"Put down in your book," said one of Andrew Jackson's old neighbors to
James Parton when that eminent biographer was in Tennessee gathering
material for his famous life of Jackson, "that the General was the
prince of hospitality; not only because he entertained a great many
people but because the poor, belated peddler was as welcome at the
Hermitage as the President of the United States and made so much at his
ease that he felt as though he had got home."
And Parton put it down in his book, and so preserved to posterity that
sincere and revealing tribute, eloquent in its simplicity, from a
neighboring farmer. There spoke a man who knew Andrew Jackson not merely
as the conqueror of the hostile Indians, the Hero of New Orleans or the
President of the United States, but as the country gentleman who kept
open house, who was known and admired by his fellow farmers and who was
celebrated for his hospitality in a country where hospitality was a
common virtue.
If an old house has emotions of its own, as some of the poets would have
us believe, it is easy to think of the Hermitage blushing with pride at
that tribute. There are many stately mansions, there are numerous great
homes of famous men; but of how many of these may it be truthfully said
that within its walls the poorest peddler with his pack found just as
warm a welcome as the most distinguished visitor?
Fortunately for succeeding generations the Hermitage, that paragon of
hospitality, is preserved just as it was in those early days when Old
Hickory himself was there to greet the way-worn traveler--peddler or
President--and make him feel at home. Serene and stately in its grove of
trees, flanked by its formal garden and surrounded by its broad acres,
it stands there a few miles out from Nashville in all its classic and
simple beauty. Here is the home he built for himself and his beloved
wife; the same old house to which he returned in 1837 after eight
turbulent years in the White House; the place where he planted his
cotton and raced his horses, where he spent his last years, where he
died and where he is buried.
The visitor's first glimpse of the house is down through the same old
winding driveway, shaded with the native cedar trees planted under
Jackson's personal direction; and its broad façade is seen through the
trees, its graceful Corinthian columns gleaming in the sunlight, just as
it looked to the old General when he drove up in his lumbering carriage
drawn by his famous team of greys. Off to the right is seen the formal
flower garden he had laid out for Mrs. Jackson in 1819; the garden where
he laid her to rest when she died in 1828, and along whose paths he
found pleasure and repose during the last year of his life. Inside the
house are found things just as he left them when he died--the
hand-painted wall paper, the massive mahogany furniture, the gleaming
silver, the books in their shelves in the library.
* * * *
As a persisting result of the astonishingly violent politics of his day,
the image of Andrew Jackson in the public mind today is often blurred
and distorted. In his campaign for the Presidency he was the victim of
such a torrent of cruel, personal vilification as never before nor since
has blackened the annals of American politics. In newspapers,
broadsides, and public addresses he was persistently and vigorously
denounced as an uncouth, ignorant backwoods ruffian, a tipsy tavern
brawler, a military despot, an adulterer and an assassin. The voters of
these United States were urged to believe that, despite his spectacular
achievements as a militia general and Indian fighter, he was morally,
mentally and temperamentally unfit to sit in the President's chair.
This barrage of malignant partisan propaganda did not succeed in barring
Jackson's way to the White House; but it did have the effect of
indelibly impressing on the minds of many thousands of American citizens
of those days the honest conviction that Andrew Jackson was what we
today tersely style a "roughneck;" and that impression has persisted to
a surprising extent through succeeding generations even down to the
present time.
[Illustration: The log house on the right is one of the group
constituting the original Hermitage residence from 1804 until the
erection of the present building in 1819. The house on the left is
the remains of the two-storied house which was the center of the
original group.]
[Illustration: The first Hermitage on the present site, as it
appeared from the time it was built in 1819 until the wings were
added in 1831.]
But the Hermitage remains as an enduring and impressive challenge to
that erroneous characterization of this many-sided and little understood
statesman. This, it is plain to see, was the home of no mere
backwoodsman or ruffian. A mansion when it was built more than a hundred
years ago, it was obviously the seat of a man of genteel
characteristics, of refined, though simple taste.
It is no uncommon thing today for visitors to the Hermitage to express
surprise that such a house should have been built by Andrew Jackson; but
such surprise grows out of a misconception of the man's true nature and
characteristics.
The usually accepted picture of Jackson in the public mind is largely
the result of our American admiration of the primitive, a love for the
so-called manly and rugged qualities which sometimes leads us into
overdoing our humanizing of some of our early heroes. As a matter of
fact, Jackson, though not a college graduate, was by no means a typical
example of the popular conception of an illiterate frontiersman. He had
had formal schooling, had studied law and had been admitted to the North
Carolina bar when at the age of twenty-one years he crossed the
mountains and came to the Cumberland settlements in what is now
Tennessee. His standard of education was notably higher than the average
of that day and locality. He came to the Cumberland country as the
state's attorney for the newly created Mero District, and we may be sure
that an uneducated, uncouth man would never have been selected by the
governor of North Carolina for this important post.
Furthermore, although he was born in comparative poverty--a posthumous
child--his widowed mother, soon to die of yellow fever while nursing
wounded Revolutionary soldiers, had relatives with whom to leave him.
These relatives were people of substance, ranking sufficiently high to
entertain George Washington on his visit to South Carolina in 1791, and
they gave the orphan Andrew the benefit of a boyhood spent amid the
surroundings of a prosperous and cultured Southern family.
So, while the youthful Andrew Jackson engaged in cock-fighting,
horse-racing and dueling, these were by no means unusual pastimes for
the high-spirited youths of that time. He had the innate qualities of a
gentleman; and those qualities find their truest manifestation in the
home he built for the declining years of his wife and himself.
* * * *
The Hermitage, though it has gained world-wide fame as Andrew Jackson's
home, was not his dwelling place when he first settled in the Nashville
community in 1788. At that time the danger of attacks by Indians had not
yet entirely disappeared, and residents of the outlying districts still
frequently lived in "stations"--groups of houses gathered about a
central habitation, thus offering the opportunity for protection against
attack. At such a station near Nashville lived the widow of John
Donelson, who had been one of the founders of the original Nashborough,
and it was in one of the cabins adjacent to her home that Andrew Jackson
lived when he settled in the new country. With him lived his friend,
John Overton, later his law partner and his lifelong confidant and
advisor. The two young lawyers hung out their shingle together, with
their office in the cabin where they lived, taking their meals with the
widow Donelson.
Living with Mrs. Donelson at this time was her daughter Rachel, the
estranged bride of a high-spirited and jealous Kentuckian named Lewis
Robards. The young couple had gone to Kentucky to live when they
married, but the jealous husband made life with him intolerable and
Rachel soon returned to her mother's house, where Jackson found her when
he went there to live. Largely through the pacific efforts of John
Overton, an old friend of the Robards family, and at the instigation of
Lewis Robards's mother whose sympathies were with Rachel in the affair,
a reconciliation was patched up and Captain Robards came to the widow
Donelson's home late in 1788 to live again with his wife. Soon, however,
Robards created a new crisis by charging Jackson with undue attentions
to his wife. The fiery young lawyer challenged Robards to a duel, but
the challenge was declined and in the spring of 1790 Robards returned to
Kentucky with the avowed intention of getting a divorce. In the fall of
that year the news drifted down to Nashville that the divorce had been
granted, and about a year later, in the latter part of 1791, Jackson
married Rachel.
The wedding ceremony took place in Natchez, Mississippi, whither she had
fled to escape from her husband's threats. "I'm going to haunt you!"
Robards told her when he left her; and she, not knowing exactly what
that threat implied but well knowing her moody husband's erratic
disposition, feared bodily harm and thought it safest to get as far away
from him as possible. The home of relatives in Natchez provided a
pleasing asylum in this emergency; and so it was there that the marriage
ceremony was performed.
But, alas, it developed that the news of the divorce was premature--the
marriage with Jackson was consummated before the attenuated Kentucky
divorce proceedings had been actually completed. Legally, therefore,
Mrs. Robards-Jackson was technically guilty of bigamy; but the incensed
Robards used a harsher term in discussing the young Tennessee lawyer's
relations with his erstwhile wife. Jackson patched the thing up as best
he could by having another wedding ceremony promptly performed in
January, 1794, after the Kentucky divorce was actually granted; but the
irregularities attending his marriage rose to plague him again and again
throughout his life, with his political enemies gleefully making capital
of the unfortunate episode to the fullest possible extent.
Jackson at the time of his marriage, though still a young man, was in
prosperous circumstances. His success as a lawyer in the new community
had been almost instantaneous, due largely to an unusual state of
affairs existing in the Cumberland settlements when he arrived there.
Nashville was still a young and undeveloped frontier town and up until
the time of Jackson's arrival boasted only one lawyer. This
representative of the legal fraternity had been retained as counsel for
a sort of combination of habitual debtors; and the result was that the
merchants, as well as other creditors, found it well-nigh impossible to
collect what was owing to them. When Jackson appeared on the scene and
let it be known that he was a lawyer looking for clients, he was
immediately offered these claims; and it was characteristic of him that
he accepted with avidity a difficult class of litigation from which many
other young lawyers might have shrunk. But Jackson's physical and moral
courage made him enjoy the kind of a fight against odds that most people
would avoid; and he prosecuted his clients' claims with such boldness
and vim that he soon drove an irresistible wedge into the debt-paying
strike. Naturally this immediately popularized him with the responsible
elements in Nashville, and his law practice quickly flourished. Within
seven years of his arrival in 1788 he had more cases on the docket in
Davidson County than all the other Nashville lawyers combined. In the
four terms of court in the county in 1794 there were 397 cases; Andrew
Jackson appeared as counsel in 288 of them.
Although he had accepted his official appointment with a mental
reservation and had really come out to Nashville on a sort of
prospecting trip, he soon decided to stay and grow up with the new
settlement. His position as attorney-general or public prosecutor of the
Mero District gave him distinction and naturally strengthened his legal
prestige, and his private law practice had quickly developed to such an
extent that at the time of his marriage he enjoyed a comfortable income.
There is a persistent legend that Jackson quickly accumulated vast
holdings of land by reason of his practice of taking land grants and
acreage tracts in lieu of legal fees, and that when he married he had so
much land he hardly knew the extent of his property. It is true that
after he had been in Nashville several years he did begin to trade and
traffic in land, and gradually blossomed into a land speculator on a
grand scale whose holdings ran into the thousands of acres. Contrary to
tradition, however, at the time of his marriage he did not own an acre
of ground anywhere; and he did not have a home to which to take his new
bride.
The records are rather vague as to the first two or three years of the
married life of Andrew and Rachel; but, from all the available facts, it
appears that they spent at least a part of their honeymoon living at or
near Natchez and then returned to Nashville and probably lived
temporarily with Mrs. Donelson. But in February, 1792, the land transfer
records show that Andrew Jackson bought from John Donelson (Rachel's
brother) a farm of 330 acres located in the foot of Jones Bend of the
Cumberland River, just across the river from the home of old Mrs.
Donelson on the Gallatin Road.
Here on this 330-acre river farm Jackson established his first home of
his own. He called the place Poplar Grove--at least a letter written to
John McKee on May 16, 1794, is so headed. Apparently, however, this name
did not exactly suit him, for a letter to John Coffee written the next
year is dated from Poplar Flat. All trace of his habitation on this farm
has now disappeared, although there is a faint reminiscence of his
tenancy in a "Jackson's well" still to be found in that neighborhood.
It is interesting to note, that this Jones Bend (now called Hadley's
Bend) was the site chosen by the United States government for the
location of its gigantic smokeless powder manufacturing plant in 1917,
and the acreage of Poplar Flat was swallowed up in the consolidation of
the farms that went to make up the great powder plant tract. In honor of
the old hero who once tilled these acres, the operation was officially
known as the Old Hickory Powder Plant; and the little industrial town
that has grown up out of that development is now called Old Hickory.
Jackson's personal affairs flourished while he was living at Poplar
Flat, and the land records of Davidson County in 1793 begin to show the
first evidences of his land trading. As he prospered he, as was natural,
wanted a better and bigger place to live; and so on March 16, 1796, he
bought from one John Shannon a tract of 640 acres further up in the bend
of the river, and here he set up his new home which he called Hunter's
Hill.
There was a strange element of romance connected with this selection of
a place to live--perhaps by design, perhaps through coincidence. It
appears that when young Captain Robards effected his reconciliation with
Rachel in 1788 it was part of the agreement that they would set up a
home in Tennessee. At any rate, Robards entered 640 acres, "on the south
side of Cumberland River, beginning at an ash, thence south 234 poles,
etc." for which he paid the state of North Carolina at the rate of ten
pounds for each hundred acres. After his divorce in 1794 Captain
Robards--a little sadly, no doubt--sold his tract of land to John
Shannon of Logan County, Kentucky, and it was this self-same piece of
ground that Jackson bought from Shannon in 1796 and on which he
established his new home.
It seems unlikely that it was a mere coincidence that led Jackson to
take up his residence on the land originally selected for home-making
purposes by his predecessor in Rachel's affections. Did she herself
guide Captain Robards' selection of the location in the first place, and
did she have some lingering sentimental attachment for it which caused
her to influence Jackson to buy it for her after they were married? Who
knows what was going on in Rachel's head as her brilliant young husband
began to clear the way for their new home on the site where a few years
ago she had expected to live with her first mate?
The Hunter's Hill house no longer exists, having been destroyed by fire
long ago; but, from all accounts, it was a notable home for its day and
time. For one thing, it was of frame construction when most of the
frontier houses were built of logs; and it was looked upon then as one
of the fine houses of the community. It had an elevated location and
commanded an inspiring view of the winding river and the fertile bend.
Few if any young married men in the Cumberland country had a better
estate.
Andrew Jackson, the energetic young lawyer from the civilized side of
the mountains, was now established as a man of affairs in the new
settlements. His legal attainments had attracted such attention outside
of Nashville that in 1790 when the federal government established "The
Territory South of the River Ohio" George Washington had appointed
Jackson district attorney, an office he held until 1796 when he was
elected to serve in the convention which in that year framed the
constitution for the new state of Tennessee.
But Jackson's great energy and great ambition made it impossible for him
to be satisfied with the activities incident to the practice of law,
holding public office and cultivating a farm. And so it was not long
before he established a store at Hunter's Hill, a store at which,
according to tradition, both he and Rachel waited on the trade.
The business of the store was varied and extensive in its nature. Goods
such as the settlers needed were brought on from the East, Philadelphia
principally; and as the selling price in Nashville was about three times
the cost in Philadelphia, there was a good margin of gross profit
although the cost of transportation was high. A typical invoice from
Jackson's Philadelphia connections shows a shipment of dry goods--linen,
calico, nankeen, cambrick, gingham, ribbons, buttons, thread,
etc.--ivory combs, fancy silk handkerchiefs, "Spanish segars," gloves,
hats and kid shoes, as well as queensware, hand saws, screw augers,
scissors, knives, etc. They also sold other such pioneer necessities as
salt, sugar, coffee, grindstones, gunpowder, nails, bar iron and cow
bells; not to mention rum, brandy, claret and whiskey, which latter
beverage retailed at 75c per gallon and which Jackson made in his own
licensed still-house.
Money was a scarce article around the Nashville settlements in those
days and the store did much of its business on the primitive basis of
barter, taking in the customers' cotton, bear skins, oak staves, deer
skins, feathers, beeswax, tallow or any other saleable commodity. There
was a market for all these things in Natchez and New Orleans; and at
intervals, whenever a boatload was accumulated, it was floated down the
river to those towns and there converted into cash.
When Tennessee was made into a state in 1796 Andrew Jackson was selected
to serve as its lone member of the House of Representatives, and he
entered into the deliberations of Congress with such spirit and
distinction that in 1797, at the age of thirty-one, he was elected to
the United States Senate to take the place of William Blount who had
been impeached for alleged treasonable transactions. But the Senate
suited Jackson but little, and early in 1798 he resigned to accept a
seat on the Superior Court of Tennessee. In February, 1802, another
honor was added to his lengthening scroll when he was made major-general
of the state militia, and he held this office concurrently with his
judgeship.
But Jackson suffered the traditional fate of the man who has too many
irons in the fire.
While he was thus engaged in the public service, his personal fortunes
were not prospering; and so in 1804 he resigned his place on the bench
and gave his whole attention to the task of trying to straighten out the
tangle into which his business affairs had drifted, partly because of
the financial panic which swept the country in 1798 and 1799, and partly
as a result of misplaced confidence. The business depression carried
down a supposedly wealthy man in Philadelphia whose notes Jackson had
accepted and endorsed. Before he knew what was happening to him, he
found himself confronted with unexpected obligations; but it was
characteristic of Jackson that he met this heart-breaking situation
unflinchingly and paid every cent as it came due. It was a painful
process, however, for it involved selling off much of his property and
practically making a new start in life.
"Our A. Jackson has made sale of his possessions," the firm of Jackson &
Hutchings on July 31st, 1804, wrote to Boggs & Davidson, their New
Orleans connection. "He is to receive two-thirds of the amount on
Christmas day next. This, we flatter ourselves, will enable us to meet
all our debts next spring."
[Illustration: This entirely imaginary and erroneous picture of the
Hermitage was used extensively and for a long time despite its
inaccuracy. This and similar pictures were based on a view printed
in _The Jackson Wreath_ in 1829 which was admittedly drawn "from a
description furnished by a friend at Washington."]
[Illustration: The Hermitage as it appeared after the wings and
portico were added to the original house in 1831.]
[Illustration: Plat of the 500 acres of the Hermitage plantation as
acquired by the State from Andrew Jackson, Jr.]
[Illustration: An old print (circa 1840) showing the young cedar
trees planted by General Jackson. The artist has distorted the true
lines of the guitar-shaped driveway. The house in the distance, on
the right, is Tulip Grove, home of Andrew Jackson Donelson.]
So the creditors of Jackson & Hutchings and of "our A. Jackson" were
satisfied; but so the Hunter's Hill estate, in which he and Rachel took
so much pride, passed into other hands, being sold on July 6, 1804, to
Colonel Edward Ward. "Necessity (as security for Thomas Watson and John
Hutchings) compelled me to sell the Hunter's Hill tract" Jackson wrote
in after years, with just a trace of bitterness. The $10,000 received
for the place helped put Jackson back on his feet; but there must have
been a tear in Rachel's eye as she looked back over her shoulder at the
home where she had been so happy as the bride of the coming young man.
And even the financial relief did not come immediately, for Colonel Ward
made the purchase on long and involved terms. He delivered to Jackson
the bond of a Mr. Lew Jones for £1670, Virginia currency, (equivalent to
$5,566.67 in Tennessee money), due on December 15, 1804. He paid
$1,794.91 in cash in January, 1805; $463.71 in cash in February; and in
March $666.67 in cash and 6,899 pounds of cotton, worth $1,000.35 at the
then price of 14½ cents per pound. Payments then ceased, and on May 7th
Jackson wrote Ward a strongly worded dunning letter insisting on the
payment of the balance of $1,721.88 still due. "When you recollect," he
wrote to Colonel Ward, "that I turned myself out of house and home, by
the sale of my possessions to you, purely to meet my engagements, you
must know that the anxiety must be great in my mind to meet them, with
the sacrifice of ease and comfort that I made upon that occasion. I need
only to add that my creditors are growing clamorous and I must have
money from some source."
Ward, in response to this appeal, paid $278.22 on account, and then
instituted a quibble on the ground that he should be permitted to pay
the balance in negroes rather than in cash. Jackson vigorously refuted
this suggestion, saying: "I can not believe that you are seriously
impressed with the belief that you are now authorized to discharge a
part of the debt in negroes. Had negroes been offered before Mr.
Hutchings descended the river with negroes for sale they would have been
received, notwithstanding the lapse of time. Of his departure you were
informed by me, with the express design that you might discharge part of
the debt in negroes if you thought proper, which if you had I would have
been in cash for them before this. As you did not have negroes then, and
the time elapsed, I did (and with propriety) conclude that you had
provided other means to meet your engagement; and negroes would not have
been named after we had sent on to market and the time so far elapsed."
Jackson also refused Ward's proffer of real estate in settlement of the
balance due, pointing out that if his own creditors would accept real
estate in payment of their claims he could dispose of all his debts "in
four hours." He then went on to say that he must have cash the following
week and that if he did not receive it he would be obliged to offer
Ward's bond for sale (an extreme step to take in those days). "But,"
said Jackson, "my engagements I must meet. This was the object of the
sale of my possessions, and from that sale I must realize that object."
Poor General Jackson! It is hard to imagine a worse plight than to
sacrifice a dearly beloved house and home in order to get money to pay
one's debts--and then not get the money without a year's unpleasant
squabbling.
The Hunter's Hill place was repurchased by Jackson, perhaps for
sentimental reasons, during the more prosperous later days when he was
President; but it was on the market again in 1840 when financial
embarassment again made it necessary for the General to dispose of some
of his property. The price at which it was then offered was $15,000,
which he considered a very low price for it; "but," he said, "a little
imprudence (on the part of Andrew, junior,) has caused this necessity,
and I would always rather sacrifice property than the credit of my
adopted son or myself." Fifteen thousand dollars may have been a bargain
price, as the General said; but he was able to find no buyer at that
figure and late in 1840 he sold it to Mrs. Elizabeth E. Donelson, widow
of his wife's brother John, for $12,000; and it is still in the hands of
descendants of this branch of the family.
In 1804, after paying off his debts, practically all of Jackson's
remaining assets were embraced in his reduced land holdings, including
the tract of 420 acres adjoining Hunter's Hill which he bought from
Nathaniel Harp when forced to sell his home place. It was to this
plantation, the future Hermitage estate, that he repaired when forced to
give up Hunter's Hill.
Just when the removal was made is not accurately revealed by the
records. In a letter written in 1844 he stated that he bought the
Hermitage land "on the 5th of July, 1804." His last recorded letter from
Hunter's Hill is dated August 25, 1804, and the first one from the
Hermitage April 7, 1805. It seems probable, however, that the removal to
the Hermitage plantation had been in contemplation even before adversity
forced it; for in the Jackson papers is a receipt dated March 2, 1803,
for 500 apple trees and 500 peach trees "for the Hermitage orchard;" and
in a letter written to Rachel on March 22, 1803, while he was attending
court in East Tennessee he inquires solicitously about the planting and
care of these young trees. Apparently thus early he was getting the
Hermitage tract ready for occupancy; although the county records show
that the land was not transferred to him until July, 1804.
The sale of the Hunter's Hill property necessarily forced the removal of
the store, and led to the establishment of a much more pretentious
business enterprise at Clover Bottom. Here he set up not only a store
but a tavern and boatyard as well, and he encouraged the establishment
of a race track and stables in which he took an interest. This made
Clover Bottom a center of interest for the whole countryside and a
favorite place for the assembling of the people. Clover Bottom is
located on the Nashville-Lebanon Road, where it crosses Stone's River,
just above that stream's confluence with the Cumberland, and it was
therefore an unexcelled location for a man who operated a boatyard as
well as a store and who also had blooded horses and liked to see them
run.
Soon after the establishment of the store at Hunter's Hill the
mercantile business had grown to such proportions that Jackson could not
handle it by himself, and he had taken in a partner named Thomas Watson.
This partnership did not work out satisfactorily, however, and was
dissolved, after which he took in John Hutchings, whose father had
married Mrs. Jackson's sister. The firm of Jackson and Hutchings thrived
and even showed itself an early disciple of the chain-store idea by
establishing branch stores at Gallatin and Lebanon. When the business
was moved to Clover Bottom, John Coffee, who was a brother-in-law of
Mrs. Jackson's was also taken into the partnership.
By dint of hard work and close application, Jackson at length managed to
clear himself of his financial troubles; but it was a long, hard pull,
and for several years he felt the pinch of reduced circumstances. In
fact, so difficult was his situation that in 1810 the whole course of
his life was near to being changed, and a slight turn of the balance in
the other direction then would have found him selling out in Tennessee
and removing elsewhere to begin life over again in a new field. At this
time the Hermitage plantation was definitely on the market, and Jackson
was actively seeking some appointment that would take him elsewhere.
It will be recalled that Jackson fought his duel with Charles Dickinson
in 1806, and the death of Dickinson in this tragic affair shocked the
sensibilities of even the hardy pioneer citizens of Nashville who were
accustomed to duelling. A few days after the duel Jackson's old friend
and former law partner, John Overton, wrote him the following
comforting, friendly letter:
Dear Genl:
Until yesterday evening, I must confess, my mind was not at ease. I
was then relieved. To-day I have seen my brother who tells me of a
little circumstance I did not know, that you were a little touched,
but not to do any great damage. Pope in his Essay on Man says:
"Whatever is, is right." To this small inconvenience we must submit,
which is not much more than the stumping of a toe, or the like.
It too frequently happens that the honest, unsuspecting part of
society will be infested with reptiles, the heads of which must be
sought after and bruised so as to be secure from their poison. God has
so ordained it. You have been the instrument of doing so. Fear
nothing. As soon as possible I will see you. Our mutual friend, Wm. P.
Anderson, will come to see you, who makes my best wishes for you.
Apropos, aside, there is a few long faces in town, though but few, for
it seems that this new-fangled Ajax had even went so far as to bet in
town, before he went over, that he would kill Genl. Jackson.
Yr friend, Jno. Overton
Gen'l Jackson. Nashville, June 1806.
This consoling letter from his old friend must have laid unction to
Jackson's soul; but not all of the Nashville citizens accepted
Dickinson's tragic death with Judge Overton's complacency. The
unfortunate victim of the duel had some warm and influential friends in
Nashville; and they spent their days and nights industriously giving
circulation to an account of the duel which placed Jackson in the worst
possible light. His popularity suffered accordingly. Then close on the
heels of this tragedy came the embroglio with Aaron Burr into which he
had permitted himself to become innocently entangled. Jackson's
popularity in Tennessee was never at a lower ebb--and he was not a man
to regard such a state of affairs with resignation. On top of all this,
he was worried about his financial affairs, and it is easy to understand
how he might have been attracted by the idea of starting life over again
in a new location--and with a government job carrying a comfortable
salary.
Mississippi was a new country, the government of which was just being
organized, and Jackson wrote to Jenkyn Whitesides, United States Senator
from Tennessee, regarding the possibility of receiving a federal
appointment as judge in the new territory. "From my pursuits for several
years past," he wrote in February, 1810, "from many unpleasant
occurrences that took place during that time, it has given my mind such
a turn of thought that I have labored to get clear of. I have found this
impossible, and unless some new pursuit to employ my mind and thoughts,
I find it impossible to divest myself of those habits of gloomy and
peevish reflections that the wanton and flagitious conduct and unmerited
reflections of base calumny heaped upon me has given rise to." It had
occurred to him, he said, that new scenes might serve to relieve him
from this unpleasant tone of thought, and he was therefore serving
notice that he would accept the judgeship if it were offered him. As a
further reason for his dissatisfaction he cited the "lethargy and
temporizing conduct" of the government, and he expressed the fear that
"as a military man I shall have no amusement or business, and indolence
and inaction would shortly destroy me."
One of Mrs. Jackson's nephews in Natchez, Donelson Caffery, heard of his
uncle's plan to sell the Hermitage home place and remove to Mississippi,
and he hastily wrote to dissuade him. "You have nearly got through all
your embarrassments," wrote young Caffery, "You have a delightful farm,
from the products of which you will at least be able to live
comfortably; by the respectable and well-informed part of the country
you are highly esteemed; you are able to select a good society from your
neighborhood." And, concluding in a burst of eloquence: "You have been
able there to read the characters of men in their actions; here another
volume will be presented to your view in which human baseness will take
up a considerable part."
Jackson persisted, however, in his effort to sell the Hermitage,
offering it among others to Colonel Wade Hampton of South Carolina, who
later served on his staff at New Orleans. Colonel Hampton made a trip to
Tennessee and looked the property over but did not buy it, although he
wrote: "I am vastly partial to your elegant seat and fine tract of
land."
Perhaps the advice of young Caffery and his other friends persuaded him
not to make the prospective changes; perhaps he was not able to get the
desired appointment. At any rate, fortunately for Tennessee and for the
country, Jackson remained at the Hermitage and was soon thereafter
relieved of his melancholic frame of mind by the declaration of war
against Great Britain in 1812. From then on until 1821 he found plenty
of "amusement and business" in fighting the Indians and the British and
the Spaniards in Florida; and for eight years he had no further cause
for complaint on the score of indolence and inaction. He returned to the
Hermitage the nation's idol, and all thoughts of moving to Mississippi
or anywhere else were permanently dismissed.
When Jackson moved to the Hermitage tract from Hunter's Hill his
financial condition did not permit of his building immediately another
such home as he had left. But Jackson had the primitive virtue of
cutting his suit to fit his cloth; and so he set himself up in a
comfortable but crude establishment made up of a group of log houses--a
large central building, two stories high, which constituted the
principal living quarters, with three adjacent log houses which were
used as sleeping quarters for guests or members of the family. The main
building, which, according to tradition, had in earlier days been used
as a block house for defense against the Indians, was 24 by 26 feet and
on the first floor had only one large room, with a huge fireplace. At
the back was a lean-to containing two rooms, a pantry and a bed-room.
This big room on the first floor was a combination of parlor, living
room, dining room and kitchen, with all the meals cooked at the big open
fireplace. Here Jackson lived for fifteen years--fifteen of the most
active years of his life, years when he was carving his name as one of
the really big men of the young United States.
Here in this log house he entertained some of the most distinguished
visitors who ever came to the Nashville settlements--President James
Monroe and Aaron Burr, among others; here it was they brought him,
well-nigh fatally wounded, from his duel with Charles Dickinson; and it
was to this rude abode that he returned in 1815, following the Battle of
New Orleans, with the plaudits of the world ringing in his ears. Also,
it was while he was living here in the log Hermitage that he conducted
his famous campaigns against the Indians, including his celebrated
invasion of Florida which so nearly involved us in war with Spain.
Today there is still standing only one of the small log cabins of the
original group. Alongside it is a larger log house, with a steeply
sloping roof, built at a later date out of the logs taken from the
original two-storied log house which had been permitted to fall into
decay. These are located in the meadow a few hundred yards to the rear
of the present Hermitage, on the original site, and are in a fair state
of preservation. Although the original two-storied house no longer
stands, the remains of its stone foundation are still faintly to be
seen.
But by 1819 Andrew Jackson--in personal taste, in fame and in social
position--had outgrown the log-house mode of living. He had become a man
of national, even international, distinction; he had been to Washington,
to Philadelphia, New York and New Orleans. He knew how distinguished men
were supposed to live. And so there gradually grew in his mind the
determination to build a new home, one that would befit his present
station in life and one that would permit Rachel to entertain with pride
the grandest ladies of the land. Fortunately for his plans, there was a
boom market in cotton from 1815 to 1818, following the treaty of peace
with England, and the cotton planters of the South had three fat years.
With cotton at 34c a pound, many of them waxed wealthy; and although
there was a slump in 1819, it appears that Jackson must have been making
financial hay while the sun was shining, for it was at this time that he
started work on his new house.
The source from which Jackson got the name "The Hermitage" remains more
or less of a mystery. The plantation was known by this name before he
built a house on it; but nothing in his letters or papers reveals the
reason why it was so-called. There is a tradition in the Donelson family
that it was named in honor of the old Donelson home-place in Virginia;
but this theory has no firmer foundation than tradition--it may be true,
but there is no authentic substantiation of it. There is a theory
(although it is nothing more than a theory) that he borrowed the name
from Jeremy Bentham's estate in England. Students of Jackson's political
beliefs feel that he was strongly influenced by the great English
philosopher and jurist, whose home was called the Hermitage. He read
Bentham's works and corresponded with him; it is not unlikely that when
it came to selecting a name for his new plantation he thought of
Bentham's home, the Hermitage, and adopted the name for his own use.
[Illustration: Front view of the house from dividing point in the
entrance driveway.]
[Illustration: Close-up view of the façade.]