General Andrew Jackson, hero of New Orleans and seventh president of the United States

Front matter

Class Book_

O J

CojATi^htW.

Chapter I. Heroes— Childhood Of A Hero

NY boy or any man, however poor and humble, or however rich and exalted, wants to be a hero. r' Every girl and every woman, however lowly and obscure, or however fashionable and fortunate, wants to be a heroine and have a hero for her lover and husband; and the bride who marries for love thinks she has him — at least, until the honeymoon has passed. Any boy or man, any girl or woman, who has this volume in hand and is reading these words, feels the force of the truths' they express, and longs to be a hero or heroine, aspires to do something grand and noble, and would gladly win a place among the illustrious men or the honored women of the world.

Because every human being thus wishes to become great and good and noble, according to his or her standard of greatness, goodness and nobleness, there is not a boy or girl, not a man or a woman who does not sympathize with the struggles and the triumphs of heroes and heroines, and love to read the history of their lives. And so I am encouraged in the hope that everybody who sees it will enjoy the reading of the life-story which I am about to tell them of one of the greatest heroes who ever lived in this world, and who is known to history and to fame as Andrew Jackson, Judge Jackson, Senator Jackson, General Jackson, President Jackson, Old Hickory Jackson.

This celebrated hero was born in poverty and obscurity. It is doubtful if there is a boy or a girl who will read this story of Andrew Jackson's life who is as poor as he was in his childhood, or who is encountering as great obstacles as he encountered, or suffering hardships and privations as bitter as those which he suffered. But, fortunately, poverty, obstacles, hardships and privations are not the worst things which can befall a child of destiny. The}^ are, in fact, more likely to be blessings than misfortunes.

" Cast the bantling on the rocks. Suckle him with the she wolf's teat ; Wintered with the hawk and fox.

Power and speed be hands and feet."

Heroes — CJiildhood of a Hero.

The old stories of Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf and Cyrus the Great by a goat, are symbolic representations of the great truth that exposure and hardship and danger are sometimes the best things which can be provided for young immortals. It was certainly so in the case of our poor boy, Andrew Jackson ; and because he lived his life, and fought his fight, and conquered fate, and blazed a path from poverty and obscurity to greatness and renown, this land for which he fought and which he loved so well, has been a better land for poor boys and poor girls, and is now a better land for every struggling boy or girl, for every toiling man or woman, than it would have been had Andrew Jackson not thus lived and fought and conquered. And now let us read the story of this poor boy's life, and see how it was that he became the idolized hero of his native land.

Andrew Jackson was born near the Waxhaw settlement, in what is now Union County, North Carolina, on March 15, 1767, nine years before the Declaration of Independence was given to the world. His father died a few days before Andrew was born. In obscurity had he lived, and in obscurity was he buried. Mrs. Jackson, with her fatherless little boys, rode to the graveyard in the wagon that carried her husband's rude coffin.

The bereaved widow was left without a protector and in absolute poverty. Obliged to abandon her desolate and squalid home in the wilderness, she took refuge, with her two little sons, Hugh and lO Gcnc7'al Andrciu Jackson,

Robert, in the house of a hospitable friend, and there awaited the birth of her third child.

It was a pitiful case. Andrew's father (after whom the new-born infant was named) had come from Carrickfergus, in the north of Ireland, two years before (1765), inspired by the hope that he would be able to make a home for his family in the American wilderness. Being too poor to buy land, even at the low price at which it was then sold, he built a cabin on land that was not his own, and set at work to chop and plough out a farm for himself. But dying prematurely and suddenly, he left his little family without a home, and they were compelled (as stated above) to seek refuge with friends who had come from their native land with the Jacksons.

A pitiful case it was, most certainly ; but our little germ of a hero had got into the world ; and when we think of it, there was much in that. Without that, nothing would have been possible for him ; with that, God willing, everything was possible. Yet when we look back to those far-away days, and in imagination gaze upon that little child born in poverty so squalid and in obscurity so dense, it seems well-nigh miraculous that such a poor little creature should have come to fill so large a space in tlie world's history — should, in fact, have become the hinge on which his country's destiny was to swing for many years. When the Mayfloiver was launched she was as obscure as Andrew Jackson was in his infancy. The Mayflower might have sailed the seas for years, carrying merchandise, without impressing her name upon the minds and

Heroes — Childhood of a Hero, ii

the hearts of mankind. It was the freight she carried and the use she pwformed on her memorable voyage in 1620, which gave her immortality. She was then freighted with the embodied principles of religious and political liberty, and was the instrument for transplanting them to a soil where they could take root, and grow beyond the fondest dreams of their advocates ; and for these reasons her name became as imperishable as the incarnated principles which she brought to the shores of the Western World. As with ships, so -with babies; whether they win an immortality of fame depends on the freight of principle and character they carry on the voyage of life, and the uses to which their lives are devoted. Owing to his mother's religious teaching and example and her ardent patriotism, our Waxhaw boy, as we shall see, though as obscure as the Mayflower was at her launching, was freighted with the principles which that little vessel brought across the ocean, and through the passionate development of these principles in him and the heroic deeds he performed in maintaining them, his name, like that of the MayfloweVy became invested with immortality.

The widow Jackson, like most women of Scotch- Irish blood, was a strong, capable and thrifty woman, an excellent housekeeper and a wise and affectionate mother. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Hutchinson. Her father's family, in the old North of Ireland home, was as poor as her husband's. But she and her sisters were fairly educated, according: to the standard of education in those primitive times, and were brought up by pious, God-fearing parents " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." *They were weavers of linen. It is said that sometimes they worked all night at their looms in order to earn enough to keep the wolf from the door. It is not unfrequently the fortune of such obscure, faithful, God-fearing women to be the mothers of heroes.

When little Andrew was three weeks old, Mrs. Jackson left her temporary home and took up her abode with another family of friends and relatives, where she lived as housekeeper for several years. Her two elder boys worked on neighboring farms. Andrew grew apace. He was the idol of his mother's heart. Mrs. Jackson was a devout woman and a habitual and prayerful reader of the Bible. The incidents narrated in the sacred Word, of the consecration of children, in their early infancy, to the service of God, had matle a deep impression on her mind. In her heart she consecrated her baby boy to God's service, and resolved that. Providence permitting, he should be a minister of the Gospel. In her devout and simple faith, which believed all things and hoped all things, she could say, with Hannah of old : "■ For this child I prayed ; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him : therefore, also have I lent him to the Lord ; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord."

Although Mrs. Jackson's fond hopes were not to be realized, her indulgence of them was providential. They elevated and hallowed her intense maternal love, and filled it with a reverence which caused her son's childhood to be enveloped in a spiritual atmosphere that carried airs from Heaven in its bosom.

Heroes — Childhood of a Hero. 13

His nature was extraordinarily receptive of religious influences, and he breathed them in from infancy. He loved and reverenced his mother with passionate devotion. Her religious habits ; her daily reading of the Bible; her praying on her knees at his bedside; her custom of having him read the Bible, and pray at her knee with her hand resting lovingly on his head — all these sacred influences entered deeply into his soul and staid there forever. Although in after years they sometimes seemed to be buried deep under less benignant influences, they nevertheless were there, doing their silent work ; and as in childhood and youth and early manhood they had a powerful influence in the development and formation of his character, so in old age they blossomed anew and shed a halo of genial glory over the closing period of his life.

Many babies were born in the year 1767, some of which were surrounded by influences that seemed to predestine them to greatness ; but how few of them can now be called by name, except by the assiduous students of history! On July 11, 1767, when Andrew Jackson was within four days of being four months old, a boy baby was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, that was to become closely associated with some of the most important events of his life. As those two babies were rocked, so widely apart, in their North Carolina and Massachusetts cradles, only the eye of Omniscience could foresee the coalescences and the collisions that were to occur between them. The Massachusetts baby, afterward known as John Quincy Adams, was to pass through comfort, high social position, institu-

14 General Andrew Jacksori.

lions of learning, the cabinets of diplomacy and the courts of Europe, to meet, at last, in the envenomed contests for the Presidency of the United States in 1824 and 1828, that North Carolina baby who, meantime, had come up through partisan warfare in the Revolution, through poverty and bitter struggles for an education and a profession, through fighting with wild beasts, Indians, Spaniards, British and foes innumerable, to a commanding position in the admiration and affection of his countrymen. As this narrative goes on, it will be interesting to note how the wide-swirling current of events slowly but constantly brought these two babies, destined to become such shining stars in the political firmament, first into friendly contiguity and then into resounding collision.

There was another baby born that same year (1767) that was to have vastly more influence on Andrew Jackson's life than the Massachusetts baby. On what day, or in what place, this influential baby was born, I do not know. It was a girl baby, and was subsequently known as an intelligent, vivacious, lovely brunette, named Rachel Donelson. Her father, John Donelson, was a noted surveyor in Virginia, and it is probable that Rachel was born in that colony. How strangely the currents of human lives are mingled ! A man, at that time yet unborn, was to perish by Andrew Jackson's hand, for uttering insulting words in the presence and hearing of the lovely brunet.te, Rachel Donelson, of whom much will be said as this story goes on.

As Andrew Jackson increased in years and stature, he learned to ride, to hunt, and to do a good

Heroes — Child Jiood of a Hero, 15

deal of hard work of the kind that fell to the lot of all the boys of that region. In the days when the Persian Empire was at the height of its power and glory, the sum of a Persian boy's education was to ride on horseback, to shoot arrows, and to speak the truth. Andrew Jackson's education was like that of the Persian boy, except that he handled a rifle instead of a bow, and shot bullets instead of arrows. He could ride as well as any Persian, and he always spoke the truth. During a few months of each year, he was sent to school in a log school-house, where he was taught by rough, poorly educated, itinerant teachers. He took to his books kindly, and learned to write a fine, clear hand. His only failure was in his spelling ; to the end of his days he never mastered the orthography of the English language ; nor, in truth, did many of his contemporaries. It seemed as though the only way in which the majority of our Revolutionary worthies could escape being bad spellers was never to spell at all.

Andrew was tall for his years, rather loose-jointed and not robust. He had sandy hair and piercing blue eyes. He was free in his manners, looked people squarely in the face, had an air of dauntless resolution, and became more and more the pride of his mother's heart.

In 1848, I went to Washington as a reporter in the

United States Senate. James K. Polk, a disciple

and personal friend of Jackson's, was then President.

Old Hickory had left Washington, at the close of his second term, in 1837, only eleven years before.

The city was full of people who knew him personally, thousands of whom idolized him and hundreds of whom hated him. I had been intensely interested in his life from childhood, and I eagerly listened to everybody who would talk to me about him. I ransacked their memories for facts, for stories, for anecdotes, and made notes thereof, with the intention of some day writing the old hero's life.

I heard enough about Andrew Jackson from his personal friends and his personal enemies in Washine:ton to fill several volumes. Some of his friends were old men from North Carolina whom he had appointed to office while he was President, and who professed to be related to him either on his father's or his mother's side. Their pretensions may have been founded on fact, for Andrew Jackson was not a man to pass over an honest and capable relative or friend to give office to a strangef, under the hypocritical assumption of a degree of public virtue which was never possessed by any man so basely mean as to forget in the day of triumph the friends who stood by him in the battle and helped him to win his victory. According to the testimony of these old men, who were familiar with the legends of Old Hickory's youth, the boy Andrew Jackson — or Andy Jackson as he was called — was a sprightly, fun-loving imp, whose propensity to boyish mischief was irrestrainable. He was fond of all athletic games, especially running, jumping and wrestling. He was also fond of horseback riding and hunting. As a wrestler, he depended on his grit more than on his strength. No matter how often he was thrown by more muscuLar boys, he would always demand " one more trial, " until, by his tireless persistency, he would obtain a victory over a boy larger and

Heroes — ChildJiood of a Hero. 17

stronger than himself. Mr. Parton, whose extensive and comprehensive '* Life of Andrew Jackson " is a store-house of facts and anecdotes, gives the testimony of an old school-mate of Andy Jackson's who says :

^* I could throw him three times out of four, but he would never stay throwed. He was dead game, even then, and never would g\YQ up. "

Andy's courage was so marked, it made a lasting impression upon the minds and memories of the inhabitants of the neighborhood. He was a leader of the brave boys of the settlement, and was ever ready to defend the weak and to defy the strong. He had a terrible temper, but his wrath was easily appeased as soon as opposition was overcome and victory had perched upon his banner. In all these respects, the old adage, " The boy is father of the man, " was absolutely true in the case of Andrew Jackson. To the end of his days he was a leader among the bravest of the brave, a defender of the weak, a defter of the wrong and strong. His courage and his fortitude were, as we shall see by and by, so lofty and so unconquerable as to seem to be superhuman. In 1834, William Cobbett, well known in his day as a brave British soldier, a member of Parliament and a writer of distinction, wrote a life of Andrew Jackson, in which he calls, him '* the greatest and bravest man now living in this world, or who has ever lived in this world, as far as my knowledge extends. "

As years went on and Andrew's character developed, Mrs. Jackson's fond hope that her favorite boy would become a preacher of the Gospel increased in strength and deepened in intensity.

1 8 Gcnei'al Aiidi^ew Jackson.

To see Andrew in a pulpit, expounding the Word of God and warning sinners to flee from the wrath to come, was the highest object of her ambition, the consuming desire of her heart. She toiled, scrimped and schemed for that end, managed to send Andrew to some of the best schools then accessible, and would probably have accomplished her purpose of making him a clergyman had not over-ruling circumstances of a stern and terrible nature interfered with her plans. But her efforts had been in the direct lines of Providence, and, to a degree beyond computation, had begun to prepare her boy for a career which was to be altogether different from a clergyman's. The gospel which Providence was to call Andrew Jackson to preach was the gospel of patriotism ; his church was to be the military camp ; his pulpit was to be his war-horse, and his doctrine was to be thundered from the mouths of cannon.

One cannot help considering what the result would have been if the fond mother's wishes had been realized, and the brave, passionate, indomitable, uncompromising Andrew Jackson had become a preacher of the ^Gospel. As far as one can judge, he would have been a commanding pastor. His flock could have taken no middle course — would not even have been permitted to look at forbidden pastures through the fence. Me would have sharply separated the goats from the sheep and driven the goats to Hades and the sheep to Heaven " without mitigation or remorse." No neighboring clergyman, no wandering preacher from afar would have been permitted to poach on his parish. He would have taken care of his own saints and provided for his own sinners. He would have given the devil no peace. But, as has already been intimated, Providence was preparing quite another arena for Andrew Jackson to display his powers in ; an arena for which his nature pre-eminently fitted him.

CHAPTER n.

THE BOY SOLDIER..

Andrew Jackson was nine years old in the )^ear (1776) in which the Declaration of Independence was adopted and published.' His brother Hugh was fifteen, and his brother Robert was twelve years old. The next year, 1777, a baby was born near Richmond, Va., that was to thwart some of Andrew Jackson's dearest hopes and to incur his bitter enmity. That baby was afterward known and passionately loved, and is still admired and loved, as Henry Clay.

In 1779 a boy baby was born in Ireland that, by the swirling current of events, was to be brought in sharp and far-sounding collision with the Carolina boy. That Irish baby boy was afterward known by the honored and celebrated name of General Sir Edward Pakenham.

In 1780, Charleston was captured by the British, and Lord Cornwallis swept through the Carolinas, marking his path with devastation. The country was laid waste, and the inhabitants were driven to

20 General A^idrew Jackson, the woods and the swamps for refuge. The Waxhaw settlement lay in the path of the British army. Hugh Jackson was already a trooper in the regiment of Colonel William R. Davie, who subsequently became Andrew Jackson's ideal soldier. Hugh Jacks(jn, though well grown for his age (nineteen), could not stand the hardships of partisan warfare. After fighting bravely at the battle of Stono Ferry, he died of exhaustion. The brave boy had the true Jackson grit, which never gave up so long as the vital principle remained.

In that same year (1780), a baby boy was born that was afterward known as Charles Dickinson. I do not know the place of his birth. There are legends that he was a marvelously beautiful babe ; in after years he was certainly a marvelously handsome man. As his mother kissed his dimpled hand, she had no premonition that it was to become the most expert hand in the use of a pistol known to that day and generation. How little a mother knows, as she kisses her baby boy's hand, with what it may in time be stained ! The hand now reddest with a human brother's blood was once a baby's innocent, dimpled hand. Fortunately for her peace, Mrs. Dickinson could not foresee that her son's confidence in his mastery of the pistol was to lead him to insult the lovely brunette, Rachel Donelson, in order to provoke the chivalric Andrew Jackson to come within his weapon's deadly range.

In the spring of 1780, a camp of militia was formed near the Waxhaw settlement, for the purpose of protecting the patriots against the hostility of the Tories who sided with the British. Militia have never been noted for taking precautions against surprise, and the Waxhaw militia were not different in this respect from other soldiers of their kind. In May (1780), the dashing Colonel Tarleton, who worked so much woe to the patriots of the Carolinas, surprised the camp and dispersed the militia, who left over a hundred of their number dead and a hundred and fifty wounded. Such terror did Tarleton's name and conduct inspire, the inhabitants fied to the forests for safety ; Mrs. Jackson fleeing with them in company with her two sons, Robert and Andrew.

Tarleton swept on his devastating way, not pausing to note the ruin he had wrought, and after he disappeared, the frightened inhabitants returned to their desolated homes. An appalling scene met their view. The bodies of the dead lay unburied, the wounded were suffering without any ministering hand to assuage their agonies. The work of burying the dead and caring for the wounded was at once begun by the returned fugitives. The old Waxhaw Church was turned into a hospital. Mrs. Jackson and her two boys became nurses of the wounded, and were assiduous in their ministrations to the helpless men, who died day after day despite all that could be done for them. On Andrew Jackson, the sympathetic, fiery-hearted boy of thirteen, the effect of all this ravage and destruction and suffering and death was profound. It burnt into his soul. As he tenderly ministered to the wants of the wounded, and day after day saw the dead buried in their rude graves, he hungered to avenge their wrongs. His patriotic passion set his child's

2 2 General Andrezv Jackson, heart ailamc, and pulsated in every drop of his fiery blood. It is related of him that while afterward passing a few months in the family of a distant relative, he used to be sent to the blacksmith shop with broken household utensils and farm implements to have them repaired. He never came home without some deadly weapon that he had rudely fashioned at the shop, with which to smite the British. Once he fastened a scythe to the end of a long pole, and on reaching home he began with great fury to cut down the weeds that grew about the house, exclaiming, in his wrath :

" Oh, if I were a man, how I would sweep down the British with my grass-blade !"

In the summer of 1780, Robert Jackson, aged fifteen, and Andrew, aged thirteen, became regular partisan troopers, donned their hunting-shirts, slung their guns across their shoulders, mounted their horses and joined the Patriot forces. It is impossible not to think that a boy only thirteen years old would be of but little service in such rough work as the Patriot troopers were called upon to perform. But Andrew Jackson was a phenomenal boy. In describing General Sumter's successful attack on the British at Hanging Rock, on July 30, 1780, Bancroft says :

" Among the partisans who were present in this

fight was Andrew Jackson, an orphan boy of Scotch-

Irish descent, whom hatred of oppression and love

of country impelled to deeds beyond his years."*

In order to understand Andrew Jackson's seem-

* Bancroft's History of the United States. Vol. v, 383.

ingly incredible boyish achievements, we must remember the training he had received in his mother's home and at his mother's knee. Under the influence of this training, he had come to believe in God's superintending Providence with absolute faith ; and by a superintending Providence he understood a Providence that would superintend Andrew Jackson. His predominant characteristics were such as unwavering trust in God rapidly develops in ardent young natures that are predisposed to faith in the Divine. It is well known that elevated and ardent spiritual affection quickens and strengthens and matures all the faculties of the mind to a marvelous degree. Andrew Jackson's mental faculties were thus quickened, strengthened and matured. He was under the domination of trust in God, love for his mother and his native land, and hatred of his country's foes. This triple combination of strenuous affections, kept in full play by the circumstances which environed him, gave the boy the courage, the fortitude, the endurance and the sagacity of a man. All the legends of those days testify to his zeal, his energy and his efficiency. His chance had come to gratify the dearest wish of his heart, to help " sweep down the British with his grass-blade," and he was vigilant to make the most of his opportunities.

Raid after raid upon the country near the Waxhaw settlement kept the people in constant alarm, and compelled them again and again to flee to the woods and the swamps foi refuge. Colonel Davie and the other partisan leaders could do but little to protect them against the numerous detachments of British

24 General Andreiu Jackso7i, troops aided by the malignant Tories. The wrath of the Patriots against the Tories burned at white heat, and their hatred was rancorously reciprocated by the allies of the British. The most cruel civil war raged throughout the Carolinas. The passions of the inhabitants became so inflamed that kindhearted Christian men enacted the part of fiends.

In August, 1780, General Gates was defeated at Camden, S. C, by Lord Cornwallis. That was a crushing blow to the Patriots. It filled the Tories with exultation. They became still more active, rancorous and brutal : and the Whigs (as the Patriots were called) defended themselves with corresponding animosity and ferocity. The effect of this horrible contest on the malleable, the growing, the forming nature of Andrew Jackson was powerful and lasting. Patriotism became a religion with him, and hatred of his country's foes a frenzy ; and we shall see how, thirty-five years afterwards, when his opportunity came, he poured forth all this, in one terrific blast of doom, upon the finest British army that ever stepped upon American soil.

Things finally came to such a pass in the Waxhaw region that, whenever one of the American soldiers wanted to spend a night at home, special arrangements had to be made to defend his dwelling and save him from capture or death. On a certain occasion, Captain Sands, one of the Patriot ofBcers, wishing to visit his family, a guard was sent to protect him. Andrew Jackson was one of the guard. The men were so exhausted by long-continued marching and watching, that they all fell asleep by midnight ; but one of them, who was restless in his slumber, heard a noise, and, going out of doors, saw a band of the enemy stealthily approaching the house. Andrew Jackson was lying next the door. The man who had discovered the approach of the enemy, seized the sleeping boy by the hair, and cried : *' The Tories are upon us !" Instantly, the boy was wide awake. Springing through the door, with the rest of the guard gathered in a group behind him, he challenged the approaching foe. No reply being given, he discharged his musket at the enemy, who returned the fire, mortally wounding the restless man who had given the alarm. Fortunately, another band of Tories, unknown to the first assailants, came up from an opposite direction and opened fire on the house. This caused the first band to halt. Little Andrew, with the instinct of a commander, took advantage of their confusion to withdraw the guard into the house, from which the Patriots kept up a brisk fire. At a critical moment, a bugle call was heard, which indicated that a company of Patriot troopers were advancing to the rescue of the beleagued guard. This caused both bands of Tories to hasten away, and the guard passed the remainder of the night in peace. It was afterward learned that the bugle call was sounded by a neighbor who heard the firing, and, suspecting that Captain Sands's house was attacked, took that method of rendering him the only efficient aid he could give.