General Jackson

Preface

THE military life of Andrew Jackson lasted nine years, of which about two years were passed in the field. He was in no proper sense of the word a professional soldier, and he resented the phrase “ military chieftain ” which Henry Clay, knowing its irritating power, so often applied to him. He was simply a Tennessee farmer and militia-general who, when his country was invaded, led his neighbors and fellow-citizens to its de-

.fense. In doing this duty of a citizen he displayed military talents which friends and foes agreed in pronouncing extraordinary.

His old comrade and friend, a near neighbor for half a lifetime, the late Major William B. Lewis, a gentleman competent to judge in such matters, used to say, as he talked of the Creek and New Orleans campaigns, that Andrew Jackson, in point of native military capacity, was the peer of the great generals of the world—Cesar, Cromwell, Frederick, Bonaparte, or Wellington—and in support of this opinion he would adduce many curious facts and traits that could be known only to an intimate and confidential companion.

This was the judgment of a friend, though a friend not blind to the limitations of his old commander. I have before me the testimony of an enemy, one who had personally felt the force of the stroke which General Jackson’s puissant arm could deal. As late as 1888 wi GENERAL JACKSON.

there were two survivors of the British army that invaded Louisiana in 1814 and took part in the action of January 8, 1815. One of these was the late Earl of Albemarle; the other, Rev. George R. Gleig, who was for many years chaplain-general to the British forces, but served as a lieutenant of foot in the expedition against New Orleans. Mr. Gleig was the “subaltern”’ whose excellent narrative of the expedition is occasionally quoted in this volume. A short time before his death he wrote thus to his American friend, General James Grant Wilson, the editor of this series of volumes:

“When I look back upon the means which General Jackson adopted to cover New Orleans, and remember the materials of which his army was composed, I can not _ but regard his management of that campaign as one of the most masterly of which history makes mention. His nigbt attack on our advanced guard was as bold a strokes as ever was struck. It really paralyzed all our future operations; for, though unsuccessful, it taught us to hold our enemy in respect, and in all future movements to act with an excess of caution. The use, also, which he made of the river was admirable. Indeed, I am inclined to think that to him the generals who came after him were indebted for the perception of the great advantages to which the command of rivers may be turned. And do not let us forget that he had little else to appose to Welliigton’s veterans, fresh from their triumphs in Spain and the south of France, except raw levies. Altogether I think of Jackson as, next to Washington, the greatest general America has produced.”

To the last of his days—and he lived to be past ninety-one—he retained these impressions unimpaired. General Wilson, in conversation, would call the old gentleman’s attention to the brilliant achievements of

PREFACE. vii

Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and others, but could never convince him that either of them showed military capacity superior to that of the general who had given him and his comrades such a world of trouble seventy years before. 7

“No,” he would say, “ Jackson did everything that could be done to repel an attack that ought to have proved successful. His beating up our bivouac on the night of our landing was a master stroke, and, had his troops been such as yours became during your civil war, he would have destroyed us.” This is the judgment of a soldier who saw and felt during some terrible weeks what it is in war to have a real general in command on the other side.

No one can carefully examine the record without discovering that Andrew Jackson possessed the indispensable qualities of a commanding general: in all circum- _ tances imperturbably brave; confident in himself, but open to suggestion and to argument ; bold when boldness was wise, but as wary as an Indian until he saw his way to victory clear; vigilant, prompt, persistent, indefatigable, and aware of the importance of little things. He had for his soldiers the paternal feeling which we observe in all the great generals, as we do also in the great captains of industry; yet he could be a stern and ruthless disciplinarian. There is a passage in his farewell address to the army in 1821 where he speaks of the bounty-jumpers of his day, who found it “a source of speculation to go from rendezvous to rendezvous, enlisting, receiving the bounty, and deserting, all the way from Boston to New Orleans.” The passage, if it had been acted upon during the late war, would have saved a vast amount of suffering and waste.

Two of his favorite maxims denote the soldier: “ In war, till everything is done, nothing is done”; and this

Vili GENERAL JACKSON.

also, “When you have a thing to do, take all the time | for thinking that the circumstances allow, but when the time has come for action, stop thinking.”

[Tue last literary work of James Parton was the preparation of this brief biography of General Jackson. It was completed in August, 1891. Two months later, a long career of literary industry was closed by his death at the ripe age of seventy. An indefatigable worker, he produced many valuable American biogtaphies, of which his earliest—a Life of Horace Greeley —was perhaps the most popular. Although less ambitious in scope than some of Mr. Parton’s previous volumes, his last work, like his first, presents a fair estimate of its subject, and seems free from the natural tendency of biographers, which Macaulay sneeringly designates “the disease of admiration.” Altogether the book appears to be a model miniature biography, possessing throughout all the interest of a romance. It would seem that this story of the career of the great American commander can not fail to add to Mr. Parton’s literary reputation. EDITOR. |

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I—PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION 5 ; ' . AE II.—DvuRING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR . é ; ey II]—He strupies Law, AND BECOMES A TENNESSEE LAWYER . . , ‘ 3 A : cy IV.—In Pusiic LIFE, AND AS A MAN OF eee é aes V.— DUEL WITH CHARLES DICKINSON : zi : 738 VI.—AtT HoME “ : : : : : : . 43 VII.—IN THE FIELD < : : : F : : ear) VIII.—TueE MASSACRE AT ForT MIMS . A : , 10d! IX.—THE CREEK COUNTRY INVADED . ‘ é . 74. X.—THE FINISHING BLOW . 5 : é : , . 108 XI.—MOBILE DEFENDED, AND THE ENGLISH DRIVEN FROM PENSACOLA . . : a 4 js : = b24) XII.—Jackson AT NEW ORLEANS, AND APPROACH OF THE BRITISH 3 ; F ; : . 3 . 144 XIII.—NiIcHT BATTLE OF DECEMBER 23 D0. amet . 164 XIV.—SHOVELS AND WHEELBARROWS . : : ‘ ana O XV.—SECOND ADVANCE OF THE ENGLISH . : , . 192 XVI.—THE 8TH OF JANUARY. . : : : : . 208 XVIIL—END OF THE CAMPAIGN ‘ ; x é : oor XVIIL—CoMMANDER OF THE SOUTHERN DEPARTMENT . . 249 XIX.—A CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY . : ; 273 XX.—INAUGURATION. ; & 5 : ‘ , . 281 XXI.—TERROR AMONG THE OFFICE-HOLDERS "i 3 . 287 XXII.—TuHE SECOND TERM. ; ; : ; : - 297 XXIII.—IN RETIREMENT .- , ‘ é . : : 1/555

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

FACING PAGE

Chapter I. Parentage And Education

In 1765, Andrew Jackson, the father of the Andrew Jackson whose career we are about to relate, emigrated, with his wife and two sons, from Carrickfergus, in the north of Ireland, to South Carolina. His sons were named Hugh and Robert; Andrew was not yet born. In his native country he had cultivated a few hired acres, and his wife had been a weaver of linen. Like most of the inhabitants of the north of Ireland, he was of Scottish origin; but his ancestors had lived for five generations in the neighborhood of Carrickfergus; lowly, honest people, tillers of the soil and weavers; radical Whigs in politics, Presbyterians in religion. He was accompanied to America by three of his neighbors, James, Robert, and Joseph Crawford, the first-named of whom was his brother-in-law. The peace between France and England, signed two years before, which ended the “old French War ’’—the war in which Braddock was defeated and Canada won—had restored to mankind their highway, the ocean, and given an impulse to emigration from the Old World to the New. From the north of Ireland large numbers sailed away to the land of promise. Five sisters of Mrs. Jackson had gone, or were soon going. Samuel Jackson, a brother of Andrew,

Oe . GENERAL JACKSON.

afterward went, and established himself in Philadelphia, where he long lived, a respectable citizen. Mrs. Suffren, a daughter of another brother, followed in later years, and settled in the city of New York, where she has living descendants.

The party of emigrants from Carrickfergus landed at Charleston, and proceeded without delay to the Waxhaw settlement, a hundred and sixty miles to the northwest of Charleston, where many of their kindred and countrymen were already established. This settlement was, or had been, the seat of the Waxhaw tribe of Indians.

A proof of the poverty of Andrew Jackson is this: the Crawfords, who came with him from Ireland, bought lands near the center of the settlement, on the Waxhaw Creek itself—lands which still attest the wisdom of their choice; but Jackson settled seven miles away, on new land, on the banks of Twelve Mile Creek, another branch of the Catawba. The place is now known as “ Pleasant Grove Camp Ground,” and the particular land once occupied by the father of General Jackson is still pointed out by the old people of the neighborhood.

For two years Andrew Jackson and his family toiled in the Carolina woods. He had built his log-house, cleared some fields, and raised a crop. Then, the father of the family, his work all incomplete, sickened and died: his two boys being still very young, and his wife far advanced in pregnancy. This was early in the spring of 1767.

The bereaved family of the Jacksons never returned to their home on the banks of Twelve Mile Creek, but went from the churchyard to the house, not far off, of one of Mrs. Jackson’s brothers-in-law, George McKemey by name, whose remains now repose in the same old burying-ground. A few nights after there was a swift

PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION, . 3 sending of messengers to the neighbors, and a hurrying across the fields of friendly women; and before the sun rose a son was born, the son whose career and fortunes we have undertaken to relate. It was in a small log-house, in the province of North Carolina, less than a quarter of a mile from the boundary-line between North and South Carolina, that the birth took place. Andrew Jackson, then, was born in Union County, North Carolina, on the 15th of March, 1767.

General Jackson always supposed himself to be a native of South Carolina. “ Fellow-citizens of my native State!” he exclaims, at the close of his proclamation to the nullifiers of South Carolina; but it is as certain as any fact of the kind can be that he was mistaken, The clear and uniform tradition of the neighborhood, supported by a great mass of indisputable testimony, points to a spot in MVorth Carolina, but only a stone’s-throw from the line that divides it from South Carolina, as the birthplace of Andrew Jackson.

In the family of his Uncle Crawford, Andy Jackson (for by this familiar name he is still spoken of in the neighborhood) spent the first ten or twelve years of his life. Mr. Crawford was a man of considerable substance for a new country, and his family was large. He lived in South Carolina, just over the boundary-line, near the Waxhaw Creek, and six miles from the Catawba River. The land there lies well for farming; level, but not flat ; undulating, but-without hills of inconvenient height. The soil is a stiff, red clay, the stiffest of the stiff and the reddest of the red; the kind of soil which bears hard usage, and makes the very worst winter roads anywhere to be found on this planet. Except where there is an interval of fertile soil, the country round about is a boundless continuity of pine woods, wherein to this day wild turkeys and deer are shot, and the farmers take their cotton to market in immense wagons of antique pattern, a journey of half a week, and camp out every night. As evening closes in, the passing traveler sees the mules, the negro driver, the huge covered wagon, the farmer, and sometimes his wife with an infant, grouped in the most strikingly picturesque manner, in an opening of the forest, around a blazing fire of pine knots that light up the scene like an illumination. In such a country as this, with horses to ride, and cows to hunt, and journeys to make, and plenty of boys, black and white, to play with, our little friend spent his early years,

In due time the boy was sent to an “ old-field school,” an institution not much unlike the roadside schools in Ireland of which we read. The Northern reader is perhaps not aware that an “old field” is not a field at all, but a pine forest. When crop after crop of cotton, without rotation, has exhausted the soil, the fences are taken away, the land lies waste, the young pines at once spring up and soon cover the whole field with a thick growth of wood. In one of these old fields the rudest possible shanty of a log house is erected, with a fireplace that extends from side to side and occupies a third of the interior. In winter the interstices of the log walls are filled up with clay, which the restless fingers of the boys make haste to remove in time to admit the first warm airs of spring. An itinerant schoolmaster presents himself in a neighborhood; the responsible farmers pledge him a certain number of pupils, and an old-field school is established for the season. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were all the branches taught in the early days.

But Mrs. Jackson had more ambitious views for her youngest son. She aimed to give him a liberal education, in the hope that he would one day become a clergyman in

PARENTAGE AND EDUCATION. 5 the Presbyterian Church. It is probable that her condition was not one of absolute dependence. The tradition of the neighborhood is, that she was noted the country round for her skill in spinning flax, and that she earned money by spinning to pay for Andrew’s schooling. It is possible, too, that her relations in Ireland may have contributed something to her support.

Andy was a wild, frolicsome, willful, mischievous, daring, reckless boy; generous to a friend, but never content to submit to a stronger enemy. He was passionately fond of those sports which are mimic battles; above all, wrestling.

If our knowledge of the school-life of Jackson is scanty, we are at no loss to say what he learned and what he failed to learn at school. He learned to read, to write, to cast accounts—little more. If he began, as he may have done, to learn by heart, in the old-fashioned way, the Latin grammar, he never acquired enough of it to leave any traces of classical knowledge in his mind or his writings. In some of his later letters there may be found, it is true, an occasional Latin phrase of two or three words, but so quoted as to show ignorance rather than knowledge. He was never a well-informed man. He never was addicted to books. He never learned to write the English language correctly, though he often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. He never learned to spell correctly, though he was a better speller than Frederick II, Marlborough, Napoleon, or Washington. Few men of his day, and no women, were correct spellers.

He was nine years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. By the time the war approached the Waxhaw settlement, bringing blood and terror with it, leaving desolation behind it, closing all schoolhouses, and putting a stop to the peaceful labors of the people,

Andrew Jackson was little more than thirteen. His brother Hugh, a man in stature if not in years, had not waited for the war to come near his home, but had mounted his horse a year before and ridden southward to meet it. He was one of the troopers of that famous regiment to raise and equip which, its colonel, William Richardson Davie, spent the last guinea of his inherited . estate. Under Colonel Davie, Hugh Jackson fought in the ranks of the battle of Stono, and died, after the action, of heat and fatigue. His brother Robert was a strapping lad, but too young for a soldier, and was still at home with his mother and Andrew when Tarleton and his dragoons thundered along the red roads of the Waxhaws, and dyed them a deeper red with the blood of the surprised militia.

CHAPTER. If,

DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR,

It was on the 29th of May, 1780, that Tarleton, with three hundred horsemen, surprised a detachment of militia in the Waxhaw settlement and killed one hundred and thirteen of them, and wounded a hundred and fifty. The wounded, abandoned to the care of the settlers, were quartered in the houses of the vicinity; the old log Waxhaw meeting-house itself being converted into a hospital for the most desperate cases. Mrs. Jackson was one of the kind women who ministered to the wounded soldiers in the church, and under that roof her boys first saw what war was. The men were dreadfully mangled. Some had received as many as thirteen wounds, and none less than three. For many days Andrew and his brother assisted their mother in waiting upon the sick men; Andrew, more in rage than pity, burning to avenge their wounds and his brother’s death.

Tarleton’s massacre at the Waxhaws kindled the flames of war in all that region of the Carolinas. Many notable actions were fought, and some striking though unimportant advantages were gained. by the patriot forces. Andrew Jackson and his brother Robert were present at Sumter’s gallant attack upon the British post of Hanging Rock, near Waxhaw, where the patriots half gained the day, and lost it by beginning too soon to drink the rum they captured from the enemy. The Jackson boys rode on this expedition with Colonel

Davie, a most brave, self-sacrificing officer, who, as we have said, commanded the troop of which Hugh Jackson was a member when he died, after the battle of Stono. Neither of the boys was attached to Davie’s company, nor is it likely that Andrew, a boy of thirteen, did more than witness the affair at Hanging Rock.

This Colonel Davie, Hugh Jackson’s old commander, . was the man, above all others who led Carolina troops in the Revolution, that the Jackson boys admired. He was a man after Andrew’s own heart—swift but wary, bold in planning enterprises but most cautious in execution, sleeplessly vigilant, untiringly active—one of those cool, quick men who apply mother-wit to the art of war; who are good soldiers because they are earnest and clear-sighted men. So far as any man was General Jackson’s model soldier, William Richardson Davie, of North Carolina, was the individual.

The boys rejoined their mother at the Waxhaw settlement. On the 16th of August, 1780, occurred the great disaster of the war in the South, the defeat of General Gates. The victor, Cornwallis, moved three weeks after, with his whole army, toward the Waxhaws; which induced Mrs. Jackson and her boys once more to abandon their home for a safer retreat north of the scene of war.

In February, 1781, the country about the Waxhaws again being tranquil, because subdued, Mrs. Jackson, her sons, and many of her neighbors returned to their ravaged homes. Andrew soon after passed his fourteenth birthday, an overgrown youth, as tall as. a man, but weakly from having grown too fast. Then ensued a spring and summer of small, fierce, intestine warfare— a war of Whig and Tory, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother, and even father against son.

Without detaining the reader with a detail of the

DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 9

Revolutionary history of the Carolinas, I yet desire to show what a war-charged atmosphere it was that young Andrew breathed during this forming period of his life, especially toward the close of the war, after the great operations ceased.

The people in the upper country of the Carolinas little expected that the war would ever reach settlements so remote, so obscure, so scattered as theirs; and it did not for some years. When at last the storm of war drew near their borders, it found them a divided people. The old sentiment of loyalty was still rooted in many minds. There were many who had taken a recent and special oath of allegiance to the king, which they considered binding in all circumstances. They were Highlanders, clannish and religiously loyal, who pointed to the text, “Fear God and honor the king,” and overlooked the fact that the biblical narrative condemns the Jews for desiring a kingly government. There were Moravians and Quakers, who conscientiously opposed ‘all war. There were Catholic Irish, many of whom sided with the king. There were Protestant Scotch- Irish, Whigs and agitators in the old country, Whigs and fervent patriots in the new. There were placeholders, who adhered to their official bread and dignity. There were trimmers, who espoused the side that chanced to be strongest. The approach and collision of hostile forces converted most of these factions into belligerents, who waged a most fierce and deadly war upon one another, renewing on this new theatre the border wars of another age and country.

The time came when Andrew and his brother began to play men’s parts in the drama. Without enlisting in any organized corps, they joined small parties that went out on single enterprises of retaliation, mounted on their own horses and carrying their own weapons.

IO GENERAL JACKSON.

The activity and zeal of the Waxhaw Whigs coming to the ears of Lord Rawdon, whom Cornwallis had left in command, he dispatched a small body of dragoons to aid the Tories of that infected neighborhood. The Waxhaw people, hearing of the approach of this hostile force, resolved upon resisting it in open fight, and named the Waxhaw meeting-house as the rendezvous. Forty Whigs assembled on the appointed day, mounted and armed, and among them were Robert and Andrew Jackson. In the grove about the old church these forty were waiting for the arrival—hourly expected—of another company of Whigs froma neighboring settlement. The British officer in command of the dragoons, apprised of the rendezvous by a Tory of the neighborhood, determined to surprise the patriot party before the two companies had united. Before coming in sight of the church, he placed a body of Tories wearing the dress of the country far in advance of his soldiers, and so marched upon the devoted band. The Waxhaw party saw a company of armed men approaching, but, concluding them to be their expected friends, made no preparations for defense. Too late the error was discovered. Eleven of the forty were taken prisoners, and the rest sought safety in flight, fiercely pursued by the dragoons. The brothers were separated. Andrew found himself galloping for life and liberty by the side of his cousin, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, a dragoon close behind them, and others coming rapidly on. They tore along the road awhile, and then took to a swampy field, where they came soon to a wide slough of water and mire, into which they plunged their horses. Andrew floundered across, and on reaching dry land again looked round for his companion, whose horse had sunk into the mire and fallen. He saw him entangled, and trying vainly to ward off the blows of his pursuers with his sword. Before Andrew

DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. Ik could turn to assist him the lieutenant received a severe wound in the head, which compelled him to give up the contest and surrender. The youth put spurs to his horse and succeeded in eluding pursuit. Robert, too, escaped unhurt, and in the course of the day the brothers were reunited, and took refuge in a thicket, in which they passed a hungry and anxious night.

The next morning the pangs of hunger compelled them to leave their safe retreat and go in quest of food. The nearest house was that of Lieutenant Crawford. Leaving their horses and arms in the thicket, the lads crept toward the house, which they reached in satety. Meanwhile, a Tory traitor of the neighborhood had scented out their lurking-place, found their horses and weapons, and set a party of dragoons upon their track. Before the family had a suspicion of danger, the house was surrounded, the doors were secured, and the boys were prisoners.

A scéne ensued which left an impression upon the mind of one of the boys which time never effaced. Regardless of the fact that the house was occupied by the defenseless wife and young children of a wounded soldier, the dragoons, brutalized by this mean partisan warfare, began to destroy, with wild riot and noise, the contents of the house. Crockery, glass, and furniture were dashed to pieces, beds emptied, the clothing of the family torn to rags; even the clothes of the infant that Mrs. Crawford carried in her arms were not spared. While this destruction was going on, the officer in command of the party ordered Andrew to clean his high jack-boots, which were well splashed and crusted with mud. The boy replied, not angrily, though with a certain firmness and decision, in something like these words :

“Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and claim to be treated as such.”

The officer aimed a desperate blow at the boy’s head with his sword. Andrew broke the force of the blow with his left hand, and thus received two wounds—one deep gash on his head and another on his hand, the marks of both of which he carried to his grave. The officer, after achieving this gallant feat, turned to Robert Jackson and ordered him to clean the boots. Robert also refused. The valiant Briton struck the young man so violent a sword-blow upon the head, as to prostrate and disable him.

Andrew was ordered to mount, and to guide some of the party to the house of a noted Whig of the vicinity named Thompson. Threatened with instant death if he failed to. guide them aright, the youth submitted, and led the party in the right direction. A timely thought enabled him to be the deliverer of his neighbor instead of his captor. Instead of approaching the house by the usual road, he conducted the party by a circuitous route, which brought them in sight of the house half a mile before they reached it. Andrew well knew that, if Thompson was at home, he would be sure to have some one on the lookout, and a horse ready for the road. On coming in sight of the house he saw Thompson’s horse, saddled and bridled, standing at a rack in the yard, which informed him both that the master was there and that he was prepared for flight. The dragoons dashed forward to seize their prey. While they were still some hundreds of yards from the house, Andrew had the delight of seeing Thompson burst from his door, run to his horse, mount, and plunge into. a foaming, swollen creek that rushed by his.house. He gained the opposite shore, and, seeing that the dragoons dared not attempt the stream, gave a shout of defiance and galloped into the woods.

The elation caused by the success of his stratagem

DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 13 was soon swallowed up in misery. Andrew and Robert Jackson, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, and twenty other prisoners, all the victims of this raid of the dragoons into the Waxhaws, were placed on horses stolen in the same settlement and marched toward Camden, South Carolina, a great British depot at the time, forty miles distant. It wasa long and agonizing journey, especially to the wounded, among whom were the Jacksons and their cousin. Not an atom of food nor a drop of water was allowed them on the way. Such was the brutality of the soldiers, that when these miserable lads tried to scoop up a little water from the streams which they forded, to appease their raging thirst, they were ordered to desist.

At Camden their situation was one of utter wretchedness. Two hundred and fifty prisoners in a contracted inclosure drawn around the jail; no beds of any description; no medicine; no medical attendance, nor means of dressing the wounds; their only food a scanty supply of bad bread. They were robbed even of part of their clothing, besides being subject to the taunts and threats of every passing Tory. The three relatives, it is said, were separated as soon as their relationship was discovered. Miserable among the miserable; gaunt, yellow, hungry, and sick; robbed of his jacket and shoes; ignorant of his brother’s fate; chafing with suppressed fury, Andrew passed now some of the most wretched days of his life. Ere long the smallpox—a disease unspeakably terrible at that day, more terrible than cholera or plague has ever been—broke out among the prisoners, and raged unchecked by medicine and unalleviated by any kind of attendance or nursing. The sick and the well, the dying and the dead, those shuddering at the first symptoms and those putrid with the disease, were mingled together; and all but the dead .were equally miserable.