Produced by Charlene Taylor, Barbara Kosker and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
The Riverside Biographical Series
NUMBER 1.
ANDREW JACKSON
BY
WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN
[Illustration: Andrew Jackson]
ANDREW JACKSON
BY
WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN
[Illustration]
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston: 4 Park Street; New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE WAXHAWS AND THE WILDERNESS 1
II. CONGRESS: THE BENCH: THE MILITIA 24
III. TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 46
IV. NEW ORLEANS 69
V. THE SEMINOLES AND THE POLITICIANS 87
VI. THE WHITE HOUSE 118
ANDREW JACKSON
I
THE WAXHAWS AND THE WILDERNESS
In Lafayette Square, which fronts the White House at Washington, there
is an equestrian statue of a very thin, long-headed old man whose most
striking physical characteristics are the firm chin and lips and the
bristling, upright hair. The piece is not a great work of art, but it
gives one a strong impression of determination, if not of pugnacity.
Sculptors have not the means to represent the human eye, else this
impression might have been made stronger; for the old gentleman whose
warlike aspect is here reproduced had a glance like a hawk's. He had,
moreover, a habit of gazing fixedly at any one who attracted his
attention. When he was angry, as he was quite frequently, few men could
meet his look with composure. When he was in good humor, however, as he
usually was when he dealt with his friends, or with women or children,
his eyes could be very kindly, and his grim lips could part in a smile
that was extremely attractive.
Not far away is the Treasury building. Were the horseman alive, by
merely turning his head he could see its outline through the trees.
There is a tradition in Washington that when this old man lived in the
White House, and Congress voted to erect a new Treasury building, the
old one being burned, there was some question of the exact spot on which
it should stand. The question was put to him when he happened to be
walking near the western end of Pennsylvania Avenue. He struck his cane
on the ground and said shortly, "Put it here, sir,"--and there it
stands. Whether or not the story is true, it is characteristic of the
man and in keeping with the history of his times; for when Andrew
Jackson was President most things were done at Washington just as he
ordered them to be done. His friends declared that this was so because
in most things his will stood for the will of the American people; his
enemies, that they were done for no good reason whatever, but only
because a despot commanded his slaves to do them.
To this day there is the same division of opinion. The historians still
fight the same battle over him and his doings which in former times was
fought out by famous orators in Congress, by the whole people at the
polls. It is doubtful, indeed, if there ever will be, until the end of
the Republic itself, an end of the dispute over the place which that
slender figure with the bristling hair ought to have in American
history. Had Andrew Jackson any good claim to statues and monuments, to
the first place in the Republic, to popularity such as no other man had
enjoyed since Washington, to power such as Washington himself had never
exercised? Did he prove himself worthy of the place and power he held?
To answer either yes or no with assurance one must patiently examine
more books than Andrew Jackson ever glanced through in his whole life.
This little book would hardly contain the full titles of them all. Yet
it may perhaps be large enough to let the reader see what manner of man
he was concerning whom so many bitter controversies have raged. Perhaps
it may serve to explain how a Scotch-Irish boy, born to the deepest
obscurity and the wretchedest poverty, and blessed, apparently, with no
remarkable gifts of mind or body, came to have statues carved in his
honor, towns and counties and cities named for him, long books written
about him, a great party organized to do his bidding, the whole country
time and again divided into those who were for him and those who were
against him.
* * * * *
It is quite important, as Mr. Parton, the most painstaking of all his
biographers, often observes, that this particular poor boy was of
Scotch-Irish stock. That stock is again and again conspicuous in
American history, and Andrew Jackson was in many respects the most
thoroughly representative Scotch-Irishman of all the notable Americans
who can trace their descent to the North of Ireland. Indeed, it may be
said that he narrowly escaped being born in the North of Ireland, for
his parents were living at Carrickfergus until two years before his
birth. They landed in America in 1765, and made their home in a
Scotch-Irish settlement, the Waxhaws, on the boundary line between the
two Carolinas. Andrew Jackson, the father, and Elizabeth Hutchinson, the
mother, were married and had two sons before they left Carrickfergus.
They were poor, and doubtless came to America for no other reason than
to better their fortunes. They were still very poor when, in the early
spring of the year 1767, the husband died. A few days later, March 15, a
son was born to the widowed Elizabeth, and she named him Andrew. He
himself in after years said that his birthplace was to the south of the
state line, and called South Carolina his native State; but Mr. Parton's
industrious researches make it seem more probable that the small
log-house in which he was born was north of the line, in Union County,
North Carolina.
The question is of less importance than the fact, of which there is no
question, that he was born to the humblest circumstances in a new
settlement of a new country, and that his childhood and boyhood were
passed among people of little culture, whose lives were hard and bare.
The boy got little education, and never was a scholar. To the day of his
death, he wrote the English language with difficulty, making many errors
of grammar and spelling, and spoke it with many peculiarities of
pronunciation. Of other languages he knew nothing; of the great body of
science, literature, and the arts he knew next to nothing. In fact, he
probably got less from books than any other famous man in American
history.
Little is authentically known of his early years. It is clear, however,
that he was a mischievous, high-spirited boy, and often got into
trouble. At least one anecdote is thoroughly in keeping with his career
in manhood. Some of his playmates, so the story goes, once loaded a gun
to the muzzle and gave it him to fire. As they expected, it kicked him
over, but they missed the fun they looked for. He sprang to his feet
white with rage, and exclaimed, with an oath, "If one of you laughs,
I'll kill him!"--and no one laughed. The oath itself is not an
unimportant part of the story, for it may as well be said at once that
Andrew Jackson, until near the end of his life, had many such vices as
swearing. He not only swore, but he frequently quarrelled and fought; he
was at one time given to betting, particularly on horses; he drank, and
he used tobacco constantly. All of these habits were common in the
society to which he was born, and he did not escape them. But some
things he did escape. He hated debt all his life, and was willing to do
almost anything rather than incur it. He had the greatest reverence for
women, and bore himself towards them with a courtesy and tenderness, a
knightly purity of thought and word and deed, which the finest
gentleman of the most ancient society in the world could not have
surpassed.
When this pleasing fact is stated, one's thoughts turn naturally to his
widowed mother, as to the most natural source of such an excellence in
the son. All we know of her does indeed indicate that her influence on
him was both strong and good: but we know very little. She was a simple,
uncultivated person, like most of her neighbors, but her conduct during
the harrowing scenes of the revolutionary war makes us think she was in
some respects extraordinary. The struggle was nowhere rougher and
fiercer than it was in the Carolinas. The notorious Colonel Tarleton
operated in the Waxhaws neighborhood, and many dreadful stories of
suffering and cruelty belong to that country and that time. The Jackson
family had their full share of the fighting and the suffering. The two
older boys, Hugh and Robert, enlisted. Young "Andy" himself, when he was
barely in his teens, carried a musket. He and Robert were captured, and
were released through the efforts of their mother, who brought about an
exchange of prisoners. Soon afterwards, she went on a long and heroic
journey to Charleston to nurse the sick Americans confined on the
British prison ships there; and there she fell ill of the ship fever and
died. Hugh and Robert both died in the service.
Andrew was thus left an orphan, weakened in body by the smallpox, which
he took while he was in prison. Moreover, he bore on his head the mark
of a blow from the sword of a British officer whose boots he had refused
to polish. No man ever lived who had a simpler human way of loving those
who befriended him and of hating those who hurt him than Andrew Jackson;
and surely few men ever had better excuse than he for hating the British
uniform. His feeling against the British was one of the things that
colored his opinions on public questions; the supreme hour of his life
was the hour when, at New Orleans, he had his revenge--full measure,
heaped up, and running over--for all that he had suffered in the
Waxhaws. Scholarly historians, passing rapidly over the events of his
childhood, give many pages of learned criticism to the course he took on
great public questions in later years, and gravely deplore the terrible
passions that swayed him when, no doubt, he should have been as
deliberate and calm as they are while they review his stormy life. But
for those who would rather understand than judge him it surely cannot
seem a small thing that he started out in life with such a heritage of
bitter memories, such a schooling in hatred, as few children were ever
cursed with. Passion and revenge are wrong, of course, but the
sandy-haired, pockmarked lad of the Waxhaws had better excuse than most
boys for failing to learn that lesson. It is doubtful, indeed, if any
one ever took the trouble to teach it him. One little thing that stuck
in his mind probably hurt worse than the sabre cut on his head. He did
not even know where his mother's grave was.
It does not appear that during the next seven years, while he was
growing to manhood, he gave himself with much industry either to study
or to work. For six months he was employed in the shop of a saddler, but
he seems to have learned more about filling saddles than about making
them, for he became somewhat famous as a horseman even in a country
where the love of horseflesh was universal. He got acquainted with some
wealthy people from Charleston who were exiled until the British
evacuated their city, and lived with them a sporting life which was
beyond his means. After the peace he made a visit to Charleston, got
into debt, got out of it by winning a wager, and grew somewhat graver in
consequence of his experience. There is even some reason to believe that
he went to work as a schoolmaster; and doubtless some backwoods schools
of that period had masters as ignorant as Andrew Jackson. Finally, he
resolved to study law, and in the winter of 1784-5 started out to find
an office in which he might prepare himself for his profession. He found
a place in the office of Mr. Spruce McCay, of Salisbury, North Carolina,
an old-fashioned Southern town, where he made his home until 1788, when
he was admitted to the bar.
All that is known of his life at Salisbury accords with what is known of
his life at the Waxhaws. He was ready for a frolic or a fight at any
hour of the day or night; he excelled in such sports as required
swiftness and nerve; he was fond of practical jokes; he was not over
fond of study, and never acquired any great knowledge of the law. At
twenty, when his studies were finished, he is described as a tall,
slender young fellow, with a thin, fair face and deep blue eyes, by no
means handsome, but distinguished by considerable grace and dignity of
manner; an exquisite rider and a capital shot; of an extraordinarily
passionate temper, yet singularly swift, even when his anger was at
white heat, to seize upon the right means to protect himself or
discomfit an adversary; already somewhat of a leader, not by any
eminence of talent or knowledge, but because he had a gift of leadership
and was always intensely minded to have his way. The year of his
admission to the bar, after a brief stay at Martinsville, a small North
Carolina town, he got himself appointed solicitor, or public prosecutor,
of the western district of Tennessee, and soon set out for the West.
The appointment of so young a man to such an office seems remarkable
until one knows what Tennessee was like at that time, and what duties a
solicitor was expected to discharge. The term Tennessee is, in fact,
misleading. The region to which Jackson went still belonged to North
Carolina, though its inhabitants had but a little while before made an
attempt to set up a separate State under the name of Franklin. But of
those who made the attempt the great majority had lived in that part of
North Carolina's western lands which is now East Tennessee--a
mountainous region of which Jonesboro, a squatter town of fifty or sixty
log-houses, was the metropolis. Nashville, whither Jackson was bound,
was nearly two hundred miles west of Jonesboro, and the Nashville
settlement was as yet less than ten years old. It was founded in 1779
by Captain James Robertson with a little company of nine. The next year
Colonel John Donelson, with a much larger party, including women and
children, came from Virginia to join his friend Robertson. His journey
was one of the most striking incidents in the peopling of the West, for
it was made in flatboats which passed down the Holston into the
Tennessee, down the Tennessee into the Ohio, up the Ohio into the
Cumberland, and up the Cumberland to Nashville. It took four months to
cover the two thousand miles or more, and there were bloody fights with
Indians, sickness, and death by the way. When, eight years later, after
an overland journey through a wilderness still almost unbroken and still
infested with Indians, Jackson came to Nashville, he found Mrs. Donelson
a widow, for her husband had been murdered; and he soon became an inmate
of her home.
It was well for a widow in that wild country if she could procure men
"boarders," even though she might not need to "take boarders" for a
living; for every household needed men to protect it from the Indians.
Immigration was increasing constantly, but the white population was
still far too small to be safe. Within seven miles of Nashville, during
the years 1780-1794, the Indians killed, on an average, one white person
every ten days.
Life in such a country was even rougher and barer than in the Waxhaws.
The houses were chiefly cabins made of unhewn logs, and the things which
in older communities make the inside of houses attractive were almost
wholly wanting. Such merchandise as was offered to the settlers had to
be fetched hundreds of miles,--usually from Philadelphia,--and grew very
dear by the time it reached them. For food, clothing, and shelter each
family relied mainly on the handiwork of its own members. As in all
frontier regions, the population was chiefly male. The brave women who
took their share of the common work and hardship were treated with much
respect, and did their part well, no doubt, but they had little leisure
for those arts which brighten the lives and refine the characters of
husbands and children.
Manners suited conditions. These builders of the West had more strength
than gentleness, more shrewdness than wisdom, more courage than culture.
They were the rough front which American civilization presented to the
wilderness and the savage,--brave, hard-handed, themselves somewhat
affected with the barbarism they came to displace, yet in all essentials
of character true representatives of their masterful race. They were
mainly of English or Scotch-Irish stock; and no other breeds of white
men have ever shown such capacity as these two for dealing with inferior
races and new countries. Their virtues were courage, energy, alertness,
inventiveness, generosity, honesty, truth-speaking; their commonest
faults were violence, combativeness, lax ways in business, intemperance,
narrowness of mind. They hated foreigners and Indians, and were ready to
fight any one who behaved like an enemy or a critic; they held in honor
women, their country, and brave men. Shut off from the greater world to
the eastward, and having few pleasures such as most Americans may now
enjoy, they filled their leisure hours with such sports as hunting,
horse-racing, drinking bouts, fights, and lawsuits. The law, indeed,
they held in great reverence; that race mark they had in common with all
other societies made up of Englishmen and Americans of English descent.
But they were even fonder of fighting than of the law, and the
particular laws which were at once hardest to enforce and most in need
of enforcement were those very simple laws which set forth the principle
that private wrongs must be righted in the courts, which stand for the
peace of the State, and not by the "wild justice" of revenge.
The difficult and dangerous work of keeping order and of enforcing
business obligations fell largely to the "solicitor;" and one need not
wonder that there was no great scramble for the office, so that a very
young man, with no experience at the bar and little knowledge of law,
got the appointment. His duties were simple enough, but he had no
reason to complain of being left in idleness. The court records of the
period show a picturesque assortment of assaults, street-fights,
pistollings, gougings, and the like. Men who took such methods to adjust
their differences were not apt to show any great respect to a prosecutor
aged twenty-one. The majesty of the law had need of a vigorous rather
than a learned representative; and the representative had need of other
weapons than those supplied by the law books if he meant to make his
authority respected and yet keep a whole skin on his body. If he proved
weak and timid, he was sure to be despised; if determined and
relentless, he was sure to make enemies; if incautious and unwary, he
would probably get himself shot. It is doubtful, however, if any better
man than young Jackson could have been found for the place, and that is
almost the same thing as saying that no better place could have been
found for him. To the office and his new surroundings he brought the
qualities they supremely demanded,--a will that no man ever subdued, a
desperate courage which not even the Tennesseans could match, and a
swift, intuitive perception of the way to act in emergencies.
According to all accounts, he was successful from the first in his
trying work, and his success in that brought him other work as a lawyer
and a rapid rise to prominence in the community. He became well
acquainted, for his work required much travelling about. He learned the
country itself. On his long journeys he was frequently in danger from
the Indians, and learned their ways and how to cope with them. Sometimes
he slept alone in the woods, or even lay all night awake, his hand on
his rifle. Once his readiness and nerve alone saved himself and a party
of travellers from surprise and massacre. Whether he dealt with Indians
who beset his pathway through the wilderness, or white men who would not
let the law take its course, it is not on record that he ever turned
aside from his purpose. In ten years he was the possessor of a
considerable estate, chiefly in land. And he had not accumulated
property by neglecting his duties as solicitor. When certain intruders
on Indian lands were giving trouble, Governor Blount said: "Let the
district attorney, Mr. Jackson, be informed. He will be certain to do
his duty, and the offenders will be punished."
But the district attorney did not escape the consequences of his
firmness and courage. He had so many "difficulties" that even in that
country he soon got a reputation for readiness to fight. A mass of
anecdote and tradition about his early quarrels has come down to us.
Some of these affairs seem to have been undignified and rather ludicrous
scuffles: in one of them Jackson overcame a huge antagonist by poking
him with the point--or, as Jackson himself pronounced it, the "pint"--of
a fence rail. Other quarrels followed the dignified procedure of the
duello. They were all subject to the condemnation which our gentler
civilization pronounces on violence as a means of ending disputes, but
no doubt they helped the young lawyer into the prominence he had won by
the time Tennessee was ready to become a State.
The most important event of this early period of Jackson's life was his
marriage. It was first solemnized early in 1791, and a second time in
January, 1794. The second ceremony was due to the painful discovery that
at the time of the first his wife was not fully released from a former
marriage. She was Rachel, daughter of John Donelson, the pioneer, and
when Jackson first came to Tennessee she was already married to one
Lewis Robards. Robards was a jealous husband. He made charges against
his wife concerning several men, and finally concerning Jackson,
although the facts that have come down to us and the opinions of those
who knew most about the affair all go to show that Jackson acted as a
chivalrous protector of a distressed woman, and never knowingly
committed any offence against his accuser's home. Robards and Rachel
Donelson had been married in Kentucky, then a part of Virginia, and
Virginia had no law of divorce. In 1790 the Virginia legislature, acting
on a petition of Robards, authorized the supreme court of Kentucky to
try the case and grant him a divorce if it should find his charges
against his wife and Jackson to be true. Somehow, Jackson and Mrs.
Robards were persuaded that this act of the Virginia legislature was
itself a divorce, and so they were married. In 1793, however, Robards
brought suit before the Kentucky court, and the court, finding on the
facts as they then existed, when the accused couple were living together
as man and wife, granted the decree. In order, therefore, to make sure
of a legal marriage, Jackson had the ceremony repeated.
It was a most unfortunate situation for an honest man and an honest
woman, and saddened a union which was otherwise pure and beautiful; for
to the day of her death Jackson and his wife loved each other most
tenderly. It brought into his life a new element of bitterness and
passion. Whoever, by the slightest hint, referred to the irregularity of
his marriage, became his mortal enemy. For such he kept his pistols
always ready, and more than one incautious man found to his cost what it
meant to breathe a word on that forbidden subject. One such man was no
less a person than John Sevier, "the Commonwealth Builder," who struck
such a good blow for American independence at the battle of King's
Mountain in the revolutionary war, and who was Governor of Tennessee
when the trouble with Jackson occurred.
The painful facts of his marriage, and the criticism of his wife, had
another effect on Jackson which in time became important to the whole
country. Through that experience his chivalrous feeling for women was
developed into a quixotic readiness to be the champion of any woman whom
he found distressed or slandered.
II
CONGRESS: THE BENCH: THE MILITIA
In 1796 Jackson took his seat as a member of the convention called to
frame a constitution for the State of Tennessee. He thus entered on a
brief career of public service, in the course of which he held three
important offices. In the autumn of 1796 he was chosen to be Tennessee's
first representative in Congress. A year later he was appointed United
States Senator, and held the office until he resigned in April, 1798.
From 1798 until 1804, he was a justice of the Supreme Court of
Tennessee.
These were all high places for so young a man, and one naturally expects
his biographer to linger for many pages over his course while he held
them. The fact that he held them is indeed important, for it shows how
strongly he had established himself in Tennessee. But very little need
be said of what he did while he held them. Indeed, it is amazing how
little _can_ be said.
In the convention he served on the committee to draft the constitution
and took a somewhat prominent part in the debates, and there is also a
tradition that he suggested the name of the State; but no notable
feature of the constitution is clearly due to him. It might, however,
have been due to the presence in the convention of such fiery spirits as
he that it adopted a rule of order which throws into comical prominence
the warlike character of early Tennesseans. Rule 8 declared: "He that
digresseth from the subject to fall on the person of any member shall be
suppressed by the Speaker."
The scant record of Jackson's services in the House of Representatives
and in the Senate is of little importance to us save in three respects.
It throws some light on his political opinions at that period; it gives
us a glimpse of him as he appeared against the background of the most
elegant society then existing in America, for Congress was sitting in
Philadelphia, which had sixty-five thousand inhabitants; and it led to
one or two friendships which had an important bearing on his later
career.
His opinions, however, were not expressed in speeches. He addressed the
House but twice, both times on a resolution for paying troops whom
General Sevier had led against the Indians without any order from the
national government. The resolution passed, and added to Jackson's
popularity at home. In the Senate it is not on record that he ever spoke
at all. Many years afterwards, Thomas Jefferson, who was Vice-President
in 1797-8, gave to Daniel Webster a rather curious explanation of the
Tennessee Senator's silence. The accuracy of Webster's report of his
famous interview with Jefferson at Monticello in 1824 has been
questioned, but if it is correct, this is what Jefferson said of
Jackson: "His passions are terrible. When I was president of the Senate,
he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of
his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke
with rage."
His votes, however, and a few letters show clearly enough where he stood
on the questions of the day. Parties were hardly yet formed under the
Constitution, but in the strife between the followers of Hamilton, who
went for a strong national government, and who became the Federalist
party, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the followers of
Jefferson, who went for the rights of the States and distrusted a strong
national government, and who became the Republican party, he sided with
Jefferson. Indeed, he belonged to the extreme faction of the
Republicans, to which the term "Democrats" was applied, at first as a
reproach. He favored the French, who were at war with England, and
opposed the treaty with England which John Jay had just negotiated. He
even went so far as to vote, with eleven others, against the address
presented to President Washington after his final speech to Congress.
The address was mainly given over to thanks for Washington's great
services to his country and to praise of his administration. The handful
that opposed it showed at least courage. One of them, Edward
Livingston, of New York, afterwards defended himself by drawing a
distinction between Washington and his administration. At that time the
partisans of France were very bitter over the firm course Washington
took to keep the country out of the European contest, and over the
treaty with England.
Livingston was one of the men with whom Jackson at this time formed a
lasting friendship. He was an accomplished gentleman, a very able
lawyer, and an advanced Republican. Another was William Duane,
Jefferson's friend, the editor of "The Aurora," a newspaper which helped
to build up the Republican party. A third was Aaron Burr, who then stood
very high among the Republican leaders, and who excelled all other
public men in charm of manner.
Another leading Republican of the time, Albert Gallatin, recalled
Jackson afterwards as "a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with
long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a cue down his back tied
in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners and deportment that of a
rough backwoodsman." Taking this with Jefferson's description of him, it
seems clear that he made no strong impression at Philadelphia, and found
himself out of place in the national legislature. Who, then, would have
dreamed that the accomplished Livingston should win his highest fame by
preparing a state paper for this unlettered person's signature; that
this rough backwoodsman should alone of all Americans surpass the
polished Burr in the charm of his manners; that Duane's little son
should one day be called by his father's unpromising acquaintance to a
place such as even Jefferson's friendship never conferred upon Duane
himself. Of all who knew Jackson in Washington, Burr seems to have had
the strongest hopes for his future.
Scant as are the traces of his labors as a legislator, even scanter are
the records of his career on the bench during the six years that
followed. The reports of the decisions of the Tennessee Supreme Court in
this period are extremely meagre; not one decision is preserved as
Jackson's. But the stories told of Judge Jackson, like the stories told
of the solicitor, the general, the president, are legion. One must
suffice. A gigantic blacksmith named Bean had committed a crime and the
sheriff dared not arrest him. "Summon me," said the judge, and himself
walked down from the bench, found the criminal, and arrested him. It was
while he was judge that his quarrel with John Sevier, who was again
governor in 1803, came finally to a head. Two years before, the two men
had been rivals for the office of major-general in the militia, and by a
single vote Jackson had won, so that he was both general and judge when
he and the governor met in what seemed likely to prove a fatal combat.
However, neither was killed, and the quarrel was patched up. In 1804
Judge Jackson resigned. He had not yet found his true place in the
public service. But he kept his commission in the militia, and those who
like to magnify the work of chance may argue that the single vote by
which he got that office determined his career.
But he had years to live before it was made plain to him what his career
should be; and during those years, from 1804 to 1813, his energies were
given chiefly to planting and business. His affairs had become somewhat
involved while he was a judge, and to restore his fortunes he entered
into trade and set up a store. In this and other enterprises a stalwart
Tennessean named John Coffee was his partner, and between the two there
grew a bond of friendship which lasted until death broke it. Jackson had
considerable shrewdness in trade, and his reputation for paying his
debts promptly was of great value, but he had more success in planting
and stock-raising than in any other money-making enterprise. His
judgment of horses was exceptionally good. From his famous stallion,
Truxton, a great racer in his day, many Tennessee thoroughbreds of the
present time are descended. Horse-racing was Jackson's favorite sport,
and was a source of profit also. In 1805 he first occupied the estate
which became so well known as "The Hermitage," where he built a
block-house of three rooms; the mansion so often displayed in pictures
was not built until 1819. In the log-house, however, no less than in the
mansion which was to follow, he offered to guests of high and low degree
a hospitality which would have been extraordinary outside of the
Southern States. Probably his planter life had some effect on his
manners, and helped him to acquire that mingling of cordiality and
distinction which in those days gave a peculiar charm to the gentlemen
of the South.
Even in his quarrels, violent, passionate, and wilful as he was, he
usually bore himself in a way to make a deep impression on the
impressionable people among whom he lived. Unfortunately, his quarrels
did not grow fewer as he grew older, for he never learned the difference
between mere opposition to his will, which might be conscientious and
honest, and personal enmity to himself. Like most men of that region and
time, he carried his personal feelings, his likes and dislikes, into
all the affairs of life. In 1803-4, when he wished to be governor of
Orleans Territory, the Tennessee congressmen urged President Jefferson
to appoint him, but he was represented to the President as "a man of
violent passions, arbitrary in his disposition, and frequently engaged
in broils and disputes."
The most celebrated and perhaps the worst of all his quarrels was that
with Charles Dickinson, a young man of prominence, a duellist, and a
marvellous shot. It was a long quarrel, beginning, apparently, over a
projected race between Truxton and Plow Bay, a horse in which Dickinson
was interested. Other persons were involved before the quarrel ended.
General Jackson publicly caned one Thomas Swann who had contrived to get
himself mixed up in the affair. Coffee, acting as Jackson's friend, had
a duel with one McNairy, and was severely wounded. Finally, for no
sufficient cause which the printed accounts discover, Jackson and
Dickinson met in Kentucky, each bent on killing his man. The word being
given, Dickinson fired quickly, and with perfect aim; a puff of dust
flew up from the breast of Jackson's coat. But he kept his feet, drew
his left arm across his breast, slowly raised his pistol, and pulled the
trigger. The hammer stopped at the half-cock. He cocked it again, aimed
deliberately, fired, and killed his man. His own life he owed to the
thinness of his body, for Dickinson had hit the spot where he thought
his adversary's heart was beating. Jackson had purposely allowed the
other to fire first, expecting to be hit, and fearing that if he, too,
fired hurriedly, the shock would spoil his aim. "I should have hit him,"
he said afterwards, "had he shot me through the brain." It is supposed
that his hatred of Dickinson was really due, not to the confused dispute
over the race, but to something Dickinson had said in his cups about
Mrs. Jackson. Whatever the provocation, the bloody story is revolting
enough; but the picture of Jackson's grim, erect figure, his hawklike
eyes terrible with hatred, the ball in his breast, the pistol in his
hand, must take its place alongside those other pictures and statues of
him which all Americans know.
But if Jackson was a terrible enemy, he was also the most faithful of
friends. Many men feared and hated him; many also loved him, and he
himself would go as far to help a friend as to crush an enemy. One of
his friends was a certain Patten Anderson, who seems always to have been
getting into trouble, but whom the general never deserted. Once Anderson
got into a fight at one end of a long table where a public dinner was
being served, and was in great danger until Jackson, who sat at the
other end, noticed the scuffle. "I'm coming, Patten," he cried, and
promptly leaped on the table and strode through dinner to the rescue.
Anderson was killed at last, and Jackson was a witness at the trial of
his slayer. He was asked if the unfortunate Anderson was not given in
his lifetime to quarrelling. "Sir," said Jackson, "my friend, Patten
Anderson, was a natural enemy to scoundrels."
His friendship for Aaron Burr came very near involving him in serious
difficulties. In 1805, when Burr was on his first visit to the
Southwest, he went to Nashville, and was entertained most cordially at
The Hermitage. He was there again on his return, and made with his host
a contract for boats and supplies to be used in that mysterious
enterprise which has so puzzled American historians. Burr declared he
had no designs hostile to the United States, and Jackson believed him.
When, a year later, the whole country was in a sort of panic over Burr's
suspected treason, Jackson offered to President Jefferson the services
of the militia under his command, and promptly took measures to thwart
any treasonable movement that might be afoot in the West; but he was
soon convinced that Burr was suspected unjustly, and never for a moment
deserted him in his trouble. He went to Richmond to testify at his
trial, and while there made a public speech full of bitterness against
those who, as he thought, were persecuting his friend. He himself was
at first strongly suspected of complicity in Burr's project, but there
is absolutely no reason to believe that Andrew Jackson ever in his life
looked upon an enemy of his country otherwise than as his own mortal
foe. His faults were many, but he loved his country simply, and with all
his heart.
It seems clear, however, that Jackson, and in fact the whole Southwest,
sympathized very strongly with the design which many in that quarter at
first thought Burr to entertain; the design, namely, of seizing West
Florida or Texas, or perhaps both. The United States were at that time,
as they were before and after, very close to war with Spain. Spain still
had possession of the Floridas, although the United States claimed that
West Florida, extending along the Gulf coast from the Perdido River to
the "Island of New Orleans," was included in the Louisiana purchase. To
drive the Spaniards out of West Florida was an ardent desire of
Jackson's. Ten years before, when the Eastern States had shown little
interest in the development of the Southwest, and had seemed to prefer
commercial privileges with the Spanish colonies to the free navigation
of the Mississippi, which the Western country needed for its
development, Spanish agents had endeavored to stir up disaffection in
the Southwest, looking to the separation of that region from the Union.
At that time, many people in the East, knowing little of the Westerners,
had suspected them of lending an ear to Spain's tempting whispers. That
was one reason why such a panic arose over Burr, for he had always been
a champion of the Southwest, and the pioneers liked him. After the
failure and disgrace of Burr the stage was cleared for another leader in
the southwestward movement. And who so likely to take the role as the
patriotic and warlike general of the Tennessee militia?
Jackson had a chance to play that role in a small way when Silas
Dinsmore, the United States agent among the Choctaws, whose lands lay in
Mississippi Territory, refused to allow persons to pass through the
Choctaw country with negroes unless they showed passports for the
negroes. Dinsmore had a law of Congress behind him, but a treaty between
the United States and the Choctaws provided for a road through the
Choctaw country which should be "a highway for citizens of the United
States and the Choctaws." Jackson, passing along the road with some
slaves, dared the agent to interfere. He also exerted himself to bring
about the removal of Dinsmore, and, as his wont was, made a personal
matter of the dispute. His feeling was so strong that years afterwards,
when Dinsmore, happening to meet him, made a courteous advance, the
general sternly repelled it.
The quarrel with Dinsmore occurred in 1812. Andrew Jackson was then
forty-five years old. He was well known in Tennessee as a successful
planter, a breeder and racer of horses, a swearer of mighty oaths, a
faithful and generous man to his friends, a chivalrous man to women, a
hospitable man at his home, a desperate and relentless man in personal
conflicts, a man who always did the thing he set himself to do. But as
yet he had never found anything to do that was important enough to
bring him before the country at large. Outside of Tennessee, few men had
ever heard his name. At Washington he was probably distrusted, so far as
he was known at all, because of his championship of Burr and his quarrel
with Dinsmore, and because he had been for Monroe instead of Madison for
President. He was ardently in favor of war with Great Britain because of
the impressment of American seamen and other grievances which the United
States had borne for years, but there seemed to be little likelihood of
his getting a chance to play a part in the war if it should come. The
war was declared in June, 1812. A member of Congress, on his way home
after voting for the declaration, had a talk with Aaron Burr, who was
now living in retirement in New York. "I know," said Burr, "that my word
is not worth much with Madison; but you may tell him from me that there
is an unknown man in the West, named Andrew Jackson, who will do credit
to a commission in the army."
It is said, indeed, that Jackson was twice recommended to President
Madison for a commission in the regular army, and twice rejected. Many
years later, Thomas H. Benton told in Congress how he himself, who was
in 1812 a young lawyer in Nashville and a militia officer under Jackson,
found in his mail one morning an act of Congress authorizing the
President to accept organized bodies of volunteers. It was a raw day in
February, but young Benton at once drew up a plan for offering Jackson's
militia command to the government, rode to The Hermitage to find the
general, "and came upon him," so Mr. Benton's story goes, "in the
twilight, sitting alone before the fire, a lamb and a child between his
knees. He started a little, called a servant to remove the two innocents
to another room, and explained to me how it was. The child had cried
because the lamb was out in the cold, and begged him to bring it
in--which he had done to please the child, his adopted son." That is a
far pleasanter picture than the other we saw just now of Jackson the
duellist, but this also is a characteristic picture, and should go into
the gallery; for Jackson, like many another man who has been denied
children of his own, was singularly tender with little folk. It is
certainly good to be able to think of him, fierce man that he was, as
turning from fondling a child to enter on his soldier's career.
Mr. Benton's account of the matter is questioned, but it is certain that
Jackson offered his services, with those of 2500 volunteers, immediately
after the declaration of war. The government accepted the offer, but
left him in idleness until October, 1812, when the governor of Tennessee
was asked for volunteers, ostensibly to reinforce General Wilkinson at
New Orleans. The governor in turn called upon General Jackson, and he,
setting to work with the utmost enthusiasm, issued to the volunteers the
first of those eminently Jacksonian addresses wherewith he was wont to
hearten his followers. On January 7, 1813, the command set forth, the
infantry by river, the cavalry, under John Coffee, by land. By the
middle of February all were united at Natchez, Mississippi, where the
expedition was halted to await further orders. Week after week passed
by, and finally, late in March, to the general's rage and disgust, he
heard from the Secretary of War that the causes of the expedition had
ceased to exist, and that he was to consider his command "dismissed from
the public service"--and not one word as to any provision for getting
the men home!
Jackson's resolution was instantly taken and firmly carried out. He
refused to disband the men at Natchez, and marched them home, pledging
his own credit for the necessary expenses. His course commanded the
approval of the State and won him the devotion of the men. It was the
first of many occasions on which, while acting as a military officer, he
dared to do the thing he thought to be right, no matter how irregular it
was. On the journey home, his soldierly behavior in trying circumstances
won him his famous nickname. The men spoke of him as being "tough as
hickory," and so came to call him "Hickory," and finally, with
affection, "Old Hickory." Before he reached Nashville he again offered
his command for service in Canada, but no reply came. In May, he
dismissed it, and it seemed as if he were not going to have any
soldier's career at all.
Benton, who had served in the expedition as an aid, went to Washington
and with difficulty persuaded the War Department to pay the expenses of
the march from Natchez. When he returned to Nashville, it was to find
that in a duel between Jesse Benton, his brother, and one Carroll, the
general had acted as Carroll's second. A bitter quarrel between Jackson
and the Bentons followed; before it ended, Jackson swore "by the
Eternal" he would horsewhip Thomas Benton on sight. They met at a
Nashville hotel. Jesse Benton was there, and also John Coffee and
Stokeley Hays, friends of Jackson's. There was a rough-and-tumble fight.
Thomas Benton fell down a stairway; Jesse Benton was stabbed; Jackson
was shot in the shoulder and severely wounded. He was put to bed in the
old Nashville Inn, a famous hostelry of the time, and while he lay
helpless from a wound so ignobly won, the call was on its way which
should at last summon him to the work for which he was fittest. He was
to pass from an action such as no biographer can defend to deeds which
none can fail to praise. Jackson the duellist must give place to Jackson
the soldier. Yet all fighting is akin, and it was but a change of scene
and purpose that turned the man of the tavern brawl into the man of The
Horseshoe and New Orleans; for it happened that there was nowhere in the
Southwest, perhaps nowhere in the country, any other man quite so sure
to have his way, whether in a street fight or in a battle.
III
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA
The call that now came to Jackson was chiefly due to a very picturesque
character of the times: the man who is said to have been the only rival
of Burr and Jackson in the impression he made upon all beholders by his
manner and bearing. The call came, indeed, from the southward, but
probably it would never have come but for the work of Tecumseh (or
Tecumthe), the famous Shawnee warrior and orator, whose home was in the
Northwest. For years Tecumseh had been striving to unite the red men of
the West and South in a supreme effort to roll back the swelling tide of
white immigration. In 1811 he made a pilgrimage to the southern tribes,
and his most fervent appeal was to that powerful body of Indians known
as the Creek Confederacy, who lived in what is now the eastern part of
Alabama and the southwestern part of Georgia. These proud and warlike
Indians were divided into two branches. The Upper Creeks had their homes
along the Coosa and Tallapoosa rivers, and their villages extended some
distance down the Alabama, which is formed by the junction of those two
streams. The Lower Creek towns were on both sides of the Chattahoochee,
which now separates southern Georgia from southern Alabama. The
so-called Confederacy, a loose sort of alliance, claimed for a hunting
ground the lands extending westward to the watershed between the Alabama
and Tombigbee rivers, which unite to form the Mobile. But in the fork of
these two rivers and along the Mobile and the Tombigbee were growing
settlements of white men. The growth of these settlements was watched
with disfavor and suspicion by the Creeks. A strong party, the Red
Sticks, or hostiles, listened readily to Tecumseh's teaching. When he
left for his home in the distant Northwest many were already dancing the
"war-dance of the Lakes."