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TROTWOOD’S MONTHLY
VOL. II. NASHVILLE, TENN., APRIL, 1906. NO. 1
Contents
HISTORIC HIGHWAYS OF THE SOUTH John Trotwood Moore
LORENA, AND HOW IT CAME TO BE WRITTEN Susie Gentry
A POEM THAT WILL LIVE Ex-Gov. Hogg of Texas
AGRICULTURE THE BASIS OF ALL WEALTH William Dennison
THE WOOING OF BESSY L. M. Montgomery
I John Trotwood Moore
HISTORY OF THE HALS Trotwood
CONTENT (poem) Sarah D. Hobart
THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS John H. Wallace, Jr.
LUTHER BURBANK (poem) E. E. Sweetland
LADY CORNELIA’S SPINET Mary Polk Wynn
OLD COTTON GIN (poem) John Trotwood Moore
WITH OUR WRITERS
WITH TROTWOOD
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Copyright 1906 by Trotwood Publishing Co. All rights reserved. Entered as
second-class matter Sept. 8, 1905, at the Postoffice at Nashville, Tenn.,
under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
Historic Highways of the South
PAPER IV—THE ROAD TO THE HERMITAGE
BY JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE
The story of Andrew Jackson and his famous home. And if the telling of
it take more than one paper, be not surprised, for after an hundred and
thirty years of the Republic—and a thousand of progress—this man stands
one in the great trilogy—Washington, Jackson and Lincoln.
The others have been mostly figureheads with the usual sprinkling of
fools.
To know a man we must first know the dirt he digs into. To grasp his
character, the secret influences of his life, we must see the trees that
grew above him, the flowers at his feet, the pictures God made for him,
in hill and river, in the storm cloud, in the thunder shaking his fields
at night, in the grass and grain which came, the fruit of his hand.
For these go into the man.
When we shall have seen the Hermitage and the breadth of its fields and
hills we shall begin to understand the broadness of the man, for a man’s
home is the effect of the cause of that which is in him.
When we shall have seen this country he lived and died in, so bountifully
endowed, lying between the Cumberland and the Stone, fit for a king to
fight for, we shall understand why Jackson loved it, fought for it—why
patriotism burned as a religion in his soul.
To him it was the Union—of the home he killed Dickinson for, that he
might live there untouched by slander; of the country he killed the
British for, that it might be the great republic of all ages. And so,
when John C. Calhoun shouted nullification he might as well have nailed a
red flag to the horn of the bull of the valley.
When we shall have seen the simplicity of his home, the rugged, brave
purity of his mind, as shown in everything around him, from the wall
paper in his halls, telling the story of Ulysses and Telemachus, to the
few really great books he owned and loved, we can form some idea of the
man who, in an age of strong speech and strong passions and free whiskey
and free fights, loved only one woman, was pure in a day of impurity,
was brave in a day of bluster, was far-sighted in a wilderness, and a
gentleman of his word always and all the time.
Seeing it all here and knowing it, we may understand the very religion
of holiness in the eye that could take such deliberate aim down the
pistol barrel that put out of business the head of the set of political
opponents, who, for a chance to kill him, ruthlessly touched the only raw
spot Fate’s finger had blistered in the mould of his life.
And he killed them—those who would destroy his home—as religiously as he
did those who would destroy his country—that long, red, quadruple-massed
line of British bullies, foul-mouthed and flame-touched, marching on the
South shouting: “Beauty and booty.”
No life story of this man has been truly told, because the Thackerays do
not write biographies; and the men who write the hard things of history,
by a strange rule of their craft’s ethics, seem to think it womanly to
write of the sweeter things of the soul. And so the lives of Jackson have
all been, more or less, partisan political histories of his times. As if
we did not have enough of it in our own day, that we must wince under
the brutal, bruising things Jackson had to cut through in fighting the
battles of the common people.
He did It and did it well. It was a thing placed on him by Fate and he
shirked not. But I love to look at the other and that greater side of
the man—the home side, the husband side, the man side, the farmer and
horseman and friend and neighbor—a picture which should live when his
politics are forgotten. For the story of the politician is ever like the
high tide that comes with its wave of splutters in the bay of Fundy and
then goes back again to oblivion and with much noise.
[Illustration: Entrance to the Hermitage as it is to-day.
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
But the Man is the sea into which it has flown, and in their great depths
have become silent and been forgotten.
And so the picture which clings to me always of Jackson is this told by
Senator Benton of him many years ago:
It was a cold, raw March day, and Jackson, the Fighter and Doer of Great
Deeds, was old and tired. The woman he worshiped had died and his heart
was broken. His children and the friends of his youth had gone too. And
so this neighbor saw the picture I want some great master to paint for
the coming ages—the most beautiful, soul-telling picture that could be
painted for the world. The old warrior sitting by the big hickory fire of
the Hermitage. He loved little children and a little child, an adopted
grandchild, had climbed up on his knee. But the little fellow had found
a half-frozen, motherless lamb in the meadow and he would not “be good”
unless the old fighter took his playmate, the lamb, too. And there he sat
with both of them in his arms and up against his big, great, game, kind
heart, that loved so the fields and the farm and the sweet, quiet things
of life, but whom God had sent to fight the bullets and the bullies of
his day and generation.
For Greatness is a hermit that must suffer and be sacrificed. And the
burden placed on it to do, is not the thing it would love to do.
Let us look now at Jackson’s land. Let us see it as it was to a raw boy
when he came over the mountains of North Carolina to make his home here.
Aeons and ages ago, when the earth was young, there burst upon the banks
of the Cumberland one of the many thousands of sulphur springs which an
All-wise Physician said would be good for the health of beings, both
beast and human, who should, through countless ages, inhabit the land.
The pioneers called it “The Great Salt Lick,” the “French Lick,” because
before ever the American hunter and trapper had arrived the French had
been there.
They all called it a lick because all wild animals licked it. Pioneers
have a quick way of naming things and a way that went to the heart of
things.
Countless herds of bison and deer had claimed the lick as theirs long
before ever the sound of a human voice had been heard in the great
forests which towered above it, or echoed from the canoe on the beautiful
river that flowed by it. For animals were on the earth before man;
and untold generations of buffalo, elk and deer told it, in their own
way, to untold generations which came after them, of the health-giving
salty-sulphurous water which bubbled from the low bottom, amid the cane
and beneath the big, cool trees on the river banks.
And it became history and tradition to them.
It flows to-day in the same low bottom, in the heart of a city man has
made out of half-baked bricks and called Nashville. And it is no longer
the Great Salt Lick for the hunter and the hunted have passed and both
have become dust upon the surface of things. To-day men call it the
Sulphur Spring, and true to the laws of the land men have walled it in
and piped it up and shut out all other animals, both of his kind and the
others; and that which the Great Physician made to be free for all the
countless sweet animals of the earth, man and woman and the chubby child,
links which make life worth the living, and the beautiful deer, kine,
elk and caribou, this greedy little tribe of animals called men, of whom
you and I are one, not satisfied with having killed off all the other
beautiful, sweet animals for their hides and tallow, and not satisfied in
having felled all the cool, sweet trees which grew on the river, that the
land might parch and burn, and unborn men might forever have to buy more
water as the land grew more barren and more thirsty.
[Illustration: The Pike at the Hermitage, going toward Nashville.
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
The greatest tragedy of the centuries is not the killing of the Innocents
or the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the disasters of war or flame or
famine, but it is the butchery by man of the trees of the earth—those
stately messengers between the clouds and the land, the felling of which
breaks the covenant of great laws invisible and blight the earth as with
fire.
It is that and the accursed Spirit, which, for a few dollars given,
claims the right to monopolize the things God made for all men.
* * * * *
When one drives down the first dozen miles of the Lebanon pike one has a
quiet, reverent feeling if he has a spark of patriotism in him. It is a
typical road of Middle Tennessee—for all of Middle Tennessee is a rich
loam lying on limestone. The rocks have been beaten into pikes and the
gray-white roads pencil the distant slope or fade away into the gentle
valleys. Around, everywhere, is the typical Southern home, the Southern
farm of the grain and stock raising kind.
This sketch is not a story of the life of Andrew Jackson. That were
impossible in a short article. We have books and books on his life
and character. Every school boy knows his history, the poverty of its
beginning, the honor of its end. This is merely intended to be a quick
picture of the man and his home as it was then—as it is to-day.
Home in the South means more than it does anywhere else in the world, for
the entire law and religion of the South is based on the idea of local
self government—the home idea. Throughout Jackson’s life every plantation
was a self-governing institution, a little government in itself. And in
this home the woman was the queen and the real ruler. In no other country
in the world has this idea been so clearly cultivated. It is all through
the South to-day. Ask any child in the South: “Who lives yonder?” and it
will always answer with the woman’s name. A visitor to the South to-day
would think it was widowed.
And so I am going out of the usual line in this story, and to tell the
real story of Andrew Jackson and his home, I am going to tell the story
of his wife and the great influence which she had on all his life. For
when it is studied and sifted everything that Jackson did is closely
bound with the twine of this woman’s love and influence.
Middle Tennessee was so rich and fertile and so full of game the
Indians would not permit any one tribe to own it. It was their common
hunting ground. One may imagine how they would regard its occupancy
by the whites. Mr. Charlville, a French trapper, stopped at the Big
Lick and lived in the old deserted Shawnee fort on the bluff in 1714.
Later, Boone and other hunters passed, but not until 1779, during the
war with England, did James Robertson and his company of nine from the
old settlement of Jonesboro, in North Carolina, come to stay, building
their fort and log cabins on the bluff near the Big Lick. When he left
the settlement it had been agreed that his friend and neighbor, Colonel
John Donelson, would follow, bringing a number of others, among them the
family of James Robertson. This Donelson did, in boats, over a route that
would stagger a sane man of to-day, down the Holston to the Tennessee,
down the Tennessee to the Ohio, up the Ohio to the Cumberland, up the
Cumberland to the Big Lick two thousand miles by water, and the route
infested with hostile savages. The story of this four months’ journey
reads as nothing else does in early American pioneer history. “Among
those who shared the dangers of this voyage,” writes the biographer
Parton, “was Rachel Donelson, the leader’s daughter, a black-eyed,
black-haired brunette, as gay, bold and handsome a lass as ever danced
on the deck of a flatboat or took the helm while her father took a shot
at the Indians.” They reached their destination April 24, 1780. Later,
Rachel married Lewis Robards, a Kentuckian and was living there when
her brave old pioneer father, John Donelson, was killed in a field near
Nashville by Indians several years afterwards.
Jackson came to the settlement a young lawyer from Salisbury, N. C., in
1788. Of his early life every one knows—his poverty, his patriotism, his
grit, his wildness. I have studied that wildness. It was the wildness of
nervous energy that must do something. It was the same thing that put
Theodore Roosevelt to living the cowboy and hunting grizzlies. For there
is much in common in the characters of these two remarkable men.
Jackson arrived in Nashville in 1788 with scarcely more than a horse
(there never was a time when it seems he did not own a horse!) and his
saddlebags. In ten years he was a rich man and had laid the foundation
for his large estate including the land around the Hermitage. He was
a fighter and a worker by nature. He jumped at once into a large law
practice, “and in those days a lawyer’s fee for conducting a suit of no
great importance,” says an old historian, “might be a square mile of land
or, in Western phrase, a six-forty.” Jackson appears frequently in the
records as the purchaser of wild lands. He bought the 640 acres which
afterwards formed the nucleus of the Hermitage for $800, a high price for
those days. In 1797 he sold more than $6,000 worth of land to a gentleman
in Philadelphia and had several thousand acres left. The secret of his
wealth is that he bought large tracts of land when they could be bought
for a horse or a cow bell and held them until the torrent of immigration
made them valuable.
Surely in this there is more than a hint for the Southerner of
to-day. When we consider the richness and cheapness of our soil, the
salubriousness of our climate and the fact that immigration has not
really yet started toward the South, the man who has the forethought now
to invest in Southern land will lay the foundation of a future fortune
more surely than in any other way.
He hated debt, yet his notes would raise money in Boston when nothing
else in Tennessee would. In 1804, when he lived at Hunter’s Hill,
thirteen miles from Nashville and two miles beyond the present Hermitage
and came so nearly being ruined financially by the failure of David
Allison, of Philadelphia, who had passed Jackson his notes for land and
which Jackson had endorsed and exchanged for goods, he sold 25,000 acres
of land in one body, paid all his debts and moved to the log cabin at
the Hermitage reproduced in this issue.
He made money on his horses and no living man knew a horse better than
Jackson. We have told before in Trotwood’s of his races at Clover Bottom.
He rode to Virginia and back to find a Truxton. He imported horse after
horse to beat Haynie’s Maria, and never did it. When he was President he
drove to his carriage in Washington two beautiful iron-grays, descendants
of Truxton. “General,” said a lady who journeyed from the far East to see
him in his old age at the Hermitage, “you ought to be the happiest of
living men. Every honor in life has been given you. You have accomplished
every thing you have ever undertaken.”
“On the contrary, madam, my life has been a dismal failure,” he replied.
“The one great object I have worked for has never been accomplished. I
was never able to beat Haynie’s Maria,” and he smiled at her astonishment.
The tragedy, as well as the sweetness of Jackson’s life lies around his
love for Rachel Donelson.
This paper will tell of the tragedy.
Before she was twenty Rachel Donelson first married Lewis Robards and
went with him, as stated, to live in pioneer Kentucky. He was a jealous,
drinking, ill-tempered fool. Horsemen have a term which fits him better
than any thing elegant I can think of—sour-headed. Robards soon became
jealous of his wife and made her life unhappy. Finally he wrote to
Rachel’s mother, the widow Donelson, then living near Nashville, that
he would send her daughter back to her. This he did, but soon afterward
repented and on the promise of better behavior was reunited to his wife
by the intervention of Judge Overton and went to live with her near
Nashville. Jackson and Judge Overton, both were lawyers, boarded in the
same home, the widow Donelson’s, with Robards and his wife, and in a
lengthy article written 1827, when Jackson was a candidate for President,
Judge Overton tells pointedly and graphically of the affair. He says
that after Robards sent his wife back to Tennessee he became unhappy
and induced Overton, who was then boarding at old Mrs. Robards’ near
Nashville, to beg his wife to let him come back to her, agreeing to live
in Tennessee and to treat her better. This Overton did, and Robards and
his wife were reunited. In the meanwhile Jackson, a young lawyer, came to
board in the house, and in a few months Robards began to treat his wife
ill again, even accusing her of liking Jackson. Jackson left the house,
to avoid any unpleasantness, but Robards finally left his wife, went
to Virginia and applied to the legislature in the winter of 1790 for a
divorce. This the legislature granted and Jackson married Mrs. Robards
in the summer of 1791, believing the marriage between her and Robards
was annulled. But it seems under the Virginia law a final decree of the
court was necessary, which Robards did not apply for until 1793. Jackson,
learning this, was remarried to his wife in 1794.
“It was a happy marriage,” says Parton, the biographer, “a very happy
marriage—one of the very happiest ever contracted. They loved one another
dearly. They held each other in the highest respect. They testified
the love and respect they entertained for one another by those polite
attentions which lovers cannot but exchange before marriage and after
marriage.
“Their love grew as their age increased and became warmer as their blood
became colder.
“No one ever heard either address to the other a disrespectful, an
irritating or unsympathizing 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 called her ‘Rachel,’ but ‘Mrs.
Jackson,’ or ‘wife.’ The reader shall become better acquainted with their
domestic life by and by. Meanwhile, let it be understood that our hero
has now a Home where lives a Friend, true and fond, to welcome 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 elsewhere—he was always gentle, kind and patient.
“He was most prompt to defend his wife’s good name. The peculiar
circumstances attending his marriage made him touchy on this point. His
temper, with regard to other causes of offense, was 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 anyone very heartily 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.”
There is a fool and a meddler in every tragedy between men. For a fool is
naturally a meddler.
“T. Swann, Esq., lately of Virginia,” filled the role above mentioned
and brought on the duel between Jackson and Charles Dickinson. T.
Swann, Esq., was a young lawyer who came from Virginia to the Western
settlement. He was a quarter horse with wheels in his head who entered
himself with the Four-milers. He strutted and would be a man. He wore
fine clothes and volunteered to loan money he never possessed. He used
strange oaths and professed knowledge of horses. He posed as a fighting
gentleman and carried tales. He butted in and backed out, of course.
In the fall of 1805 General Jackson matched his horse, Truxton, against
Captain Joseph Ervin’s Plowboy, for $2,000, payable in notes on the day
of the race, the notes to be then due. If either party failed to race he
was to pay a forfeit of $800. Six persons were interested in the race for
Truxton: General Jackson, Maj. W. P. Anderson, Major Verrell and Captain
Pryor. For Plowboy: Captain W. P. Ervin and Charles Dickinson, his
son-in-law. Before the day of the race arrived Dickinson and Ervin found
that Plowboy was not fit, withdrew him and paid forfeit. It was done to
the satisfaction of all, amicably done and settled.
[Illustration: The famous Clover Bottom race track, the scene of early
horse racing in Tennessee, and where Jackson’s horses ran so many races.
Scene of the triumph of Haynie’s Maria and her great rider, “Monkey
Simon,” a pair which Jackson could never defeat.
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
Charles Dickinson was a young lawyer of talent and fine connections.
He would drink at times and was then wild and reckless, but he was not
unamiable and was a gentleman when sober, but when excited by drink he
swore violently and was loose in his talk. Soon after paying forfeit in
the Truxton-Plowboy race he “got in his cups” and spoke disparagingly of
Mrs. Jackson. In fact all of Jackson’s enemies, even from John Sevier
down (whom Jackson once came very near killing for the same cause), used
the unfortunate haste of Jackson’s marriage whenever they wished to
offend him most deeply. Jackson called on Dickinson and quickly took him
to task. Dickinson apologized, said if he had used the words he was drunk
and was sorry, and they separated in a friendly manner.
But Dickinson soon got into his cups again, and in the Nashville Inn used
most offensive words concerning Mrs. Jackson. Jackson was always most
cool and thoughtful in the closest places. This time he went to Captain
Ervin and advised him to use his influence with his son-in-law to control
his tongue, and added: “I wish no quarrel with him; he is being used by
my enemies to pick a quarrel with me. Advise him to stop in time.”
Here it would have ended but for “T. Swann, Esq., late of Virginia,”
and as so many foolish reports of the famous duel have been published I
shall go into details to tell how it was really fought. Every year it
is published—how Dickinson at the famous race said in the presence of
Jackson that “Truxton ran away from Plowboy like Jackson ran away with
another man’s wife,” and so on. All of which is untrue. The Impartial
Review and Cumberland Repository, edited by Thomas Eastin, of January,
1806, and now in the library of the Tennessee Historical Society, is full
of all the letters and communications leading up to the tragedy, and
without going into lengthy details, the main facts of which are these:
1. Mr. T. Swann, one night, was loafing in the store of George and Robert
Bell and says he heard Patton Anderson say that the notes offered by
Captain Joseph Ervin at the time he paid the forfeit were different from
those General Jackson agreed to receive. Charles Dickinson heard of this
and called on T. Swann, Esq., to know if it was true, and Swann said it
was.
2. T. Swann then loafed over into General Jackson’s store, the old Indian
block-house, which stood for many years on the Clover Bottom track, and
asked General Jackson if Captain Ervin or Dickinson offered him notes
different from those they had agreed to take. General Jackson answered
that Dickinson’s were the same, but Ervin’s were a little different, not
being due on demand, as agreed.
3. Mr. T. Swann later rode from Clover Bottom to Nashville with Captain
Ervin and told him what General Jackson had said.
4. Meeting between General Jackson Ervin and Dickinson in Nashville.
Mutual explanations, in which General Jackson said what he thought of T.
Swann Esq., in terms forceful but not elegant.
5. A letter from T. Swann, Esq., to General Jackson, calculated to make
the latter challenge him to mortal combat, the presumptuous, windy letter
of a foolish boy.
6. A hot reply from General Jackson, an elegant letter and a model in the
King’s English. This letter alone would refute any idea that Jackson’s
intellect was not of the highest or his English half-baked. In it he
says: “There are certain traits that always accompany the gentleman and
man of truth. The moment he hears harsh expressions applied to a friend
he will immediately communicate it, that explanations may take place;
when the base poltroon and cowardly tale-bearer will always act in the
background. You can apply the latter to Mr. Dickinson and see which fits
him best. I write it for his eye, and the latter I emphatically intend
for him. When the conversation dropped between Mr. Dickinson and myself
I thought it was at an end. As he wishes to blow the coal, I am ready to
light it to an end.”
All of which shows that Jackson had decided to strike over the head of T.
Swann to the real power behind him—the man who had twice publicly abused
Mrs. Jackson.
7. T. Swann cannot keep away from the General, but hunts him up as soon
as he comes to town and demands an explanation. He meets abuse and
threats of caning, in which the General says he would not want a better
breakfast than to eat fifty such as T. Swann, Esq.
8. T. Swann challenges the General to mortal combat. Read the
grandiloquent challenge:
“General Andrew Jackson: Think not that I am to be intimidated
by your threats. No power terrestrial shall prevent the settled
purpose of my soul. The statement I have made in respect to the
notes is substantially correct. The torrent of abusive language
with which you have assailed me is such as every gentleman
should blush to hear. Your menaces I set at defiance, and now
demand of you that reparation which one gentleman is entitled
to receive of another. My friend, the bearer of this, is
authorized to make complete arrangements in the field of honor.”
THOMAS SWANN.
“Nashville, Jany. 12th, 1806.”
9. Jackson comes to town, meets Mr. T. Swann and breaks a cane over his
head. T. Swann is game, if he is a fool, and though the cane, to use
his own language, becomes “a large bludgeon and a brace of pistols,” he
challenges the General again and induces Mr. N. A. McNairy to act for him.
10. Charles Dickinson takes matters up, writes an offensive letter to
Jackson, closing with:
“As to the word ‘coward,’ I think it is as applicable to
yourself as to any one I know, and I shall be very glad when
an opportunity serves to know in what manner you give your
medicines, and I hope you will take in payment one of my most
moderate cathartics.
“Yours at command,
“CHARLES DICKINSON.
“Jany 10, 1806.”
Dickinson wrote this and took a flatboat for New Orleans, spending the
time to and fro practicing with a pistol.
11. Jackson publishes a communication in the town paper, supported by
affidavits of John Hutchings and John Coffee, concerning the whole
matter, stating that T. Swann brought it all on himself, was an
intermeddler and not a gentleman, and raps Mr. McNairy for being in
the same class. Bluff old John Coffee writes a page or two telling how
Jackson had to cane T. Swann to keep from killing him, and that Mr.
McNairy, T. Swann’s friend, told him one thing and did another. The
hidden humor of all this preparation for blood-letting is the fact that
General Jackson did not consider T. Swann a gentleman, and therefore
not entitled to satisfaction with pistols. In proof of it he prints the
affidavit of Robert Hays, who solemnly swears and asserts that the said
T. Swann volunteered once to loan Sam Jackson $200 but when the said Sam
went to get it, T. Swann had loaned it to another man! Several others
swear to the same thing, to wit, that T. Swann was no gentleman, because
he failed to respond to the touch of the said Samuel.
Under the code of honor T. Swann may not have been a gentleman, but in
full cognizance of the record of S. Jackson, Esq., for borrowing, we are
in honor bound to reverse our former assertion as to the said T. Swann
being a fool!
12. Nathaniel A. McNairy, knight of high renown, now comes into the arena
of newspaper controversy and publishes a most abusive and sarcastic
letter about General Jackson, saying among other things—they used many
italics in those days—that “the brave General is much more pleased in
shedding bushels of ink than one ounce of blood, provided there is an
equal chance that that one ounce should be extracted from his own dear
carcass. But give him an advantage and he is as brave as Julius Caesar,
such as this: Give him a large brace of rifled-barreled pistols and he
will race a superannuated Governor in the road as he travels (this refers
to Jackson’s quarrel with John Sevier), or he will meet Mr. Swann in some
sequestered spot, that the alert General may obtain some dishonorable
advantage when no eye can see him; or let him have a pistol and he will
shoot at a man who has none and drive him off to Kentucky, God knows for
what offense!” etc.
Here was a fight for Jackson, but as he was booked for Dickinson, John
Coffee took the job off his hands and fought the duel with McNairy, and
they fought to kill in those days. Witness the graphic account of this
duel in the Impartial Review, written by Maj. Robert Purdy, the second of
John Coffee.
13. In the duel it was agreed that if either man fired before word had
been given, the second of the other was to shoot him. One, two, three,
fire! was the rule, but McNairy fired at two, wounding John Coffee in
the hip. Purdy came near killing McNairy for this, but he begged off,
claiming it was an accident.
14. Dickinson returns from New Orleans and, on May 24, publishes a bitter
attack in the Impartial Review, on General Jackson, saying among other
things “notwithstanding he is a Major General of the militia of Mero
District, I declare him to be a worthless scoundrel, a poltroon and a
coward.”
The editor of the paper showed this to Thomas Overton before it was
published and that gentleman rode to the Hermitage. “General Jackson,” he
said, “it is a thing you cannot pass over. You must fight him.”
“General Overton,” said his friend “this is an affair of life and death.
I will take the responsibility myself. I will ride to town and see the
piece and form my own judgment of it.”
15. He did and this is Jackson’s famous challenge to Dickinson.
“Charles Dickinson.—Sir: Your conduct and expressions relative
to me of late have been of such a nature and so insulting that
it requires and shall have my notice.
“Insult may be given by men, and of such a kind that they
must be noticed and treated with the respect due a gentleman,
although (in the present instance), you do not merit it.
“You have, to disturb my quiet, industriously excited Thomas
Swann to quarrel with me, which involved the peace and harmony
of society for a while.
“You, on the 10th of January, wrote me a very insulting letter,
left this country, caused this letter to be delivered after
you had been gone some days, and viewing yourself in safety
from the contempt I held you, have now in the press a piece
more replete with blackguard abuse than any other of your
productions. You are pleased to state that you would have
noticed me in a different way, but my cowardice would have
found a pretext to evade that satisfaction if it had been
called for, etc., etc.
“I hope, sir, your courage will be an ample security to me that
I will obtain speedily that satisfaction due me for the insults
offered, and in the way my friend who hands you this will point
out. He waits upon you for that purpose, and with your friend
will enter into immediate arrangements for this purpose.
“I am, etc.,
“ANDREW JACKSON.”
16. T. Swann still butts in. He comes out in a card, in which he says: “I
shall now conclude this address to the public by assuring General Andrew
Jackson (to use a favorite expression of his own) ‘that I shall at all
times hold myself answerable for any of my conduct.’”
That was May 20, 1806, nearly a century ago. T. Swann, perhaps, is dead
by now. But we will faithfully endeavor to secure a picture of his grave
as it looks to-day, that he may still appropriately appear in the tragedy
his gunpowder head and hair-trigger mouth brought on. Jackson brushed
him aside as a bull would a fly and went after the man he had picked out
to fight all the time—Dickinson, the best shot in the West, the man who
after one warning had dared to impugn the character of Rachel Donelson
Jackson.
And so was brought on the great duel, one of the most famous of all times
and which cast its shadow over Jackson’s life, even to the portals of
death. For the almost fatal wound Dickinson gave him broke out afresh now
and then during all his remaining days and helped to carry him off at
last.
17. The Duel. A great man always has his bitterest enemies at his own
home. The nearer they get to him—friends and enemies—the more they love
or hate him. It is the weakness of poor, fighting humanity that they are
kind to strangers out of their way, but will fight the neighbor who gets
in their way. And when a man becomes so much greater than his neighbors
that the world knows him but knows them not, there may he expect to find
the essence of all narrowness.
Jackson always had his bitter enemies. Many people of his own town fought
him most bitterly, even when he was saving their lives from Indians and
their land from the foreigner. He could stand it himself and suffer,
but when they took it out by slandering his wife, then it was that his
pistols were ever ready.
[Illustration: Pike near the Clover Bottom race track.
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
A political enemy of Jackson living at Nashville published during his
Presidential campaign a pamphlet containing a list of “nearly one hundred
fights or violent or abusive quarrels.” But Jackson lived seventy-eight
years, in an age when personal fights were the law of the land. He always
made his friends’ quarrels his own, and for the first fifteen years of
his life, as District Attorney, Judge and lawyer he was brought into
collision with the tough element and rascals of the State.
The challenge was sent May 22, and Dickinson promptly accepted it
through his second, Dr. Catlett, and named the day of meeting at seven
o’clock Friday morning, May 30, 1806, at Harrison Mills, on Red River,
in Logan County, Ky. Jackson objected strenuously to postponing it a
week. He wanted to fight the next day and sent Overton, his second, to
see Catlett and have the date changed. Catlett said Dickinson did not
have his pistols ready. Jackson offered to give him his choice of his
own, and added: “For God’s sake, let this business be brought to an issue
immediately, as I cannot see after publication why Mr. Dickinson should
wish to put it off until Friday.”
But Dickinson would not yield, and for a week the impetuous Jackson could
only chafe and wait.
From Nashville to Harrison Mills, in Logan County, Ky., is fully fifty
miles across country. Horseback was the only mode of travel through the
new country then, but a ride of fifty miles a day, used to horseback as
they were, and riding such horses as he rode, was no unusual thing for
him.
[Illustration: The Sulphur Spring—“The Great French Lick,” as it appears
to-day on Cherry Street, Nashville. Quere: What would the buffalo and
hunters of old have thought of that thing in their day, with a negro in
the tower?
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
Dickinson arose Thursday morning before day. His young wife was sleeping
by his side and knew nothing of it. He dressed then awakened her and
kissed her with more than usual tenderness: “Good-bye, darling. I shall
be sure to be home to-morrow night.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, surprised. “Oh, just over into Kentucky
on a little matter of business. I will be back to-morrow night.”
He started out, but she called him back and kissed him again. He laughed
boyishly, recklessly at the look of doubt and fear that had crept into
her eyes for she had heard rumors only of what the whole town knew, but
it never occurred to her that the tragedy was so near.
It was a gay, rollicking crowd of a half-dozen young men who joined
Dickinson for his ride across two counties to Kentucky. Never was a more
hilarious party. They took short cuts. They galloped across dangerous
places, displaying horsemanship and nerve. They drank and made the woods
echo with their shouts. Before he left Nashville, Dickinson had bet $500
that he would kill his man—that he would put his ball within a half-inch
of the coat button over Jackson’s heart. When they stopped for dinner,
he amused the crowd with his wonderful marksmanship. He tied a string
between two trees and three times he cut it in twain with his pistol
ball. At twenty-four feet he put four bullets in a spot no larger than a
silver dollar. “When General Jackson comes along here,” he said to the
landlord of the little eating house, “show him these.”
He thought to weaken Jackson’s nerve, but little did he realize the real
nerve of the man who was afterwards to send to death and defeat the
troops that conquered Bonaparte.
There is no record of Jackson’s home-leaving, except that he started
early and went quietly along, those two soldiers of the Revolution and
of Indian warfare. If his wife knew it, she was not the woman to try to
stop him. She had much of the stubborn, solemn, predestined Scotch-Irish
nature of her husband. She was used to his fights, for he had many of
them, and to her he was always right. She would not stop him if she
could, and that no one ever stopped him she knew. There was the dignity
of great love and respect between the two. They never questioned each
other’s motives. The one never trespassed on the other’s world. She was
intensely religious—of the Presbyterian predestined kind. If she kissed
him good-bye, not an eyelash quivered, not a tremor of doubt or fear, and
if she said anything, doubtless it was:
“Good-bye, Mr. Jackson. Of course you will kill him. God is on our side!”
If Dickinson and his crowd rode along with shouts and songs, and wild,
reckless fun, very different was Jackson’s and Thomas Overton’s journey.
They knew Jackson’s chances for death were five to one. He was an
indifferent shot—all high-strung, nervous men are. He had but one chance,
and he and Overton thought it out as calmly as ever generals planned a
battle. For it was a battle—a battle of life and death, with the chances
all against Jackson. It reminds me of the night before Hastings which
Harold, the Saxon king’s, army spent in drink and song and cheer and wild
hilarity. But down on the sandy beach William the Conqueror’s men spent
theirs in solemn thought and silent sleep and prayer.
Little things count most in the crises of life and it was Dickinson’s
talk at last that gave Jackson the plan of his fight.
“General,” said Thomas Overton, as they rode along, “I have been thinking
of the only chance we have got. It’s a bitter pill, but it’s our only
chance with a man who shoots as quick and true as Dickinson.”
Jackson was silent. He knew his second; that no gamer, truer man lived;
that he was not only a soldier himself, but had been in many affairs of
honor before; that he would let no chance escape him.
“You see, it is this way,” went on the second; “we have agreed on the
mode of fighting, as you know. The distance is twenty-four feet. We will
toss up for position. There will be no counting. Each man is to hold his
pistol down by his side until the word fire is given, then each is to
fire as he pleases.”
Jackson was still silent. He knew this was not to his advantage. But as
the challenged party Dickinson’s second had the choice of weapons and
conditions. He knew that Dickinson, expert shot that he was, needed no
time to aim and fire, but that he himself did. Dickinson shot instantly,
as a boy shoots a marble; no aim, but that true action of the hand and
eye which come together by practice and long instinct. There is no aim
that equals it—it is natural, it is the mark of the expert.
“Now I have thought it out. There is no chance for me to get the first
shot. Dickinson can shoot quicker than you and with more chance of
success. All you can do is to wait till he shoots and take your chance.
If he wounds you or misses you take your time and kill him. If you try to
shoot first, you will miss him and he will kill you. It’s hard, but it’s
all we can do.”
Jackson agreed and went to the field, a six foot three inch target at
twenty-four feet, for a man who could put four balls in four shots into
a space not half the size of Jackson’s heart! It took a heart of steel
to know that, as he traveled wearily along the rough road, and when the
landlord pointed to a sparrow’s head Dickinson had shot off, he smiled
grimly and said:
“Never mind, my dear sir, he will come this way day after to-morrow in a
box. Be sure of that.”
[Illustration: The Spring and Dairy at the Hermitage, where Jackson used
to indulge in cool buttermilk.
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
Jackson never would talk in after years of the fight. In fact he never
talked of any of them could he help it. Only twice did he ever mention
it. Once when he was President and he was fighting for his political life
and they were using Dickinson’s death, among other things, to defeat
him. “As for Dickinson,” he said, “I would have killed him if he had shot
me through the brain.” In his later years he regretted it more and more,
and once said: “I never would have killed him if he had missed me. When I
killed him I was as sure as I lived that he had mortally wounded me.”
A little tavern kept by David Miller stood on the banks of the Red River
in those days, one hundred years ago. Other friends joined Jackson en
route, and they reached the tavern, a small party of horsemen, about
sunset Thursday afternoon, May 29, and obtained lodgings for the night.
Dickinson’s party went to a house two miles lower down the river, kept by
William Harrison.
Jackson ate heartily and sat out under the stars after supper smoking his
pipe as usual, and chatting with his friends. Jacob Smith, the landlord,
soon fell under the magnetic charm of the man and used to love to state
how he talked with his guest and how, as he bade him good night, he
wished him good luck on the morrow.
Early the next morning an overseer who worked Jacob Smith’s negroes on a
near-by farm, saw a cavalcade of horsemen ride to the river’s banks. He
knew what was up, and he wished greatly to see it. There was no ferryman
at the river, and after waiting and calling, Jackson spurred his horse
into the stream and dashed across into the forest beyond followed by his
friends. It was a level beautiful spot in the shade of large towering
poplars. The trees rose tall and stately, already showering upon the
grass beneath their wax-like, blood-flecked blossoms, emblems of the
flecks of deeper carmine so soon to crimson the earth.
The cavalcade dismounted and hitched their horses. Dickinson and party
were already there. It was not yet seven. Jackson walked between his
surgeon and his second.
“How do you feel about it now, General?” asked the surgeon.
“All right, sir; all right. I will wing him, never fear.”
But Overton was still thinking, his head down, silently and deeply. He
had just heard of Dickinson’s boast that he would shoot within an inch
of the button over Jackson’s heart. Jackson was slender and wore a coat
always buttoned tightly around his erect, thin, military form.
“General,” he said quietly, as they walked along, “unbutton your coat to
the top button. Let it hang loose.”
And this it was that saved Jackson’s life and gave to his country one of
her greatest generals and one of her greatest Presidents.
Dickinson’s second drew the choice for position. He promptly stationed
Dickinson with his back to the rising sun. The glare would be in
Jackson’s face. But Overton drew the word and his quiet face lighted with
pleasure, for he had even thought that out, how he would give it. Nothing
escaped Thomas Overton when his friend’s life was at stake.
There were peculiar words in use in the old Revolutionary manual of arms.
“Poise fl’ok!” would mean to-day: “Present arms.” The change is obvious:
“fl’ok—” “firelock.”
“Ready, aim, fere!” and they dwelt long on f-e-r-e, for it meant fire.
And when it came from Overton’s mouth he brought it out with a shriek and
volume, quick and sharp, so unexpected that it took calmness and nerve to
think more of the shooting than the word.
Dickinson was younger than Jackson and far handsomer. He stood at his
mark smilingly, confidently. Jackson stood, his thin, determined face
drawn with the intensity of that earnestness and calmness which it ever
wore in critical moments. It is said that he had a bullet in his mouth
to clench his teeth upon, a thing he often did in the agony of the great
physical pain which, from one cause and another, was his inheritance all
through life.
The two men were as unlike as nature could make them. Dickinson, who came
from Maryland was a well-bred cavalier. Jackson had no breeding at all.
He was born a day or two after they buried his father in a pauper’s grave
and all his mother ever told him was that they had left Ireland to escape
British persecution and that his grandfather was hanged for leading in an
Irish rebellion. Dickinson was gay, brave, cool and the best shot with a
pistol living.
Jackson was earnest, terribly earnest; cool, but gunpowdery. He stood for
something. He was a man of destiny—felt it, knew it. Dickinson was a man
of chance. Jackson felt he was destined for great things. He did not see
how, but he knew he would kill Dickinson.
“Are you ready, gentlemen?” asked Overton.
“I am ready, sir,” said Dickinson.
“Ready!” snapped Jackson from his thin, drawn lips.
“Then f-e-r-e!” shouted Overton, almost before the word had left
Jackson’s lips.
It was a strange word to Dickinson, strangely, fiercely, excitingly said.
Up went his pistol—he never took aim—and when it reached the button over
Jackson’s heart the quiet sweetness of the virgin poplars canopying the
cool, grassy plot echoed to the thunder of his big pistol, hurling at
Jackson’s heart the terrible two-ounce cone of lead.
[Illustration: Scene on Stone River just back of the Clover Bottom race
track.
(Photo March, 1906, by E. E. Sweetland.)]
Overton’s eyes were glued with fear on Jackson. He saw the dust fly out
from the button over his heart. He saw Jackson half wince, his face
flash with grim anger, half brace himself and throw his left arm across
his breast as if to hold his heart in till he could fire. It was done
naturally, easily, and Overton’s face lighted with joy as he saw Jackson
calmly, coolly raise his own pistol.
But Dickinson—Overton drew his own pistol and turned on him
fiercely—Dickinson, pale, astounded, had involuntarily stepped back from
his own line, exclaiming:
“My God! Have I missed him?”
“Back to your mark!” shouted Overton, “or I will shoot you in your
tracks!”
Dickinson flushed and stepped up to the mark, his eyes down, his smoking
pistol in his hand.
Jackson took deliberate aim and touched the hair trigger.
Snap!
It stopped on the half-cock. Never before had it done that, for a truer,
better weapon no man ever had. Why this accident, this chance, one in ten
thousand? We know not the unseen of life. Who sent it to give Dickinson
this chance for his life—to save Jackson from a shadow that would darken
all of his?
Coolly, grimly Jackson recocked his pistol. Reeling with pain and loss
of blood, but bracing himself to kill, he took deliberate aim, not at
Dickinson’s brain, not at his heart, for his chances were small there,
but at the middle of his body where he knew he could hit and where death
would be sure and lingering.
Dickinson collapsed at the fire and went down, pale, frantic. Jackson
stood stoically, reeling, nausea-stricken, but no man knew it. The
surgeon and friends rushed to Dickinson and opened his clothes. The blood
poured in a rush from near his hip. The surgeon’s face lit up. That did
not mean death. But look, the hole was above the center of his abdomen
where the large bowel crossed the smaller ones. One glance was enough.
“No chance,” he whispered to the second; “that is death.”
Jackson walked off erectly—not a waver, not a limp, between his second
and his surgeon. Dickinson’s eyes followed him, and the agony of his
failure entered with the agony of his fate.
“Are you wounded, General?” asked the surgeon.