton was evidently a little agitated. Indeed, as he afterward confessed to his physician, he had not the duelist's nerve, i. e., he could not quite conceal a feeling, common to all duelists when they are placed, that a man who stands eight or ten jjaces from the mtiz- zle of a loaded pistol which is about to go off, is in a false position. " Fire !" The men wheeled and raised their pistols. Benton fired first, and then stooped or crouched, to receive the flre of his antagonist. The aot of stooping caused a portion of his frame, that was always prominent, to be more prominent still. CarroU fired. His ball in flicted a long, raking wound on the part exposed, which would have been safe but for the unlucky stoop. Jackson ran up to his principal, and asked him if he was hit. " No," said he, " I beUeve not." At that moment, CarroU observed blood on his left hand, and found that he had been shot. in the thumb. 1813.] AiPFRAT WITH THE BENTONS. • 119 " Oh, yes," he added, " he's hit my thumb." "I told you he would not hurt you," said Jackson ; " and he wouldn't have hit you at all if you'd kept your h.and at your side, where it ought to have been." Benton was carried home, and his wound was dressed. He was confined to the house for some weeks. Meanwhile, Colonel Thomas H. Benton had completed his busi ness at Washington, had sent on to Tennessee the news of his great success, and was about to return home, when he heard of this duel, and heard, too, that General Jackson had gone to the field, not as his brother's friend, but as the second of his brother's antagonist ! General Jackson ! whom he had so signally served. Soon came wild letters from Jesse, so narrating the affair as to place the con duct of General Jackson in the worst possible light. Officious friend s of the Bentons, foes to Jackson and to Carroll, wrote to Colonel Benton in a simUar strain, adding fuel to the fire of his indignation. Benton -wrote to Jackson, denouncing his conduct in offensive terms. Jackson repUed, in effect, that before addressing him in that manner, Colonel Benton should have inquired of him what his conduct really had been, not Ustened to the tales of designing and. interested par ties. Benton wrote stUl more angrily. He said that General Jack son had conducted the duel in a " savage, unequal, unfair, and base manner." On his way home through Tennessee, especially at Knox ville, he inveighed bitterly and loudly, in public places, against General Jackson, using language such as angry men did use in the western country fifty years ago. Jackson was informed of this. Phrases applied by Benton to himself were reported to him by some of those parasites and sycophants who made it their business to minister to his passions and prejudices ; a class of people from whose malign, misleading influence men of intense personality are seldom wholly free. Jackson had liked Thomas Benton, and remembered with grati tude his parents, particularly his mother, who had been gracious and good to him when he was a " raw lad " in North CaroUna. Jack son was, therefore, sincerely unwiUing to break with him, and mani fested a degree of forbearance which it is a pity he could not have maintained to the end. He took fire at la'St, threw old friendship to the winds, and swore by the Eternal that he would horsewhip Tom Benton the first time he met him. 120 LJFE OF ANDEEW JACKSON. [1813. The vow had gone forth ; a sacred vow at that day in Tennessee. To all Nashville it was known that General Jackson had promised to whip Thoraas Benton " on sight," to use Colonel Coffee's com mercial term. Colonel Benton was duly informed of it. Jesse Benton, then nearly recovered from his wound, was perfectly aware of it. The thing was to be done. Tbe only question was. When f Back from Washington came Colonel Benton, bursting with wrath and defiance, yet resolved to preserve the peace, and neither to seek nor fly the threatened attack. One measure of precaution, however, he did adopt. There were then two taverns on the public square of NashvUle, both situated near the same angle, their front doors being not more than a hundred yards apart. One was the old Nash vUle Inn (burnt in 1856 or 1857), at which General Jackson was accustomed to put up for more than forty years. There, too, the Bentons, Colonel Coffee and all of the general's peculiar friends were wont to take lodgings whenever they visited the town, and to hold pleasant converse over a glass of wine, and to play biUiards together — a game pursued with fanatical devotion in fhe early days of NashviUe. By the side of this old inn was a piece of open ground, where cocks were accustomed to display their prowess, and tear one another to pieces for the entertainment of some of the citizens. On reaching Nashville, Colonel Benton and his brother Jesse did not go to their accustomed inn, but stopped at the City Hotel, to avoid General Jackson, unless he chose to go out of his way to seek them. This was on the 3d of September. In the evening of the same day it came to pass that General Jackson and Colonel Coifee rode into town, and put up their horses, as usual, at the Nashville Inn. Whether the coming of these portentous gentlemen was in consequence of the general's having received, a few hours before, an intimation of the arrival of Colonel Benton, is one of those ques tions which must be left to that already overburdened individual— the future historian. Perhaps it was true, as Colonel Coffee grin. ningly reraarked, that they had come to get their letters from the post-office. They were there — that is the main point — and concluded to stop ah night. Captain CarroU called in the course of the even ing, and told the general^that an affair of the most delicate and ten der nature compeUed him to leave NashvUle at dawn of day. " Go, by aU means," said the general. " I want no man to figM my battles." 1813.] .AFFRAY WITH THE BENTONS. 121 The next morning, about nine. Colonel Coffee proposed to Gen eral Jackson that they should stroll over to the post-office. They started. The general carried with him, as he generally did, his riding whip. He also wore a small sword, as all gentlemen once did, and as official persons were accustomed to do in Tennessee, as late as the war of 1812. The post-office was then situated in the public square, on the corner of a little alley, just beyond the City Hotel. There were therefore, two ways of getting to it front the Nashville Inn. One way was to go straight to it, across the angle of the square; the other, to keep the sidewalk and go round. Our two friends took the short cut, walking leisurely along. When they were about midway between their inn and the post-office. Colonel Coffee, glancing toward the City Hotel, observed Colonel Benton standing in the doorway thereof, drawn up to his fuU hight, and looking daggers at them. " Do you see that feUow ?" said Coffee to Jackson, in a low tone. " Oh, yes," replied Jackson -without turning his head, " I have my eye on him." They continued their walk to the post-office, got their letters, and set out on their retm-n. This time, however, they did not take the short way across the squar?, but kept down the sidewalk, which led past the front door at which Colonel Benton was posted. As they drew near, they observed that Jesse Benton was standing before the hotel near his brother. On coming up to where Colonel Benton stood. General Jackson suddenly turned toward him, with his whip in his right hand, and, stejpping up to him, said, " Now, you d — d rascal, I am going to punish yon. Defend your- seff." Benton put his hand into his breast pocket and seemed to be fumbling for his pistoL As quick as lightning, Jackson drew a pis tol from a pocket behind him, and presented it full at his antago nist, who recoiled a pace or two. Jackson advanced upon him. Benton continued to step slowly backward, Jackson close upon him, with a pistol at his heart, until they had reached the back door of the hotel, and were in the act of turning down the back piiazza. At that moment, just as Jackson was beginning to turn, Jesse Ben ton entered the passage behind the beUigerents, and, seeing his brother's danger, raised his pistol and fii-ed at Jackson. The pistol \^as loaded with two balls and a large slug. The slug took effect 6 122 LIFE OP ANDREW JACKSON. [1813 in Jackson's left shoulder, shattering it horribly-. One of the baUs struck the thick part of his left arm, and buried itself near the bone. The other ball spUntered the board partition at his side. The shook of the wounds was such, that Jackson fell across the entry, and re mained prostrate, bleeding profusely. Coffee bad remained just outside, meanwhile. Hearing the re port of the pistol, he sprang into the entry, and. seeing his chief prostrate at the feet of Colonel Benton, concluded that it was his ball that had laid him low. He rushed upon Beiiton, drew his pis tol, fired, and missed. Then he " clubbed " his pistol, and Mas about to strike, when Colonel Benton, in stepping backward, came to some stairs of which he was not aware, and fell headlong to the bottom. Coffee, thinking him hors du cortibat, hastened to the as- sistanbe of his wounded general. The report of Jesse Benton's pistol brought another actor on the'bloody scene — Stokely Hays, a nejihew of Mrs. Jackson, and a devoted friend to the general. He was standing near the Nash ville Inn, when he heard the pistol. He knew well what was going forward, and ran with all his speed to the spot. He, too, saw the general lying on the floor, weltering in his blood. But, un like Coffee, he perceived who it was that had fired the deadly charge. Hays was a man of a giant's size, and a giant's strength. He snatched from his sword-cane its long and glittering blade, and made a lunge at Jesse with such frantic force, that it would have pinned him to the wall had it taken effect. LuckUy the point struck a button, and the slender weapon was broken to pieces. He then drew a dirk, threw himself in a paroxysm of fury upon Jesse, and got him down upon the floor. Holding him down with one hand, he raised the dirk to plunge it mto his breast. The prostrate man seized the coat-cuff of the descending arm and diverted the blow, so that the weapon only pierced the fleshy part of his left arm. Hays strove madly to disengage his arm, and in doing so gave poor Jesse several flesh wounds. At length, with a mighty wrench, he tore his cuff from Jesse Benton's convulsive grasp, lifted the dirk high in the air, and was about to bury it in the heart of his antag onist, when a bystander caught the uplifted hand and prevent.ed the further shedding of blood. Other bystanders then interfered; the maddened Hays, the wrathful Coffee, the irate Benton were held back from continuing the combat, and quiet was restored. 1813.] AFFRAY WITH THE BENTONS. 123 Faint from the loss of blood, Jackson was conveyed to a room in the NashviUe Inn, his wound still bleeding fearfully. Before the bleeding could be stopped, two mattresses, as Mrs. Jackson used to say, were soaked through, and the general was reduced almost to the last gasp. AU the doctors in Nashville were soon in attend ance, aU but one of whom, and he a young- man, recommended the amputation of the shattered arm. " I'll keep my arm," said the wounded man, and he kept it. No attempt was made to ex tract the baU, and it remained in the arm for twenty years. The ghastly wounds in the shoulder were di-essed, in the simple manner of the Indians and pioneers, with poultices of slippery elm, and other products of the woods. The patient was utterly prostrated with the loss of blood. It was two or three weeks before he could leave his bed. After the retirement 6f the general's friends, the Bentons re mained for an hour or more upon the scene of the affray, denounc ing Jackson as an assassin, and a defeated assassin. They defied him to come forth and renew the strife. Colonel Benton made a parade of breaking Jackson's smaU-sword, which had been dropped in the struggle, and left on the fioor of the hotel. He broke it in the pubhc square, and accompanied the act with words defiant and contemptuous, uttered in the loudest tones of his thundering voice. , The general's friends, all anxiously engaged around the couch of their bleeding chief, disregarded these demonstrations at the time, and the brothers rethed, victorious and exulting. Shortly after the affray. Colonel Benton went to his home in Franklin, Tennessee, beyond the reach of " Jackson's puppies." He was appointed lieutenant-colonel in the regular army; left Ten nessee ; resigned his commission at the close of the war ; emigrated to Missouri; and never again met General Jackson tUl 1823, when both were members of the senate of the United States. Jesse Benton, I may add, never forgave General Jackson ; nor could he ever forgive his brother for forgiving the general. Publications against Jackson by the angry Jesse, dated as late as 1828, may be seen in old coUections of poUtical trash. About the time of this bloody affray. Commodore Perry gained his -victory on Lake Erie. The news, so electric, so revivifying, reached NashviUe at a moment when other tidings of a nature far different absorbed the minds of aU the inhabitants of the frontier. 124 LIFE OF ANDEEW JACKSON. [1813. "When these boyish men fought their silly fight, on the 4th of Sep tember, the courier was already on his way from the South with a piece of news that would have st.ayed their bloody h.ands had it come in time. If they could but have known what was . transpir ing on the MobUe River! Jackson was deeply to blame for that shameful affray. Judge, from following chapters, whether ever man was so exquisitely punished for a fault as he was for that. CHAPTER XIV. THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. August 30th, 1813, was the date of this most terrible event. The place was a fort or stockade-of-refuge, on the shores of Lake Tensaw, in the southern part of what is now the state of Ala bama. One Samuel Mims, an old and wealthy inhabitant of the Indian country, had inclosed with upright logs an acre of land, in the middle of which stood his house, a spacious one story building, with sheds adjoining. The inclosure, pierced with five hundred port-holes, three and a half feet from the ground, was entered by two heavy rude gates, one on the eastern and one on the western side. In a corner, on a slight elevation, a block-house was begun, but never finished. When the country became thoroughly alarmed by the hostUity of the Indians, the inhabitants along the Alabama River, few in number and without means of defense, had left their crops standing in the fields and their houses open to the plunderer, and had rushed to the block-houses and stockades, of which there were t-n-enty in a line of seventy mUes. The neighbors of Mr. Mims resorted to his inclosure, each family hastening to construct within it a rough cabin for its own accommodation. As soon as the fort — for fort it was caUed — was sufficiently pre pared for their reception, Governor Claiborne, of New Orleans, dis patched one hundred and seventy-five -i'olunteers to assist in its de fense, under the command of Major Daniel Beasley. Already, from the neighborhood, seventy miUtia-men had assembled at the fort. 1813.] THE MASSACEE AT FORT IIIMS. 125 besides a mob of friendly Indians, and one hundred .and six negro slaves. Upon taking the command. Major. Beasley, to accommodate the multitude which thronged to the fort, had enlarged it by mak- . ing a new line of picketing si.xty feet beyond the eastern end, but left the old line of stockades stxinding, thus forming two inclo- sures. On the morning of the fatal day, though Major Beasley had spared some of his armed men for the defense of neighboring sta tions. Fort Minis contained no less than five hundred and fifty-three souls, a mass of human beings crowded together in a fiat, swampy region, under the broiling sun of an Alabama August. Of these, more than one hundred were white women and children. Many days had passed — long, hot, tedious days — and no Indians were seen. The first terror abated. The higher officers, it seems, had scarcely believed at all in the hostUe intentions of the Creeks, and were inclined to make light of the general consternation. At least, they were entirely confident in their abUity to defend the fort against any force that the Indians could bring against it. The motley inmates gave themselves up to fun and frolic. A rumor would occasionally come in with alarming news of Indian move ments, and, for a few hours, the old caution was resumed, and the men would languidly work on the defenses. But still the hourly scouts sent out by the comraander could discover no traces of an enemy, and the hot days and nights still wore away without alarm. August 29th, two sla\'es, who had been sent out to watch some cattle that grazed a few miles from the fort, came rushing breathless through the gate, reporting that they had seen twenty-four painted warriors. A general alarm ensued, and the garrison flew to their stations. A party of horse, guided by the negroes, galloped to the . spot, but could neither find Indians, nor discover any of the usual traces of their presence. Upon their return, one of the negroes was tied up and severely flogged for alarming the garrison by what Major Beasley supposed to be a sheer fabrication. The other » negro would also have been punished but for the interference of his master, who believed his tale; at which interference the major was so much displeased that he ord^-ed the gentleman, with his large family, to leave the fort on the following morning. Never did stich a fatal infatuation possess the mind of a man intrusted with so many human lives. 126 LIFE OF ANDEEW JACKSON. [1813. The 30th of August arrived. At ten in the morning the com mandant was sitting in his room writing to Governor Claiborne a letter (wdiich still exists) to the effect that he need not concern himself in the least respecting the safety of Fort Mims, as there was no doubt of its impregnalnlity against any Indian force what ever. Both gates were wide open, ^^^omen were preparing dinner. Children were playing about the cabins. Soldiers were sauntering, sleeping, playing cards. The owner of the frightened negro had now consented to his punishment rather than leave the fort, and the poor fellow was tied up expecting soon to feel the lash. His companion, who had been whipped the day before, was out tend ing cattle at the same place, where again he saw, or thought he saw, ' painted warriors ; and fearing to be whipped again if he reported the news, fled to the next station some miles distant. All this calm and quiet morning, from before daylight until noon, there lay in a ravine only four hundred yards from the fort's east ern gate, one thousand Creek warriors, armed to the teeth, and hideous with war-paint and feathers. Weathersford, the crafty and able chieftain, had led them from Pensacola, where the British had supplied them with weapons and ammunition, to this well-chosen spot, where tbey crouched and waited through the long slow inorn- ing, with the devUish patience with which sav.ages and tigers can wait for their prey. So dead was the silence in the ravine, that the birds fluttered and sang as usual in the branches above the dusky breathing mass. Five prophets with blackened faces, with medicine bags and magic rods, lay among them, ready at the signal to begin their incantations and stimulate the fury of the warriors. At noon a drum in the fort beat to dinner ; officers and men, their arms laid aside, all unsuspicious of danger, were gathering to the meal in -s-arious parts of the stockade. That dinner-drum was the signal which Weathersford had cunningly chosen for the attack. At the first tap, the sUent ravine was alive with Indians, who leaped up and ran in a tumultuous mass toward the eastern gate of the de voted fort. The head of the throng had reached a field, oue hun dred and fifty yards across, that lay before tbe gate, had raised a hideous whoop, and were streaming across the field, before a sen tinel saw or heard them. Then arose the terrible cry, Indians! Indians ! and there was a rush of women and chUdren to the houses, and of men to the gates and j-o t-holes. Major Beasley was 1813.] THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS. 127 one of the first at the gate, and made a frantic attempt to close it ; but sand had washed into the gateway, and ere the obstruction could be removed, the savages poured in, felled the commander to the earth with clubs and tomahawks, and ran over his bleeding body into the fort. He crawled behind the gate, and in a few minutes died, exhorting his men with his last breath to make a resolute re sistance. At once the whole of that part of the fort which had been lately added, and which was separated from the main inclosure by the old line of pickets, was filled with Indians, hooting, howl ing, dancing among the dead bodies of many of the best officers and men of the little garrison. The poor negro, tied up to be whipped for doing all he could to prevent this catastrophe, was killed as he stood waiting for his punishment. The situation was at once simple and horrible. Two inclosures adjoining, with a line of port-holes through the log partition — one inclosure full of men, women, chUdren, friendly Indians and negroes — the other filled with howling savages, mad with the lust of slaughter ; both compartments containing sheds, cabins, and other places for refuge and assault — the large open field without the east ern gate covered with what seemed a countless swarm of- naked fiends hurrying to the fort — aU aVenues of escape closed by Wea- thersford's foresight and viligance — no white station within three mUes, and no adequate help within a day's inarch — the command ant and some of his ablest officers trampled under the feet of the savage foe. Such was the posture of affairs at Fort Mims a few minutes after noon on this dreadful day. The garrison, partly recovering their first panic, formed along the line of port-holes and fired some effective voUeys, kUling with the first discharge the five prophets who were dancing, grimacing, and howling among the assailants in the smaUer inclosure. These men had given out that they were invulnerable. American bullets were to spht upon then- sacred persons and pass off harmless. Their faU so abated the ardor of the savages that their fire slackened, and some began to retreat from the fort. But new crowds kept com ing up, and the attack was soon renewed in all its first fury. The gamson, with scarcely an exception, behaved as men should do in circumstances so terrible and desperate. One Captain BaUey took the command after the death of Maj or Beasley, and infused the fire of his own indomitable spirit into ihe hearts of the whole com- 128 LIFE OF ANDI7E-vy JACKSON. [1813. pany; adding an example of cool valor to encouraging words. The garrison maintained a ceaseless aud destructive fire through the port-holes and from the houses. It happened, more than once, that at a simultaneous discharge through a port-hole, both the Indian Avithout aud the white man within were kUled. E\'en tlu; boys and some of the women assisted in the defense ; •¦'.?! 1 few of the women gave themselves up to terror wdiile there remained any hope of pro- serving the fort. Some of the old men broke holes in the roof of the large house and did good execution upon the sa\ages outside of the stockade. The noise was terrific. AU the Indians who could not get at "the port-holes to fight seemed to have p.assed the hours of this horrible day in dancing round the fort, screaming, hooting, and taunting the inmates with their coming fate. Amid scenes like these three hours passed, and still the larger part of the fort remained in the hands of the garrison, though many a gallant soldier had fallen, and tbe rooms of tho large house were fiUed with wounded men and ministering women. The heroic Bailey still spoke cheerily. He said that Indians never fought long when they were bravely met ; they would certainly abandon the assault if the garrison continued to resist. He tried to induce a small party to make a sortie, fight their way to the next station, and bring a force to attack the enemy in the rear. Failing in this, he said he would go himself, and began to climb the picketing, but was pulled back by his friends, who saw the madness of the at tempt. About three o'clock the Indians seemed to tire of the long con test. The fire slackened ; the bowlings subsided ; the savages be gan to carry off the plunder from the cabins in the lesser inclosure; and hope revived in many a despairing heart. But Weathersford, at this hour, rode up on a large black horse, and meeting a throng of the retreating plunderers, upbraided them in an animated speech, and induced them to return with him to the fort and complete its destruction. '5 And now FIRE was added to the horrors of the scene. Bv burning ar rows and other expedients, the house of Mr. Mims was set on fire, and soon the Avhole structure, with its extensive out-buildings and sheds, was wrapped in fiames ; while the shrieks of the women and chil dren were heard, for the first time, above the dreadful din and whoop of the battle. One after another, the smaller buildings caught, 1813.] THE MASSACRE AT PORT MIMS. 129 untU the whole inclosure was a roaring sea of flame, except one poor corner, where some extra picketing formed a last refuge to the sur- ¦yiving victims. Into this inclosure hurried a crowd of women, children, negroes, old men, wounded soldiers, trarapling one an other to death — all in the last agonies of mortal terror. The sav ages were soon upon them, and the work of slaughter — fierce, un relenting slaughter — began. Children were seized by the feet and their brains dashed out against the pickets. Women were cut to pieces. Men were tomahawked and scalped. Some poor Span iards, deserters from Pensacola, were kneeling along the pickets, and were tomahawked, one after another, as they knelt. Weathers ford, who was not a savage, but a misguided hero and patriot, worthy of Tecumseh's friendship, did what Tecumseh y.'ould have done if he had been there : he tried to stop this horrid carnage. But the Indians were delirious and frantic with the love of blood, and would not stay their murderous hands while one of that mass of human -victims continued to Uve. At noon that day, as we have seen, five hundred and fifty-three persons were inmates of Fort JNIims. At sunset, four hundred man gled, scalped and bloody corpses were heaped and strewed within its wooden walls. Not one white woman, not one white child, es caped. Twelve 'of the garrison, at the last moment, by cutting through two of the pickets, got out of the fort, and fled to the swamp. A large number of the negroes were spared by the In dians and kept for slaves. A few half-breeds were made prisoners. Captain BaUey, severely wounded, ran to the swamp, and died by the side of a cypress, stump. A negro woman, with a baU in her breast, reached a canoe on Lake Tensaw, and paddled fifteen miles to Fort Stoddart, and bore the first news of the massacre to Gov ernor Claiborne. Most of the men wlio fled from the slaughter wandered for days in the swamps aud forests, and only reach ed places of safety, nearly starved, after many a hair-breadth escape from the Indians. Some of them are still living, from whose lips Mr. A. J. Pickett, the historian of Alabama, gathered most of the particulars which have been briefly related here. The garrison sold their lives as dearly as they could. It is thought that four hundred of Weathersford's band were kUled and wound ed. That night the savages, exhausted with their bloody work, ap pear to have slept near the scene of the massacre. Next day they 130 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [1813. returned to bury their dead, but fatigued with the number, gave it up, .and left many exposed. Ten days after, Major Kennedy reach ed the spot with a detachment of troops to bury the bodies of the whites, and found the air dark with buzzards, and hundreds of dogs gnawing the bodies. In two large pits the troops, shuddering now with horror, and now fierce for revenge, succeeded at length in burying the remains of their countrymen and countrywomen. Ma jor Kennedy said in his report, " Indians, negroes, white men, women, and chUdren, lay in one promiscuous ruin. All were scalp ed, and the females of every age were butchered in a manner Avhich neither decency nor language will permit me to describe. The main budding was burned to ashes, which were filled with bones. The plains .and Avoods around Avere covered with dead bodies. All the houses Avere consumed by fire, except the block-house and a part of the pickets. The soldiers and officers with one voice call ed on divine Providence to revenge the death of our murdered friends." Such was the massacre at Fort Mims. The news flew upon the Avings of the wind. From Mobile to the borders of Tennessee, from the vicinity of New Orleans almost to the coast of Georgia, there was felt to be no safety for the Avhite man except in Ibrtified posts ; nor certain safet}' even in them. In the country of the Al abama River and its branches, CA'ei'y Avhite man, Avoman, and child, every friendly half-breed and Indian, hurried to the stockades, or fled ill Avild terror toward MobUe. " Never in my life," Avrote an eye-witness, " did I see a country given up before ^yithout a struggle. Here are the finest crops my eyes ever beheld made and almost fit to be housed, Avith immense herds of cattle, negroes, and property, abandoned by their oAvners, almost on the first alarm." Within the stockades diseases raged, and hundreds of families, unable to get Avithin those inclosures, lay around the walls, squ.alid, panic- stricken, sick, and miserable. Parties of Indians roved about the country rioting- in plunder. After burning the houses and laying Avaste the plantations, tliey would drive the cattle together in herds, and either destroy them in a mass, or drive them off for their fu ture use. The horses Avere taken to facUitate their marauding, and their camps were fiUed Avith' the luxuries of the planter's houses. Governor Claiborne, a generous and feeling man, was at his wits' end. From every quarter came the most urgent and pathetic de- 1813.J THE MASSACEE AT PORT. M I AI S . 131 mands for troops. Not a man could be spared, for no one knew where next the exultant savages Avould endeavor to repeat the ca tastrophe of Fort Mims ; and in the best-defended forts there were five non-combatants to one soldier. For some Aveeks of the autumn of 1813, it really seemed as if the white settlers of Alabama, in cluding those of Mobile itself, Avere on the point of being exter minated. Had Weathersford's force hastened to improve their victory, and marched upon Mobile, ill-garrisoned and crowded with fugitives, it is probable .the town would have fallen before them, and a direct communication Avith the British fleet been established. But an Indian, never very Avise, is a drunken fool after victory. . He must count and trim his scalps, recount his exploits, secure his plunder, and miss the substantial advantages of his success. The news of the massacre at Fort Mims was thirty-one days in reaching New York. It is a proof how occupied were the minds of the people in the Northern States with great events, that the dread narrative appeared in the New York papers only as an item of war news of comparatively small importance! The last prodigious acts in the drama of Napoleon's decline and fall were watched with ab sorbing interest. The news of Perry's victory on Lake Erie had just thrilled the nation with delight and pride, and all minds were StUl eager for every new particular. Harrison's victory on the Thames over Proctor and Tecumseh soon followed. The lament able condition of the southern country was therefore little felt at the time beyond the states immediately concerned. Perry and Har rison were the heroes of the hour. Their return from the scene of their exploits Avas a continuous triumphal fete. In a room at NashvUle, a thousand mUes from these splendid scenes, lay a gaunt, yeUow-yisaged man, lick, defeated, prostrate, with his arm bound up, and his shoulders bandaged, waiting impa tiently for his Avouiids to heal, and his strength to return. Who then thought of him in connection with victory and glory ? Who supposed that lie, of aU men, Avas the one denned to cast into the shade those favorites of the nation, and shine out as the prime hero of the war ? 132 LIFE OF ANDRE AV JACKSON. [1813. CHAPTER XV. TENNESSEE IN THE FIELD. There must have been SAvift express riding in those early days of September, and as stealthy as SAvift through the Indian country; for, on the 18th of the month, nineteen days after the massacre, we find the people of Nashville assembled iu town meeting to delib erate upon the event ; the RevT Mr. Craighead in the chair. This was Saturday. A committee, of Avhich Colonel Coffee was a mem ber, Avas appointed to confer Avith Governor Blount and General Jackson, and report on the foUoAving day. On Sunday morning the citizens were again in session, listening to an eloquent address by the reverend chairman, and to a series of resolutions urging the immediate succor of the southern settlers. It Avas' announced tliat the goA-ernor of the state Avas favorable to the measure. " We have to regret," said the committee, " the present temporary indis position of our brave and patriotic General Jackson ; but Ave have the utmost confidence, from his declarations and his convalescent state, to announce that he will be able to command so soon as the freemen of Tennessee can be collected to march against the foe." The news of the massacre produced everywhere' in Tennessee the most profound impression. Pity for the distressed Alabarai- ans, fears for the safety of their own borders, rage against the Creeks, so long the recipients of governmental bounty, united to infiame the minds of the people. But one feeling pervaded the state. With one voice, it was decreed that the entire resources and the whole available force of Tennessee should be hurled upon the savage foe, to avenge the massacre and deliver the southern country. A most strikuig narrative of the proceedings of the legislature on this occasion, and of the nerve, vigor, and resolution of the pros trate Jackson, Ues before me, from the pen of Mr. Enoch Parsons, a member then of the senate of Tennessee. " I arrived at Nash viUe," says this gentleman, " on the Saturday before the third Monday in September, 1813. I found in the pubUc square a very large crowd of people, and many fine speeches were making to the people, and the talking part of a Avar was never better perfonned. 1813.] TENNESSEE INTHE FIELD. 133 I was invited out to the place where the orators were holding forth, and invited to address the people. I declined the distinction ; the talking ended; and resolutions were adopted, the substance of which w.as that the enlightened legislature would convene on the next Monday, aud they Avould prepare for the emergency. "The legislature Avas composed of tAventy senators and forty representatives, some of them old, infirm inen. As soon, as the houses were organized, at my table I y/rote a bill, and introduced it, to call out 3,500 men, under the general entitled to command, and place them in the Indian nation, so that they might preserve the Mississippi territory from destruction, and prevent the friendly Indians from taking the enemy's side, and to render service to the United States until the United States could provide a force. The bill pledged aU the revenue of the state for one hundred years to pay the expense, and authorized the governor to borrow money from any source he could, and at the lowest rate he could, to defray the expenses of the campaign. The secretary of state, WiUiam G. Blount, Major John RusseU, a senator, and myself signed or in dorsed the Governor's note for tAventy thousand doUars, and the old patriotic State Bank lent the money which the note caUed for. " At this time General Jackson was lying, as he had been be tween ten and twenty days, with the wounds received in the battle with the Bentons and others, and had not been out of his room, if out of his bed. The constitution of the state would not allow the biU to become a law until it had passed in each house three times on different days. The biU was, therefore, passed in each house on Monday, and lay in the senate for Tuesday. ^ " After the adjournment of the houses on Monday, as I passed out of the senate chamber, I was accosted by a gentleman, and presented with General Jackson's compliments and a request that I should see him forthwith. I had not been to his room sbice niy arrival. I compUed with his request, and found he was minutely informed of the contents of the bill I had introduced, and wished to knoAV if it AVould pass, and said the news of the introduction of the bUl had spread all over the city, and that it was called the War BUl or Parsons' BiU. I assured tbe general it would pass, and on Wednesday would be a law, and I mentioned that I regretted very much that the general entitled to command, and who aU would de- 134 LIFE OP ANDEEW JACKSON. [1813. sire should command the forces of the state, was not in a condition to take the field. To Avhich General Jackson replied : " ' The devU in hell, he is not.' " He gritted his teeth Avith anguish as he uttered these words, and groaned when be ceased to speak. I told him that I hoped I was mistaken, but that I did not beUeve be could just then take the field. After some tirae I left the general. Tavo hours after, I. re- ceiA'ed fifty or more eopiies of his orders, which had been made out and printed in the me.an time, and ordered tbe troops to rendez vous at Fayetteville, eighty miles on the Avay, on Thursday. At the bottom of the order was a note, stating that the health of the commanding general Avas restored. " That evening- or the next day, I saw Dr. May, General Jack son's prineip.al physician, and inquired of him if he thought Gen eral Jackson could jjossibly march. Dr. May said that no other man could,