_ANDREW JACKSON AS A “SPORT.”_
In many respects Andrew Jackson was the most interesting, picturesque
and unique character America has produced. Scotch and Irish
blood commingling in his veins, there was a perfect blend of the
characteristics of both races, and in addition thereto he had some
traits and besetments peculiarly his own. In his calm and restful
moods, he was as tender and serene as a child, and easily accessible
by the very humblest; but when the storm of passion swept over his
soul, he was a flaming furnace of fury, almost wholly heedless of
consequences, and as much to be feared and avoided as an enraged lion.
In the face of perils he had the dauntlessness of John Knox, and was
an exact counterpart of the great reformer when he threw down the gage
of battle to the Roman hierarchy. A soldier by nature, he scoffed at
the prescribed rules of military movements, and made his own tactics,
surpassing even the Corsican prodigy in martial genius and originality,
as the trained soldiers of Pakenham, who won the bloody field of
Waterloo, testified involuntarily when they fled in defeat and dismay
before his undisciplined militia from the gates of New Orleans.
The highest order of statesmanship wrought in him its perfect work. If
he was not the founder, he was the preserver, of a great party. He was
a sturdy patriot. Love of country was the controlling emotion of his
great soul. The determination which animated him, crystallized in his
stern pronouncement, “The federal union: it must be preserved!” crushed
an incipient rebellion as a giant would crush a shell of glass.
His judicial administration was signalized by clear discernment, keen
analysis, deep penetration, ready and correct decision, and an instinct
to trail the sly and devious cunning of wrong and guilt.
Jackson lacked the refinements of fashion and the polished graces
of the courtier, but his quick grasp of every situation and his
instinctive sense of the proprieties bore him with composure and
dignity through all the social ordeals through which he had to pass.
Still, in these functions he had a will and a way of his own, and
little he recked whether others were pleased or affronted.
Jackson’s figure, like the shadow of the Brocken, grows more colossal
as we recede from it.
This is one side of Jackson’s life--the sober, serious side--an
unblurred career of honor, usefulness and triumph, for which the
truth-loving muse of history never tires of garlanding his name with
the most loving eulogies. As is usually the case with mortals, there
was a reverse side of Jackson’s character. Here we find a few spots on
the otherwise white flower of a blameless life.
In the years before honors thrust themselves so thick and fast upon
him, he was what would now be called a “sport.” The semi-civilization
of the time, his rugged environment, the lack of training consequent
upon the loss of his natural guardians, his absolute dependence upon
himself, and his high-born spirit that could brook no control, combine
to form an eloquent plea in extenuation of the few “indiscretions” that
were mingled with so many commendable traits. He loved the excitement
and wild abandon of the chase, and the deep-mouthed pack’s “heavy bay,
resounding up the rocky way” and mountain solitudes, was sweeter music
to his enraptured ear than a thunderous jumble of Dutch diapasons to a
Wagnerian devotee.
Jackson was fond of adventure and games requiring daring, alertness,
skill and strength, and engaged with the heartiest zeal in all the rude
hilarities of pioneer life; but horse-racing was his special weakness.
At the time spoken of, he knew a great deal more about the “points”
of a flyer than he did about Blackstone, the science of government or
the ten commandments. A fleet-footed horse was his idol, and when he
saw one equal or break the record made by Maggie on the night when she
outstripped the witches of Kirk Alloway with frightened Tam O’Shanter
clinging to her mane, his was the ecstasy of the swain in his earliest
love. On this “weak point” hangs an o’er-true tale, and the event gives
a true insight into Jackson’s character when he was at his worst.
It happened along in the eighties of the last century, when Jackson was
a resident of Washington county and boarded with Christopher Taylor
(familiarly known as “Kit Taylor,” and grandfather of Skelton Taylor
of Chattanooga), who lived, as stated in an earlier chapter, about one
mile below Jonesboro, on the road to the Brown settlement. At this
time, Jackson’s “weakness” was at its weakest, and horse-racing was
his most delightful occupation. He had a racer upon which he lavished
his time and his affections, and which he imagined was the fastest in
all the country; and he was eager to “back his judgment” with all the
means at his command. Col. Love, who lived in Greasy Cove, then a part
of Washington county and now of Unicoi, owned the champion flyer of the
new country, having even defeated the fastest horses over in Virginia,
about Wolf Hills, where Abingdon now stands. Jackson envied Love, and
was determined to rob him of his laurels and becloud the reputation of
his horse. He sent a challenge, which was promptly accepted.
The race was widely and graphically advertised. In all the contests
of equine speed, it would have no prototype in the past and no rival
in the future. All upper East Tennessee was stirred into a ferment of
excitement, which grew more intense every day, from the time of the
announcement until the event took place. The coming horse-race became
the absorbing, exclusive topic of conversation at the log-rollings,
house-raisings, quiltings, distilleries, stores, school-houses,
firesides, inns and before and after “meetin’.” Children caught the
infection from the adults, and the dogs, if they have the intelligence
with which they are credited, doubtless cast knowing winks at each
other when their respective owners discussed the universal theme and
speculated upon the outcome of the to-be-incomparable event.
The place selected for the race was in Greasy Cove, on the farm now
owned by the Loves. Tall mountains looked down on lower heights, and
these in turn on the spot to be made historic--a poem of nature, a
dream of beauty in a setting of scenic grandeur, embroidered with the
silver fretwork of the Nolichucky’s restless billows.
The track was a half-circle, half a mile long.
The advertised day, in the summer or early fall of 1788, came at last,
and with it the popular excitement pitched to the highest tension. And
such a heterogeneous mass as swarmed into that sequestered valley--the
old, the young, farmers, workers in wood and iron, lawyers, doctors,
saints, sinners, and even preachers; on foot and horseback, singly,
in groups and in vast cavalcades, from Washington, Greene, Hawkins,
Sullivan, and from the Wolf Hills of Virginia. Civilization had not
yet reached a sufficient development to produce a “moonshiner,” but
“the rosy” flowed as copiously as if some magician had changed the
neighboring streamlets into the crystal elixir, and the number of
fisticuffs was in proportion to its consumption. As was the custom of
the day, the fellows “spilin’ for a fight” stripped to the waist line
and fought in a ring, and when one cried, “Take him off!” the mill
ended, the bitten, gouged and bleeding combatants “made up,” washed,
dressed, and sealed the pact of peace with a drink of whiskey from the
same gourd. The men who met at Sycamore shoals, followed “the sword
of the Lord and of Gideon” across the Alleghanies under Sevier and
Shelby, drove the Hessian hordes from King’s Mountain and closed the
final chapter of the Revolution with one of its grandest triumphs, were
there. The pioneer who built his fort-cabin in the wilderness and shot
the prowling savage through a chink in the wall, was there, with his
faithful spouse and the rest of the family. The lovesick swain in his
flax linen, with his bonnie lass in a gown of snowy cotton, who caused
the mountain roses to pale with envy as she glided like a sylph among
them, was there also. But the horse-race overshadowed everything else
in interest and importance.
Jackson had been training his horse for months in advance in “Kit”
Taylor’s neighborhood, and the racer knew his master’s imperious will
perfectly. He “smelt the battle afar off,” and perhaps at the same time
“danger in the tainted air”; but when the test came, the determination
to be first under the string thrilled every fiber and sinew in his
lithe and wiry body.
The betting was fast and furious, and the reckless readiness of the
gamblers, following the example of the contestants, to risk all on
their favorite steed, would have taken away the breath of even the
“plunger” of today. Guns, furs, iron, clothing, cattle, horses,
negroes, crops, lands and all the money procurable were staked on the
result. No “boom” period in that section saw so much property change
hands in so short a time.
A week or ten days before the race, Jackson was overtaken by a serious
disappointment. His jockey, a negro boy belonging to Taylor, was taken
down with a violent fever. Jackson announced his determination to ride
the race himself, and Love readily agreed to the proposition. When this
arrangement became known, the throng became delirious with enthusiasm
and delight. The judges, who had been selected after a good deal of
finesse and some wrangling, were stationed half and half at each end of
the semicircular track. Jackson appeared on his restless and impatient
flyer, with a haughty air of confidence and self-possession, the
rival steed prancing at his side, under the control of a born jockey,
who well knew the responsibility resting upon him and how to act his
part on the momentous occasion. They were started with a shout that
shook the azure vault above and reverberated in answering echoes from
the surrounding mountains. The horses were marvels of symmetry and
beauty, and in fine condition for speed and endurance. At the word
“Go!” they shot out on the smooth track as if they had been hurled
from two monster mortars. On they sped, neck and neck. The jockey was
the hazy outline of a boy printed on the air: Jackson rode as if he
were part of his spectral horse. The yells of the onlookers packed
around the crescent course would have drowned the blending screams of
a hundred steam-whistles. All at once, the Love horse spurted ahead.
The partisans of Jackson got their breath in gasps. The victor whizzed
under the string like an arrow, leaving Old Hickory to make the goal at
his leisure. If Jackson’s horse was a wind-splitter that left a blue
line behind him, Love’s was the same as a belated streak of lightning
chasing a hurricane that had outrun it. Just for a moment there was
the deep, ominous hush that precedes the crash of the tempest; then
a pandemonium of noise and tumult that might have been heard in the
two neighboring states broke loose. It awoke the black bear from his
siesta, and the frightened red deer “sprang from his heathery couch
in haste” and sought the distant heights. The loud, long and deep
profanity would have discounted the “army in Flanders.” Jackson was the
star actor in this riot of passion and frenzy. His brow was corrugated
with wrath. His tall, sinewy form shook like an aspen leaf. His face
was the livid color of the storm-cloud when it is hurling its bolts
of thunder. His Irish blood was up to the boiling-point, and his eyes
flashed with the fire of war. He was an overflowing Vesuvius of rage,
pouring the hot lava of denunciation on the Love family in general
and his victorious rival in particular. Col. Love stood before this
storm unblanched and unappalled--for he too had plenty of “sand,” and
as lightly esteemed the value of life--and answered burning invective
with invective hissing with the same degree of heat and exasperation.
Jackson denounced the Loves as a “band of land pirates,” because they
held the ownership of nearly all the choice lands in that section. Love
retorted by calling Jackson “a damned long, gangling, sorrel-topped
soap-stick.” The exasperating offensiveness of this retort may be
better understood when it is explained that in those days women
“conjured” their soap by stirring it with a long sassafras stick.
The dangerous character of both men was well known, and it was ended by
the interference of mutual friends, who led the enraged rivals from the
grounds in different directions.
It is probable that this crushing defeat, with its intense
mortification and odious memories, gave Jackson a profound distaste for
the turf and other time-wasting sports of pioneer life. At all events,
he turned his attention to the sober and “weightier matters” of life,
and eagerly embraced the “tide in the affairs of men” which led to fame
and fortune, and enabled him, on the field of battle, in the forum of
law, in the council hall and at the head of a great nation, to make for
himself
“One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die.”
The incidents and results of this celebrated horse-race did not in
the least discredit Jackson in the estimation of the people where
it occurred, as was shown long afterward. While it was difficult to
exaggerate the great victory gained over the British at New Orleans by
Gen. Jackson, still it was somewhat exaggerated by the time the news
of it reached Jonesboro. Some few days after the first account of the
battle had reached the town--in a letter from a Knoxville gentleman
to a friend in Jonesboro--some court day or other public occasion had
caused quite a crowd to collect in town, and the gentleman who had
received the letter was requested to make a public announcement of its
contents to the anxious and excited populace. This he did in front of
the court-house. The excitement was at blood heat, but perfect silence
and order prevailed while the gentleman was making his speech--for such
it was, as he did not actually read the letter. The substance of the
speech was that Gen. Jackson had killed the whole of the British army
on the battle-field, except a few who were driven into the Mississippi
river and drowned; that he had captured all of their arms and ships,
and had taken his own army on board the vessels, and was then on the
high seas on his way to take possession of England. At this point,
which was the conclusion of the speech, an old man of sixty, standing
near the speaker, threw his hat into the air, and jumping excitedly
up and down, shouted: “Whoop-pee! hurrah for Andy Jackson, hell and
thunder! I knowed, the day I seed him ride that hoss-race in Greasy
Cove, that he could whup anybody!” The scene that followed was without
a precedent in the history of the town, not even the return of Sevier
with his conquering heroes from King’s Mountain having caused more
rejoicing and celebrating. From and after that time, the exclamation
of Gen. Jackson’s enthusiastic admirer became a saying in the country
round about; and when news of an earthquake, the burning of a town or
city, the sinking of a ship at sea with all on board, would be told to
some not over-reverent citizen, he would exclaim, “Andy Jackson, hell
and thunder!” as the only words adequate to express his feelings on the
reception of news of such a catastrophe.
The deep-rooted, heartfelt, undying hatred of the British which these
people nursed, kept alive and handed down, may be illustrated by
the recital of a few facts which came within my own knowledge and
observation. During the recent war between the states, there was
much said and written, at one period, about England recognizing the
independence of the Southern Confederacy, and entering into diplomatic
or friendly relations with the Confederate government. While this
subject was under discussion, I heard old men, who were intense in
their loyalty to the Southern cause, and who had sent their sons all
into the Confederate army, declare openly and vehemently that, if
the Southern Confederacy “made friends with the British,” they would
renounce their allegiance to it and bring their boys home; that they
had rather be subjugated by the Yankees than to conquer with the aid of
“the British”!
So late as 1882-3, Sir Thomas Watson, an Englishman, spent several
months in Jonesboro, examining and negotiating for a valuable piece
of iron property in Washington county. He would come to my office
occasionally, and would sit and talk with me. On one of these
occasions, an old friend of mine, some seventy years of age, came in,
and I introduced him to Sir Thomas, telling him that the latter was
from England. My old friend sat down, but did not address a word
to the gentleman to whom I had introduced him during the half or
three-quarters of an hour which ensued; but I noticed him more than
once looking at the Englishman very much as if he was “drawing a bead”
on him along the barrel of a rifle. When Watson left the office, the
old gentleman’s eyes followed him. As the door closed after him, my old
friend drew a breath of relief, and asked, “What’s _he_ doing here?”
When I told him, he appeared incredulous. “I don’t believe he’s after
any good,” he said; “better have nothing to do with a Britisher. This
one may be a spy. If Andy Jackson was alive, and was to hear of that
man being here, I’ll bet he would drive him out of this country!”
The race-horse in Greasy Cove, in the shadow of the mountain over
which Jackson had crossed a few months before, and in the midst of the
early settlements of Tennessee, was not the last time he appeared on
horseback in the presence of his admiring and applauding countrymen.
In 1833 President Andrew Jackson rode on horseback along Broadway in
the city of New York, in a “roaring wave” of shouts that came from a
“sea of upturned faces” which lined the whole way of his triumphal ride
through the great thoroughfare of the great city, where men, women
and children had gathered to get even a passing glimpse of the hero
of the hour. He was then sixty-six years old, but his horsemanship,
acquired in part at the celebrated race in Greasy Cove, prevented on
this occasion a serious accident to the President of the United States.
It was said by those who witnessed the manner in which he sat upon and
controlled the spirited and frightened charger which he rode, that the
horse would have dashed any other man headlong from the saddle; but
Jackson was as cool and calm as he was skillful, and soon brought the
animal under perfect control--as he soon afterwards did Nicholas Biddle
and the United States Bank.