Life of Andrew Jackson, condensed from the author's "Life of Andrew Jackson," in three volumes

Front matter

Oass.

LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON.

MR. PARTON'S WORKS

Preface

This volume is a condensation of the " Life of Andrew Jackson," in three volumes, octavo, which was published by the author in 1860. Nearly every thing in the way of document, letter, episode, disquisition, note, or appendix, has been omitted ; but the story of the life has been retained, and the more interesting narratives, scenes, and anecdotes, are preserved entire.

There is much in the larger work which the student of recent history, the statesman, the politician, the soldier, and the citizen who desires to understand the interior working of his country's institutions, cannot dispense with. But the present volume contains all of Jackson which young readers need know, or readers in general will care to know.

It is proper to state, that a great part of the information given in these pages respecting the childhood, the youth, the frontier experiences, the White House life, and the last years of General Jackson, was derived by the author, in the course of an extensive tour in the Southern States, from the general's surviving relations, comrades, and political associates.

The events of the last two years have invested with new interest the character of the man to whom we owed the postponement of civil war for thirty years. Mr. Webster thought the issue should have been met then^ the strength of the government tested then^ not postponed till the mighty spell of the Union had lost its potency over a third of the country ; and

-y^t

6 PREFA CE.

Jackson himself .constantly regretted, to his dying hour, that he had not dealt to Calhoun the penalty due to one whom balked ambition alone made a disturber of his country's pea'6e. jSTevertheless, thirty years of peace was a boon for which the country is the more warmly grateful from knowing what civil war is.

The reader will find the Jackson of these pages a hero without fear, but, unhappily, not without reproach. He was a faulty man, like the rest of us, and committed, in his life, some most grievous sins. As his virtues and his good deeds are distinctly set forth and duly extolled, so his errors and weaknesses are not concealed.

New York, December, 1862.

OOl^TEI^TS.

Chapter Pag'

I. — Birth and Parentage 9

II. — Childhood and Education 13

III. — During the Revolutionary War 19

IV. — He Studies Law , 34

¥. — Hemotal to Tennessee 45

VI.— Jackson Practices Law 53

VII. — Jackson in Congress 62

VIII. — Judge of the Supreme Court 69

IX. — Jackson as a Man op Business 75

X. — Duel with Charles Dickinson - 82

XI. — General Jackson at Home 95

XII. — General Jackson in Service 106

XIII.— Affray with the Bentons : 116

XIV. — The Massacre at Fort Mims 124

XV. — Tennessee in the Field 132

XVI. — Mutiny in the Camp 147

XVIL — The Finishing Blow 1 65

) XVIII — Defense of Molile 181

i XIX. — Jackson Expels the English from Pensacola 191

XX. — Jackson's First Measures at New Orleans 197

XXI. — Approach of the British 205

XXII.— Night Battle op December Twenty-Third 215

XXIII. — Jackson Fortifies 226

XXIV. — The British Advance a Second Time 240

XXV. — The Eighth op January 253

XXVI. — End of the Campaign 272

/ XXVIL— Rest and Glory 291

8 CONTENTS.

Chapter Pash

XXVIII.— The Seminole War 295

XXIX. — A Governor in the Calaboose , . 316

XXX. — A Candidate for the Presidency *^30

XXXI. — Elected President 339

XXXII. — Inauguration. — Mrs. Eaton 348

XXXIII. — Terror among the Office-Holders 354

XXXIV. — The Bank of the United States 359

XXXV. — Congress in Session 363

XXXVI. — Mr. Van Buben Calls upon Mrs. Eaton 371

XXXVII. — Dissolution op the Cabinet 384

XXXVIIL— The Bank Bill Vetoed 391

XXXIX.— Nullification. 398

XL. — Removal of the Deposits ■.-. 420

XLT. — The French Imbroglio 433

XLII. — Close of the Administration 441

XLIII. — In Retirement 441

XLIV. — The Closing Scenes 457

XLV. — Conclusion 464

LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON.

Chapter I. Birth And Parentage

In 1V65, 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 live 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 Avon — had restored to niankmd 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, afterward went, and established himself in Philadelphia, where he long lif ed, a respectable citizen. Mrs. SuflVen, a daughter of another brother, followed in later years, and settled in New York, where she has living descendants. Andrew Jackson was a poor man, and his Avife, Elizabeth Hutchinson, Avas a poor man's daughter. The tradition is clear among the numerous descendants of Mrs. Jackson's sisters, that their lot in Ireland was a hard one. The grandchildren of the

10 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON. [Il67.

Hutchinson sisters remember hearing their mothers often say, that in Ireland some of these girls were compelled to labor half the night, and sometimes all night, in order to produce the requisite quantity of linen. Linen-weaving was their employment both before and after marriage; the men of the families tilling small farms at high rents, and the women toiling at the loom. The members of this circle were not all equally poor. There is reason to believe that some of them brought to America sums of money which were considerable for that day, and sufficient to enable them to buy negroes as well as lands in the southern wilderness. But all accounts concur in this : that Andrew Jackson was very poor, both in Ireland and in America. The Hirtchinson sisters are remembered as among the most thrifty, industrious, and capable of a race remarkable for those qualities. There is a smack of the North-Irish brogue still to be observed in the speech of their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The party of emigrants from Carrickfergus landed at Charleston, and proceeded, without delay, to the Waxhaw settlement, a hundred and sixty miles to the north- v^'est of Charleston, where many of their kindred and countrymen were already establislied. This settlement was, or had been the seat of the Waxhaw tribe of Indians. It is the region watered by the Catawba river, since pleasantly famous for its grapes. A branch of the Catawba, called the Waxhaw Creek, a small and not ornamental stream, much choked with logs and overgrowth to this day, runs through it, fertilizing a considerable extent of bottom laud. It is a pleasant enough xmdulating region, an oasis of fertility in a waste of pine woods ; much " worn" now by incessant cotton-raising, but .showing still some fine and profitable plantations. The word Waxhaw, be it observed, has no geographical or political meaning. The settlement so called was [lartly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina. Many of the settlers, probably, scarcely knew in which of the two provinces they lived, nor cared to, know. At this" day, the name Waxhaw has vanished from the maps and gazetteers, but in the country round about the old settlement, the lands along the creek are stil called " the Waxhaws."

Another proof of the poverty of Andrew Jackson is this : the Crawfords, who came with him from Ii-eland, bought lands near the center of the settlement, on the Waxhaw Creek itself, lands

1767.] BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. ^

Which stiU attest the wisdom of their choice- hnt T..T..

a ". P,:ilrGrr'"r°' "-Catawba. The pla.3 is «;Lfw

«ih JTieabant urove Camp Ground " nnri +1iq,.o. ■• i i

mmculty The best information now attainable confirms the tra

JNoith Caiolma, a few miles from Monroe, the conntv seat The county was named Union, a few years ngo, in lonoi of The U^K,n's indomitable defender, and in rebuke of ' neighboring nut Z,:J\ ™^ P^PO^ed to eall the county Jacfaon, but Uni°on was and raised a crop. Then, the father of the family, h s wofk a I mcomplete sickened and died: bis two boys bring still very

_ In a rude farm-wagon the coi-pse, accompanied, as it seems, in ,

ZZ: lb r '^ i" *1 ""'^ '■"""'5'' ™' --W^d to the 'o d f ^.i.vhw church-y.ard, and interred. No stone marks the spot beneath w-hich the bones have moldered; but tradition poLH

ttie place where Andrew Jackson lies is known by the gravestones

A little church (the third that has stood near that spot), havi/-

bli rf^tt: r'' f /'" -«'-!-*-! - its appeaii^^" rese„° bling mther a neat farm-house, stands, not in the church-yard.

12 LIFE OF ANDKEW JACKSOJSr. [1767.

but a short distance from it. Huge trees, with smaller pines among them, rise singly and in clumps, as they were originally left by those who first subdued the wilderness there. Great roots of trees roughen the red clay roads. Old as the settlement is, the country is but thinly inhabited, and the few houses near look like those of a just-peopled country in the Northern States. Miles and miles and miles, you may ride in the pine woods and " old fields" of that country, without meeting a vehicle or seeing a living creature. So that when the stranger stands in that church-;yjard among the old graves, though there is a house or two not far off, but not in sight, he has the feeling of one who comes upon the ancient burial-place of a race extinct. Rude old stones are there that were placed over graves when as yet a stone-cutter was not in the province ; stones upon which, coats-of-arms were once engraved, still partly decipherable ; stones which are modern compared with these, yet record the exploits of revolutionary soldiers ; stones so old that every trace of inscription is lost, and stones as new as the new year. The inscriptions on the gravestones are unusually simple and direct, and free from sniveling and cant. A large number of them end with Pope's line (incorrectly quoted) which declares an honest man to be the noblest woi'k of God.

The bereaved family of the Jacksons never returned to their home on the banks of Twelve Mile Creek, but went from the church-yard to the house, not far off, of one of Mrs. Jackson's brothers-in-law, George McKemey by name, whose remains now re])ose in the same old burying-ground. A few nights after, Mrs. Jackson was seized with the pains of labor. There was a swift sen-ding 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-liouse, 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.

Geneial Jji,eksou 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

1767.] CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 13

he was mistaken. The clear and uniform tradition of the neighborhood, 'supported by a great mass of indisputable testimony, points to a spot in JVorth Carolina, but only a stone's throw from the line that divides it from South CaroUna, as the birthplace of AndreAV Jackson.

In a large field, near the edge of a wide, shalloAV ravine, on the plantation of Mr. T. J. Cureton, there is to be seen a great clump, or natural summer-house, of graj)e-vines. Some remains of old fruit trees near by, and a spring a little way down the ravine, indicate that a human habitation once stood near this spot. It is a still and' solitary place, away from the road, in a red, level region, where the young pines are in haste to cover the well-worn cotton fields, and man se^us half inclined to let them do it, and move to Texas. Upon looking under the masses of grape-vine, a heap of large stones showing traces of fire is discovered. These stones once formed the chimney and fireplace of the log-house, wherein George Mckemey lived and Andrew Jackson was born. On that old yellow hearth-stone, Mrs. Jackson lulled her infant to sleep and brooded ovej' her sad bereavement, and thought anxiously respecting the future of her fatherless boys. Sacred spot ! not so much because there a hero was born, as because there a noble mother suffered, sorrowed, and accepted her new lot, and bravely bent herself to her more than double weight of care and toil.

Mrs. Jackson remained at this house three weeks. Then, leaving her eldest son behind to aid her brother-in-law on his farm, she removed with her second son and the new-born infant, to the residence of another brother-in-law, Mr. Crawford, with whom P'he had cros'sed the ocean, and who then lived two miles distant. Mrs. Crawford was an invalid, and Mrs. Jackson was permanently established in the family as housekeeper and poor relation.

Chapter II. Childhood And Education"

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 hne, 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 hight. The soil is a stiiF, red clay, the stifFest of the stiif, 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 fettile 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. Just so, doubtless, did the farmers in Andy's day transport their produce ; and, many a time, I doubt not, he slept by the camp-fire ; for the Carolina boys like nothing better than to go to market with their fathers, and share in the glorious ad\enture of sleeping out-of-doors. 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 Andy 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 lV7V.] CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 15

certain number of pupils, and an old-field school is established for the season. Such schools, called by the same name, exist to this day in the Carolinas, differing little from those which Andrew Jackson attended in his childhood. Reading, writing and arithmetic were all the branches taught in the early day. Among a crowd of 4irchins, seated on the slab benches of a school like this, fancy a tall, slender boy, with blue bright eyes, a freckled face, au abundance of long sandy hair, and clad in coarse copperas-colored cloth, with bare feet dangling and kicking — and you have in your mind's eye a picture of Ajidy, as he appeared in his old-field school days in the Waxhaw settlement.

But Mrs. Jackson, it is said, 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 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. General Jackson had a distinct recollection of her receiving presents of linen from the old country, and, particularly, one parcel, the letter accompanying which was lost, to the sore grief of the old lady; for, in those days, a letter from " home" was a treasure beyond price. The impression that she was not destitute of resources is strengthened by the fact, that Andrew, at an early age, attended some of the better schools of the country — schools kept by clergymen, .in w^hich the languages were taught, and young men prepared for college and for the ministry.

The first school of this kind that he attended was an academy in the Waxhaw settlement, of which one Dr. Humphries was master. The site of the large log-house in which Dr. Humphries kept his school is still pointed out, but no traces of it remain ; nor can any information respecting the school, its master, or its pupik be now obtained. There is also a strong tradition that young Jackson attended a school in Charlotte, X. C, then called Queen's College, a school of renown at that day. The inhabitants of the pleasant town of Charlotte all believe this. Jackson himself once bald that he went to school there. When a delegation went from

Charlotte to Washington to ask Congress to establish a mint in the gold region, President Jackson was told by one of them that gold had been found in the very hill on which Queen's College had once stood. To which the President replied, " Then it must have grown since I went to school there, for there was no gold there then ;" a remark which the geologists of Charlotte still facetiously quote when the question of the origin of gold is discussed among them.

There are yet living several persons whose fathers were schoolmates of Andrew Jackson ; and though none of them can say positively where he went to school, nor who were his teachers, nor what he learned, yet all of them derived from their fathers some general and some particular impressions of his character and conduct as a school-boy. Such incidents and traits as have thus come down to us, will not be regarded, I trust, as too trivial for brief record.

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. Being a slender boy, more active than strong, he was often thrown.

" I could throw him three times out of four," an old schoolmate used to say; "but he would never stay throwed. He was dead game, even then, and never would give up."

He was exceedingly fond of running foot-races, of leaping the bar, and jumping ; and in such sports he was excelled by no one of his years. To younger boys, who never questioned his masteiy, he was a generous protector ; there was nothing he would not do to defend them. His equals and superiors found him self-willed, somewhat overbearing, easily offended, very irascible, and, upon the whole, "difficult to get along with." One of them said, many years after, in the heat of controversy, that of all the boys he had ever known, Andrew Jackson was the only bully who was not also a coward.

But the boy, it appears, had a special cause of irritation in a disagreeable disease, name unknown, which induces a habit of^ — not to put too fine a point on it — " slobbering," Woe to any boy who presumed to jest at this misfortune ! Andy was upon him incontinently, and there was either a fight or a drubbing. There is a

1777.] CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION. 17

story, too, of some boys secretly loading a gun to the muzzle, and giving it to young Jackson to fire off, that they might have the pleasure of seeing it " kick" him over. They had that pleasure. Springing up from the ground, the boy, in a frenzy of passion, exclaimed :

" By G— d, if one of you laughs, I'll kill him !"

And no*one dared to laugh. It was a swearing age, the reader will remember. The expression, " By G — d," was almost as familiar to the men of that day as m.o^i Dieu now is to Frenchmen, or mein Gott to Germans. It was used commonly by fox-hunting clergymen, there is reason to believe. So, at least, we may infer from the comedies and novels of the period.

Frolic, however, not fight, was the rulmg interest of Jackson's childhood. He pursued his sports with the zeal and energy of his nature. No boy ever lived who liked fun better than he, and his fun, at that day, was of an innocent and rustic character, such as strengthens the constitution, and gives a cheery tone to the feelings ever after.

I can only add a second-hand reminiscence of a rainy-day debate between Andy and one of his uncles, related to me by a son of that uncle. The subject of the discussion Avas, What makes the gentleman ? The boy said. Education ; the uncle. Good Principles. The question was earnestly debated between them, without either being able to convince the other.

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, and 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. f He never learned to write the English lai%uage correctly, though, he often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. He never learned to spell correctly, though he was a better speller than Frederic II., Marlborough, Napoleon, or Washington. Few men of his day, and no women, were correct spellers. And, indeed, we may

LIFE OF ANDREW J A C K S O :-' . [iVVT.

say that all the most illustrious men have been bad spellers, except those who could not spell at all. The scrupulous exactness in that respect, which is now so common, ,was scarcely known three generations ago.

The schools, then, contributed little to the equipment of this eager boy for the battle of life. He derived much from the honest and pure people among whom he was brought up. Their instinct of hwiesty was strong within him always. He imbibed a reverence for the character of Avoman, and a love of purity, which, amid all his wild ways, kept him stainless. In this particular, I believe he was without reproach from youth to old age. He deeply loved his mother, and held her memory sacred to tlie end of his life. He used often to speak of the courage she had displayed when left without a protector in the wilderness, and would sometimes clinch a remark or an argument by saying, ^''That I learned from my good old mother."

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 school-houses, and putting a stop to the peaceful labors of the people, Andrew Jackson was little more than thirteen. His brother Hugh, a man of 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.

1780.] DURING THE KEVOLUTIONART WAR. 19

Chapter III. . * During The Reyolutionart "war

It was on the 29th of May, 1.780, that Tarleton, with three hundred horsemen, surprised a detachment of militia in the Waxhaw settlement, aijd 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 woiinds, and none less than three. For many days Andrew and his brother assisted their mother in v\'aiting upon the sick men ; Andrew, more in rage than pity, burning to avenge their wounds and his brother's death.

Tarleton had fiiUen upon the Waxhaws like a summer storm, which bursts upon us unawares, does its destructive work, and rolls thundering {iway. The families who had fled returned soon to their homes, and the wounded men recovered, or found rest in the old church-yard. Then came rumors of the apjjroach of a larger body of royal troops under Lord Rawdon, who soon arrived in the Waxhaw country,, demanding of every one a formal promise not to take part in the war thereafter. Mrs. Jackson, her boys, the Crawfords, and a majority of their neighbors, abandoned their homes and retired a few miles to the north, rather than enter into a covenant so abhorrent to their feelings. A few days later, Rawdon was compelled to retrace his steps, and the Waxhaw people returned to their farms again. Once more that summer they were alarmed by a hostil-e assemblage a few miles distant, and prepared for a third flight ; but the " murderous tories " were dispersed in time, and our friends still clung to their homes. The men who were able to bear arms were generally away with* their companies, and the women, children, and old men passed their days and nights in fear, ready at any moment for flight.

Tarleton's massacre at the Waxhaws kindled the flames of war in all that re^on of the Carolinas. Many notable actions were fought, and some striking thongh nnimportant advantages were gained by the patriot forces. Andrew Jackson and his brother Robert were present at Sumpter's gallant blundering 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 tiie 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 were attached to Davie's company, nor is it likely that Andrew, a boy of thirteen did more til an witness the afiair at the Hanging Rock. If he was in a jDOsition to observe the movements of the troops, or if he ovei'heard the coTnments of Colonel Davie upon the battle, he received a lesson in the art of war. Colonel Davie attributed the failure of the attack to the circumstance that the men dismounted a hundred yards too late. " Dismounting under fire is an operation that tasks the discipline of the best troops, and is sure to discompose militia," maintained Colonel Davie in the council. Sumpter thought it best to dash in on horseback to a point near the enemy's works; then dismount, and rush upon them on foot. This was attempted, but the attempt was only half successful, owing to the confusion caused by dismounting iinder fire. The rum finished what error began, and the affair ended in a debauch instead of a victory.