severe. John Woods, a boy not eighteen, the support of aged parents, was
shot for refusing to obey a superior officer. That he could have been
spared seems probable, but Jackson taught hard lessons to his
undisciplined troops, and sometimes in a harsh manner.
In seven months the Creeks had been utterly routed; half their warriors
were dead, and the rest were broken in spirit. Weathersford, their most
heroic chief, the leader at the Fort Mims massacre, sought General
Jackson at his camp.
"How dare you," said Jackson, "ride up to my tent, after having murdered
the women and children at Fort Mims?"
"General Jackson, I am not afraid of you," was the reply. "I fear no
man, for I am a Creek warrior. I have nothing to request in behalf of
myself. You can kill me, if you desire. But I come to beg you to send
for the women and children of the war party, who are now starving in the
woods. Their fields and cribs have been destroyed by your people, who
have driven them to the woods without an ear of corn. I hope that you
will send out parties, who will conduct them safely here, in order that
they may be fed. I exerted myself in vain to prevent the massacre of the
women and children at Fort Mims. I am now done fighting. The Red Sticks
are nearly all killed. If I could fight you any longer, I would most
heartily do so. Send for the women and children. They never did you any
harm. But kill me, if the white people want it done."
"Kill him! kill him!" shouted several voices.
"Silence!" exclaimed Jackson. "Any man who would kill as brave a man as
this would rob the dead!"
Weathersford's request was granted, and the women and children of the
war party were provided for. The chief died many years afterward, a
planter in Alabama, respected by the Americans for his bravery and his
honor.
The Creek war over, Jackson went back to Tennessee, a noted, successful
soldier. He had not only conquered the Creeks, but he had won for
himself the position of major-general in the United States army, having
in charge the department of the South. He was now forty-seven, and had
indeed reached a high position. Mississippi voted him a sword, and other
States sent testimonials of appreciation. All this time he was a
constant sufferer in body, and only kept himself from his bed by his
indomitable will. The Hermitage could not long keep the ardent, tireless
general from the front. He soon established his headquarters at Mobile,
and prepared to defend a thousand miles of coast from the British. He
had but a small army at his command, and was far from Washington, with
scarcely any means of communication. Indeed, the English had captured
that city already, and burned most of its public buildings.
The English had attacked Mobile Point, been defeated, and retired to
Pensacola, Florida. Spain owned Florida, and was supposed to be neutral,
but she was in reality friendly and helpful to England, and allowed her
to use the State as a base of operations. Jackson wrote to Washington
asking leave to attack Pensacola. The answer did not come back till the
war of 1812 was over and Jackson had won renown for himself and his
country. He did not wait for an answer, however, but stormed Pensacola,
captured it, and then hastened to New Orleans, where he expected the
next attack would be made. He used to say to young men, "Always take all
the time to reflect that circumstances will permit; but when the time
for action has come, stop thinking." And at Pensacola he stopped
thinking, and acted. Nothing was ready for his coming, but all eyes
turned to the conquerer of the Creeks as the savior of New Orleans.
Women gathered around him and looked trustingly toward the erect,
self-centred, bronzed soldier. Men flocked willingly to his service,
glad to do his bidding. He summoned the engineers of the city and
ordered every bayou to be obstructed by earth and sunken logs. The city
was put under martial law. No person was permitted to leave the place
without a written permit signed by the general or one of his staff. The
street lamps were extinguished at nine o'clock, after which hour any
person without the necessary permit or not having the countersign was
apprehended as a spy and held for examination. All able-bodied men,
black and white, were compelled to serve as soldiers or sailors.
He had with him about two thousand troops, and four thousand more within
ten or fifteen days' march. Against these, for the most part
undisciplined troops, a British force of twenty thousand men was coming,
with a fleet of fifty ships, carrying a thousand guns. Much of this
army had served under the great Wellington in France; its present
leader, General Packenham, was Wellington's brother-in-law. He was only
thirty-eight, brave, and the idol of his men. Some of the ships had been
with Nelson in the battle of the Nile. The flower of England's army and
navy had been sent to conquer the independent and self-reliant
Americans.
So certain were the British of conquest that several families were with
the fleet, husbands and brothers having been appointed already to civil
offices. Another person was also confident of victory--the man who had
seen but fourteen months of service, but who from boyhood had never
known what it was to be defeated. He inspired others with the same
confidence. Says Latour, in his history of the war in West Florida and
Louisiana, "The energy manifested by General Jackson spread, as it were,
by contagion, and communicated itself to the whole army. There was
nothing which those who composed it did not feel themselves capable of
performing, if he ordered it to be done. It was enough that he expressed
a wish or threw out the slightest intimation, and immediately a crowd of
volunteers offered themselves to carry his views into execution."
The English fleet entered Lake Borgne, sixty miles north-east from New
Orleans, on December 10, 1814. Twelve days later they had reached the
Mississippi River, nine miles below the city. The next day, when
Jackson was informed of their approach, he said, bringing his clenched
fist down upon the table, "By the Eternal, they shall not sleep on our
soil!"
At once, with, as Parton says, that "calm impetuosity and that composed
intensity which belonged to him," he sent word to the various regiments
to meet him at three o'clock at a specified place. And then he lay down
and slept for a short time, his only rest during the next three days and
three nights. Few men except General Jackson, with his iron will, could
have slept at such a time. A messenger came, sent by some ladies, asking
what they should do if the city were attacked.
"Say to them not to be uneasy. No British soldier shall enter the city
as an enemy, unless over my dead body," and he kept his word.
At three o'clock the men were hastening on to meet the "red-coats."
Twilight came early, and the moon rose dimly over the battle-field. The
signal of attack was to be a shot fired from the ship Carolina. At
half-past seven, the first gun was heard, then seven others, and the
word was given--FORWARD.
And forward they went, with quick steps and eager hearts. A tremendous
fire opened upon our artillery-men. The horses attached to the cannon
became unmanageable, and one of the pieces was turned over into the
ditch. Jackson dashed into the midst of the fray, exclaiming, "Save the
guns, my boys, at every sacrifice," and the guns were saved. Men fought
hand to hand in the smoke and the darkness; the British using their
bayonets, and the Americans their long hunting-knives. Prisoners were
taken and retaken. Till ten o'clock the battle raged; when our men fell
back upon the Roderiguez canal, to wait till the morning sun should show
where to begin the deadly work. When the morning came, the battle-field
presented a ghastly appearance. Says a British officer concerning the
American dead, "Their hair, eyebrows, and lashes were thickly covered
with hoar-frost, or rime, their bloodless cheeks vying with its
whiteness. Few were dressed in military uniforms, and most of them bore
the appearance of farmers or husbandmen. Peace to their ashes! they had
nobly died in defending their country."
The Roderiguez canal was now strongly fortified. Spades, crowbars, and
wheelbarrows had been sent from the city. The canal was deepened and the
earth thrown up on the side. Fences were torn away, and rails driven
down to keep the sand from falling back into the canal. The line of
defence, a mile long, was four or five feet high in some places. Cotton
bales from a neighboring ship were used.
"Here," said Jackson, "we will plant our stakes, and not abandon them
until we drive these 'red-coat' rascals into the river or the swamp."
While these busy preparations were going on, food was brought to General
Jackson, which he ate in the saddle. Christmas day came. The English
Admiral Cochrane had said, "I shall eat my Christmas dinner in New
Orleans." General Jackson heard of it, and remarked, "Perhaps so; but I
shall have the honor of presiding at that dinner."
The Americans were ready, but the British did not make the expected
attack. Every man was at his post. When an officer, the son of one of
Jackson's best friends, said to him, "May I go to town to-day?" the
reply was, "Of course, Captain Livingston, you _may_ go; but _ought_ you
to go?" The young man blushed, bowed, and returned to duty.
Meantime, the British were not idle. They had determined to silence the
guns of the American ships, and, with great toil, had brought up into
the swampy ground nine field-pieces, two howitzers, one mortar, a
furnace for heating balls, and the necessary ammunition. At dawn on the
morning of December 27 the firing began. The Carolina, after a terrific
bombardment, blew up. The Louisiana fought her way out into a place of
safety.
The days went by slowly under the dreadful suspense. On New Year's day,
General Packenham cannonaded the Americans and was driven back. On
January 8, the final battle began. Early in the morning, the British
moved against the Americans. Jackson walked along the lines, cheering
the men, "Stand to your guns. Don't waste your ammunition. See that
every shot tells. Give it to them, boys! Let us finish the business
to-day."
And every shot did tell. The sharpshooters aimed at the officers, and
the batteries mowed down the British regulars. Seeing them falter,
Packenham rushed among the men, shouting, "For shame! recollect that
you are British soldiers!" Taking off his hat, he spurred his horse to
the head of the wavering column. A ball splintered his right arm. Then
the Highlanders came to the support of their comrades.
"Hurrah! brave Highlanders!" he said, as a mass of grape-shot tore open
his thigh and killed his horse. Another shot struck him, and he was
borne under a live-oak to die. The great tree is still standing.
At nine o'clock in the morning the battle was virtually over. The
English lost seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five
hundred taken prisoners; while the Americans lost but eight killed and
thirteen wounded. "The field was so thickly strewn with the dead that,
from the American ditch, you could have walked a quarter of a mile to
the front on the bodies of the killed and disabled.... The course of the
column could be distinctly traced in the broad red line of the victims
of the terrible batteries and unerring guns of the Americans. They fell
in their tracks; in some places, whole platoons lay together, as if
killed by the same discharge."
The news of this great victory at New Orleans astonished the North, and
made Jackson the hero of his time. The whole country was proud of a man
who could win such a battle, losing the lives of so few of his men.
Nearly every State passed resolutions in his praise. The Senate and
House of Representatives ordered a gold medal to be struck in his
honor. Philadelphia enjoyed a general illumination; one of the
transparencies representing the general on horseback in pursuit of the
enemy, with the words, "This day shall ne'er go by, from this day to the
ending of the world, but He in it shall be remembered." Henry Clay said,
"Now I can go to England without mortification."
When Jackson and his army returned to New Orleans, men, women, and
children came out to meet them. Young ladies strewed flowers along the
way; children crowned the general with laurel, and an impressive service
was held in his honor in the Cathedral. He replied, "For myself, to have
been instrumental in the deliverance of such a country is the greatest
blessing that Heaven could confer. That it has been effected with so
little loss--that so few tears should cloud the smiles of our triumph,
and not a cypress leaf be interwoven in the wreath which you present, is
a source of the most exquisite enjoyment."
Mrs. Jackson and little Andrew, now seven years old, came down from the
Hermitage, and his cup of joy was indeed full. To have Rachel's
commendation was more than to have that of all of the world besides. The
ladies of New Orleans gave to her a valuable set of topaz jewelry, and
to the general a diamond pin. A month later, they were at home once
more. He had shown the good judgment, the calm bravery, the
comprehensive outlook, the quick decision, the tender compassion of the
great soldier. Perhaps the busy public life was over--who could tell?
Four months later, General Jackson went to Washington, at the request of
the Secretary of War, to arrange about the stations of the army in the
South. The journey thither was one constant ovation. At a great banquet
tendered him at Lynchburg, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, then seventy-two,
gave this toast: "Honor and gratitude to those who have filled the
measure of their country's honor." At Washington also he received
distinguished attention.
In 1817, the Seminole Indians of Georgia and Alabama had become hostile.
General Jackson was the man to conquer them. He immediately marched into
their country with eighteen hundred whites and fifteen hundred friendly
Indians, and in five months subjugated them.
Florida was purchased in 1819, and two years later Jackson was appointed
its governor, with a salary of five thousand dollars. Mrs. Jackson
joined him there, but neither was happy, and he soon resigned, and
returned with her to the Hermitage. He had built for her a new house, a
two-story brick, surrounded by a double piazza. He was at this time
frail in health, and did not expect ever to live in the home, but wished
it to be made beautiful for her. He hoped now to live a quiet life,
enjoying his garden and his farm; but the nation had other plans for
him.
In 1823, Jackson was elected to the United States Senate, twenty-six
years after his first appearance in that body. He was now prominently
mentioned as a candidate for the Presidency. Strange contrast indeed to
the days when, bare-footed and orphaned, he struggled for the rudiments
of an education.
While he had many ardent friends, he had strong opponents. Daniel
Webster said, "If General Jackson is elected, the government of our
country will be overthrown; the judiciary will be destroyed;" yet he
added, "His manners are more presidential than those of any of the
candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him
decidedly." Jefferson said, "I feel very much alarmed at the prospect of
seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know
of for the place. He has had very little respect for laws or
constitution, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are
terrible.... He has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a
dangerous man." But the people knew he had conquered the Indians and the
British, and they believed in him.
The candidates for the Presidency in 1824 were Jackson, John Quincy
Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. While Jackson received the
largest popular vote, the House of Representatives, balloting by States,
elected John Quincy Adams. It was believed that Clay used his influence
for Adams against Jackson, and this caused the election of Adams, a
scholarly man, the son of John Adams, and long our representative
abroad.
Four years later, in 1828, the people made their voices heard at the
ballot-box, and Jackson was elected by a large majority. The contest had
been exceedingly personal and annoying. The old stories about his
marriage were again dragged through the press. Mrs. Jackson, a victim of
heart-disease, was unduly troubled, and became broken in health. When he
was elected, she said, "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad; for my
own part, I never wished it."
Jackson had built for her a small brick church in the Hermitage grounds,
and here, where the neighbors and servants gathered, she found her
deepest happiness, and sighed for no greater sphere of usefulness. When
she urged the general to join her church, he said, "My dear, if I were
to do that now, it would be said, all over the country, that I had done
it for the sake of political effect. My enemies would all say so. I
cannot do it _now_, but I promise you that, when once more I am clear of
politics, I will join the church."
The people of Nashville were of course proud that one from their city
had been chosen to so high a position, and tendered him a banquet on
December 23, the anniversary of the first battle at New Orleans. A few
days before this, Mrs. Jackson was taken ill, but she urged her husband
to make himself ready for the banquet. While he had watched by her
bedside constantly, on the evening of December 22, she was so much
better that he consented to lie down on a sofa in an adjoining room. He
had not been there five minutes before a cry was heard from Mrs.
Jackson. He hastened to her, but she never breathed again.
He could not believe that she was dead. When they brought a table to lay
her body upon it, he said tenderly, in a choking voice, "Spread four
blankets upon it. If she does come to, she will lie so hard upon the
table."
All night long he sat beside the form of his beloved Rachel, often
feeling of her heart and pulse. In the morning he was wholly
inconsolable, and, when he found that she was really dead, the body
could scarcely be forced from his arms.
At the funeral, the road to the Hermitage was almost impassable. The
press said of her, "Her pure and gentle heart, in which a selfish,
guileful, or malicious thought, never found entrance, was the throne of
benevolence.... To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to supply the
indigent, to raise the humble, to notice the friendless, and to comfort
the unfortunate, were her favorite occupations.... Thus she lived, and
when death approached, her patience and resignation were equal to her
goodness; not an impatient gesture, not a vexatious look, not a fretful
accent escaped her: but her last breath was charged with an expression
of tenderness for the man whom she loved more than her life, and honored
next to her God." Only such a nature could have held the undivided love
of an impetuous, imperious man. Jackson, like so many other unchristian
men, had the wisdom to desire and to choose for himself a Christian
wife.
He prepared a tomb for her like an open summer-house, and buried her
under the white dome supported by marble pillars. On the tablet above
her are the words, "Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of
President Jackson.... Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper
amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her
fellow-creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most
liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to
the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an
ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she
thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle
and so virtuous, slander might wound, but could not dishonor. Even
Death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but
transport her to the bosom of her God."
Such a woman need have no fear that she will fade out of a human heart.
While Jackson lived, he wore her miniature about his neck, and every
night laid it open beside her prayer-book at his bedside. Her face was
the last thing upon which his eyes rested before he slept, through those
eight years at the White House, and the first thing upon which his eyes
opened in the morning. Possibly it is not given to all women to win and
hold so complete and beautiful an affection; perchance the fault is
sometimes theirs.
Andrew Jackson went to Washington, having grown "twenty years older in a
night," his friends said. His nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, and his
lovely wife accompanied him. Earl, the artist, who had painted _her_
picture ("her" always meant Rachel with General Jackson), for this
reason found a home also at the White House.
The inauguration seemed to have drawn the whole country together.
Webster said, "I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons have come
five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think
that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." After the
ceremony, crowds completely filled the White House.
During the first year of the Presidency, the unfortunate maxim which had
found favor in New York politics, "To the victors belong the spoils,"
began to be carried out in the removal, it is believed, of nearly two
thousand persons from office, and substituting those of different
political opinions. The removals raised a storm of indignation from the
opposite party, which did not in the least disturb General Jackson.
In his first message to Congress, after maintaining that a long tenure
of office is corrupting, urging that the surplus revenue be apportioned
among the several States for works of public utility, he took strong
ground against rechartering the United States Bank. This caused much
alarm, for the influence of the bank was very great. Its capital was
thirty-five million dollars. The parent bank was at Philadelphia, with
twenty-five branches in the large cities and towns. Since Alexander
Hamilton's time, a government bank had been a matter of contention. When
the second was started in 1816, after the war of 1812, business seemed
to revive, but many persons believed, with Henry Clay, that such a bank
was unconstitutional, and a vast political power that might be, and was,
corruptly used. Complaints were constantly heard that officials were
favored.
When the bill to recharter the bank passed Congress, Jackson promptly
vetoed the bill. He said, "We can, at least, take a stand against all
new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any
prostitution of our government to the advancement of the few at the
expense of the many." A few years later he determined to put an end to
the bank by removing all the surplus funds, amounting to ten millions,
and placing them in certain State banks. When Mr. Duane, the Secretary
of the Treasury, would not remove the deposits, General Jackson
immediately removed him, putting Roger B. Taney in his place. Congress
passed a vote of censure on the President, but it was afterward expunged
from the records. Speculation resulted from the distribution of the
money; the panic of 1836-37 followed, which the Whigs said was caused by
the destruction of the bank, and the Democrats by the bank itself.
The United States Bank was not the only disturbing question in these
times. The tariff, which was advantageous to the manufacturers of the
North, was considered disadvantageous to the agricultural interests of
the South. Bitter feeling was engendered by the discussion, till South
Carolina, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, declared that the
acts of Congress on the tariff were null and void; therefore,
nullification or disunion became the absorbing topic. Then came the
great dispute between Robert Y. Hayne and Daniel Webster.