The life of Andrew Jackson

Front matter

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Preface

Probably the first person to take thought of a life of Andrew Jackson was Jackson himself. His letters show that he began to preserve material for his biographer from the time he became a pubUc personage. The drafts of the letters he wrote, the letters lie received, and his simplest public papers were carefully filed away in boxes. Some of the papers were endorsed, "To be kept for the historian." They became numerous with the wars against the Creeks and the British, his first great achievements; and out of that phase of life came his first biography. To Major .;ohn Reid, miUtary aide, faithful companion in the darkest hours < ;f trial, author of many of Jackson's military papers, and a man of real abiHty — as his book shows — was entrusted the task of preparing this story. He carried the narrative through the Creek war before it was interrupted by death in 1816. Jackson 'A/ as concerned to find a man to complete the work, and at last hit upon John H. Eaton, then a promising young lawyer whose industry was so great that the book was placed before the public in 181 7. Its origin, progress, and completion were all under the direct oversight of Jackson himself. Eaton brought • ut a second edition in 1828, with chapters bringing the story down to date. It was not a critical work, but the parts which had no bearing on the political campaigns of 1824 and 1828 were v/ell written. Reid particularly recommends himself as a straightforward historian.

Jackson's political career brought forth a plentiful crop of biographies, all of which are mentioned in the exhaustive preface T.0 Parton's "Life of Jackson." Some praised him and some f vi PREFACE condemned, but none were satisfactory. Meantime, the col lection of letters and official documents was ever growing, and other men, ambitious of renown or of Jackson's favor, aspired to write a comprehensive biography. First it was James Gadsden, who was assured in 1822 that he should have the coveted opportunity. Why he gave it up does not appear. He was from South Carolina, a friend of Calhoun, and went into oecultation when that statesman ceased to be chief heutenant of the democratic leader. That of itself would have made his literar}^ hopes impossible. Next, Major Henry Lee, of eminent Viriginie lineage, and a ready political writer, got the promise. He actually began the task, but fell from favor in 1829 when chargec with such grave personal immorality that he could no longer be countenanced. He was rejected by the senate for an unimportant consulate, and turned against Jackson. It was with some difficulty that he was induced to give up the forty pages he had finished of the proposed book.

Other aspirants were Roger B. Taney, George Bancroft, and Amos Kendall. The last was given the promise of the papers. He began to write in 1842, when he had lost the auditorship to which his patron appointed him. He was then poor financially and expected large returns from his venture. He began to pubUsh it in parts, announcing that fifteen would complete the enterprise. Jackson placed the entire collection of papers at his disposal and two visits to the "Hermitage" gave fair opportunity to get all it contained. He carried away to Washington many of the most important papers and had not returned them when Jackson died in 1845. His work was interrupted when seven instalments had appeared, and it was not completed. Jackson was not pleased with the numbers which he saw, but did not withdraw the papers. There was a plan on foot to build a Jacksor? memorial in Washington, and he desired them to be handed over by Kendall, when he had finished with them, to Frank P.

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tion of the generosity of the donors the Library has called it "The Montgomery Blair Collection." Historians have cited it by the briefer title of "Jackson Mss. " and that term has been used in the foot-notes in the present work. I cannot refrain from acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Montgomery Blair, jr., and his wife for many courtesies in connection with the use of the papers, and for much help which I have been permitted to receive from their intelUgent knowledge of the contents. Their interest in preserving them and making them accessible to historians demands the gratitude of every student of the Jacksonian period.

It is not possible to say how much was withheld from the collection by Kendall, since the destruction of his papers by fire about twenty years ago disposed of most of those in his possession. The collection is not full for the two presidential terms of Jackson. It is a fair inference that Jackson had many papers for that period, and since they are not found it is probable these were retained. But on this phase of his career contemporary criticism was so fierce that the light has been fairly abundant. Here, too, we have much information in the papers of contemporary politicians, particularly in those of Van Buren, who was closely associated with the minor leaders of his party.

Before fire destroyed the Kendall papers a portion of them, it is not possible to say how many, came into the hands of W. G. Terrell, a Washington newspaper man, who disposed of them in various ways. Some were published in the Cincinnati Commercial, February 4, 5, and 10, 1879. These were sixty-nine letters from Jackson to Kendall and cover the period from September 4, 1827, to May 20, 1845, the entire acquaintance of the two men. They are most complete from 1832 to 1835. It is possible that some of these letters were from the Jackson collection, although all were conceivably the property of Kendall. In 1909 Hon. John Wesley Gaines, member of congress from

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Tennessee, purchased other papers which had been in Terrell's possession and came from Kendall. Mr. Gaines presented them to Mrs. Rachael J. Lawrence, daughter of Andrew Jackson, jr. Among them were several which must have been secured by Kendall from Jackson. The most important were published in the Nashville Tennesseean, April i8 and 25, 1909.

Some other smaller collections of Jackson letters exist. The Tennessee Historical Society owns one collection, and a complete list of its contents is published in the American Magazine of History (Nashville), volume vi., pp. 330-334. The most important pieces are published in full in the same journal. Many letters from Jackson to W. B. Lewis are in the Ford collection in the New York Public Library, some of which have been published in the Bulletin of the library. Through the courtesy of Mr. Worthington C. Ford and Mr. Gaillard Hunt, his successor as chief of the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress, I have been able to satisfy myself of the value of other smaller and more personal collections.

Of the papers not primarily Jackson's the most important are in the Van Buren collection in the Library of Congress. It contains few letters by Van Buren, for it was not his habit to leave an exact record of transactions. Late in life he asked Jackson to return his letters, and the master of the "Hermitage" complied. Van Buren gave as his reason the desire to use them in an autobiography he was preparing. The missives in question were doubtless destroyed, since they do not appear in the Van Buren collection, nor are there traces of them or the use of them in the unpublished autobiography which survives. A few remain in the Jackson papers, probably overlooked when the rest went back to the writer of them. On the other hand, Van Buren did not mind keeping the correspondence of his friends. A large collection survives in which are many letters from the leading poHticians of the day. Men who were in awe

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of Jackson, or who represented other factions than his, were in communication with the cool and shrewd New Yorker, whose philosophy was to keep on personal terms with any man whom he might some day need for a friend. Another valuable series is the W. B. Lewis letters In the Ford collection in the New York Public Library.

It was Jackson's habit to write his letters in draft, leaving his secretaries to make the fair copies which were actually sent to correspondents. The originals were carefully filed and are numerously preserved. The Blair heirs placed in the collection before it went to the Library of Congress many originals from him to their grandfather, of which no drafts or copies were made. Besides these, the Jackson papers contain many unimportant documents. Business letters, formal notes from strangers, dinner invitations, morning reports of regiments at New Orleans, and letters from admirers begging for locks of his hair were treasured with as much care as the correspondence of his most prominent party associates. This lack of discernment in reference to the source of information of the future biography witnesses how seriously he considered the task he was leaving to the historian. Van Buren and Lewis showed more discrimination and weeded out unimportant matter. In the Atlantic Monthly, volume 95, page 217, there is a valuable description of "The Jackson and Van Buren Papers" from the pen of Mr. James Schouler, the historian.

These manuscripts are the best portray ers of Jackson. They reveal faithfully a man who was great, spite of many Hmitations. He was badly educated, he was provincial, his passions frequently overcast judgment, he had a poor concept of a proper adjustment of the administrative machine, and he clung tenaciously to some of the worst political ideals of the past; yet he was so well endowed by nature that he broke over these impediments and became a man of distinction. He belonged to the xii PREFACE

class of strong personalities in whicii are Bismarck, Wellington, Wallenstein, and Julius Caesar. He was untaught in books and to a large extent unteachable, but through native abihty he solved the greatest problems from the standpoint of the light within him. His ideals were absorbed from the frontier environment: had he been placed by nature in other surroundings, for example, the society of some older community, he must still have been a marked man, possibly a leader equally effective in the life around him. But it was his to represent a new community which reckoned little with the finer points of intelligent experience. He voiced the best thought of the frontier, which happened to be the average thought of the older parts of America of his day. His Western ideals were for him the only ideals. They gave him his battle-cry, which, when once uttered, found support in the hearts of average Americans everywhere; and this was the secret of the Jacksonian movement.

Nor was he altogether dependent for position on his military renown, which only served to call attention to qualities which on the battlefield or in the political arena were the real Jackson. He persisted as a politician quite independently of the admiration men had for his achievements as a warrior. Taylor, Scott, and Grant were also military heroes whose soldierly qualities thrust them into the political field, where their well-earned laurels faded. In Jackson's case the soldier's wreath blossomed and grew until political achievement became the chief part of his glory.

It has been my object to show in the faithful story of his life the exact trace he left in the nation's history. I have not slighted his failings or his virtues; and I have tried to refrain from warping the judgment of the reader by passing upon his actions. I have sought, also, to present a true picture of the political manipulations which surrounded him and in which he was an important factor. I can hardly hope to have performed

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either task with universal satisfaction. I am conscious that errors of judgment and misapprehension of facts may have clouded the effort on either or both sides; but as each Httle may serve to lead the human mind to a clearer realization of truth, so I venture to hope that this life may be a contribution to a better knowledge of the complex period with which it deals. For the errors of either kind I beg the reader's generous indulgence.

I must add an expression of my gratitude to many friends of learning for abundant aid in the work I have done. To Messrs. Herbert Putnam, Worthington C. Ford, and Gaillard Hunt, of the Library of Congress, I am especially indebted for kindnesses which went far beyond the requirements of professional service. I have received valuable aid from Mr. Wilberforce Fames, of the New York PubHc Library; Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery Blair, of Silver Springs, Maryland; Miss E. Estella Davies, of Nashville; Mr. Edward Biddle, of Philadelphia; Mr. George W. Cable, Dr. John C. Hildt, and Mr. Henry B. Hinckley, of Northampton, Massachusetts; Professor R. C. H. Catterall, of Cornell University; ]Mrs. J. Lindsay Patterson, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Mr. William Beer, of New Orleans; Professor Frederic W. Moore, of Vanderbilt University ; and many others whose interest and encouragement have been as valuable as more material assistance. I save for my last mentioned and best gratitude the personal help of my wife, Jessie Lewellin Bassett, through the tedious years of labor which my task has demanded.

Northampton, Massachusetts^ ■ J. S. B.

September 2j, igio.

Preface To The Second Edition

A NEW edition enables me to notice a criticism made when the first edition appeared. An otherwise friendly reviewer thought that it was a pity that the book was not a " life and times " of Jackson. In an equally friendly spirit I wish to say that it was not meant to be such a book. History is one thing and biography is another: this is biography, unless it fails of its purpose. To try to make one treatment combine the two mars the unity which ought to characterize any wellwritten book. The subject of a biography is entitled to the chief place in his own life : when he ceases to have it he becomes a mere peg upon which to hang other men's deeds. I have sought to keep Jackson in the foreground and to treat the political history of his time as an important background. Of course, it is agreed that the background is a part of the picture.

Jackson was the centre of a web of political intrigue that cannot be ignored by the student of the history. The actual course of events was directed by the circle around him. It is vain that the academic historian is satisfied to deal with the results of the intrigues, without wishing to observe the process by which they worked. The citizen wishes to know the manipulations of the politicians in the past, because knowing them enables him to understand the process and better to give value to the actions of present-day leaders. The politician of to-day has equal interest in knowino- - ' really happened in the inner circles, because knr

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PREFACE enables him better to play the part he has to play in present activities. We cannot understand the Jacksonian period without understanding Jackson. It is to understand him, and through him the work he did, and not because gossip is attractive, that I have tried to raise the curtain of the innermost party stage.

This edition differs from the first in two respects: the one-volume form places it more easily within the reach of persons who may desire to know something about Jackson; and various minor changes have been made in the text, many of them in accordance with the suggestions of friends who have kindly offered their aid. The most notable alteration is in the extract from Biddle's memorandum, page 599. It is based on a more careful reading of the original, in which I have had the orenerous aid of Mr. Edward Biddle of Philadel-

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phia. It may not be improper to add that Professor Catterall, before he died, expressed his satisfaction with my interpretation of this paper, so different from his own.

JOHN SPENCER BASSETT.

Smith College,

Northampton, Mass.,

December 26, 1915.

Contents

CHAPTER Volume I page

I. Early Years 3

II. Early Career in Tennessee 15

Chapter I

In the years immediately following the Treaty of Paris, 1763, the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas were filled with vast pioneer enterprises. Along the roads which ran southward from the Potomac to the Dan, Yadkin, and Catawba, toiled many trains of immigrant wagons, and from Charleston to the upper valley region of South Carolina another throng of settlers was ever traveling. They all sought the red uplands, where rich meadows bordered a thousand creeks and brooks. Before this host primitive nature quickly gave way. Their axes soon sang triumphantly through many square miles of oak and pine land, their cattle drove the deer from the rich canebrakes, their corn fields began to nod saucily at the retreating forests, and homesteads and orchards announced the advent of the white man's civihzation.

The people came from several sources. Scotch-Irish predominated, but Germans were numerous, and there were many who belonged to that roving frontier class which, already separated from their Old-World moorings, had acquired the right to be called "American." It is convenient to classify them by their religious association, since religion was one of their earliest concerns. The Scotch-Irish were Presbyterians almost to a man; and their arrival was quickly followed by itinerant preachers, meeting-houses^-, and organized congregations. The Germans were Moravians, Lutherans, and German Reformers. Of the others many were Baptists, some were Quakers, and many more were of the class who care Httle for creed or parson.

Some of the best land in all this region was that which the Catawba Indians had occupied from the days of early colonial settlement. It lay on the Catawba River at the point where it crosses the North Carolina boundary line and south of Mecklenburg County in the upper province. By the middle of the eighteenth century this land was open for settlement. It passed the ordinary course with good land, first into the hands of speculators, then into the possession of small holders, and finally after many transfers among these purchasers into the hands of a permanent body of prosperous settlers.

A little north of the point where the state line turns to pass around the old Indian reservation it is cut by Waxhaw Creek, which rises in North Carolina and flows westward to the Catawba. Its adjacent lands are particularly desirable, and they attracted a thrifty and valuable class of immigrants. Most of them were from the North of Ireland, and the Waxhaw Meeting-House, which they built soon after their arrival, was one of the most noted early landmarks of the Catawba Valley.

Among the people whom the wagon trains from Charleston brought to this place in 1765 were Andrew Jackson, Elizabeth, his wife, and their two sons, Hugh and Robert. They were poor people from the neighborhood of Carrickfergus. The husband was probably of the Irish tenant class, and the wife is said to have been a weaver both before and after her marriage.' With

1 "A memorandum preserved by Jackson among his papers and without evidence of its reliability asserts that there were four brothers in Ireland by the name of Jackson each of whom occupied as freeholder "a large farm." Andrew, the youngest, lived near Castlercagh and sold his property in 1765. and went to America where he landed at Charleston, S. C, and removed to the back country. All of these Jacksons, it declared, were devoted to the Established Kirk of Scotland and were noted for their hospitahty . Castlereagh is about one hundred and twenty-five miles from Carrickfergus whence Jackson and Crawford sailed for America. One brother — his name is not given — lived at Ballynisca, in the parish of Car-Donnell and was father of Samuel Jackson, who became senior partner in the Philadelphia firm of Jackson and Bayard, with whom William Patterson, of Baltimore, lived when a youth. Another brother, name not given, lived at Knocknagoney, parish of Holywood, and his daughter married James Suffem, of New York, a brother of John Suffem, a prominent state politician. The fourth brother, whose name is not mentioned, lived at Bally Willy, parish of Bangor, and was called " Laird Jackson." This memorandum could have been prepared after the appearance of Rcid's book, and there is an evident purpose to enhance Jackson's social standing. He endorsed most of his papers, but nothing appears on this.

ithem came James Crawford and his wife, a sister of Eliz<*t)ctli a Jackson. Another sister had already come to the neighborhood, ^and her husband, George McKemy, bought land on the North Carolina side of the boundary line. Several other sisters were settled in the same community, two of whom were married to brothers by the name of LesHe. Crawford had some money and was able to buy a good farm on the lower part of the creek and in the southern province, but Jackson, being very poor, contented himself with a tract of land on Twelve Mile Creek, about five miles east of the Hne. The place was in North CaroUna, near the present railroad station of Potter, and it lies now, though not definitely pointed out, in a township and county which are called respectively Jackson and Union in honor of the sor ot" this impecunious immigrant. Two years of labor were enough, to break the body of the unfortunate man, and early in March, 1767, he rested from all his anxieties. His loyal friends, alter giving his spirit the honor of a true Irish wake, placed his remains in the Waxhaw churchyard. The widow abandoned the farm, the title to which the husband seems never to have acquired, and was received with her children into the home of her sister Crawford. A few days later, March 15, she was dehvered of a third son whom she called Andrew in token of his father. In the house of her sister she took the place of housekeeper — for Mrs. Crawford was an invalid — and her children were given the usual advantages of a well-to-do frontier home.

The exact spot at which Jackson was born has become a subject of controversy. By a tradition which hngered in the Leslie branch of the family the event was said to have occurred at the house of George McKemy. When the mother, so the story runs, journeyed from her stricken abode to her sister's home, she stopped for a visit at the home of McKemy, and here iabor came upon her. But when she was able to travel she continued her journey; and thus it came about that people ihought the Crawford home welcomed into the world th' future President.

The Leslie tradition was reduced to writing in 1858, by Genera,. Walkup, a citizen of North Carolina, who was enthusiastically con'/inced that to his own state belonged the honor of having the birthplace of so distinguished a man. The evidence is chiefly traceable to the statement of Sarah Lathen, whose mother, Mrs. Leslie, was a sister of Mrs. Jackson. Sarah Lathen, in 1 767, was a girl of seven years, and in her old age she was accustomed to tell her family and friends that she remembered going with her mother across the fields at night to the house of George McKemy to attend Mrs. Jackson when Andrew was born, and that hei mother, who was a midwife, was summoned for that purpose Some thirty years after her death the story was collected from those who remembered that she told it and reduced to written affidavits. Parton has reproduced it at length and accepted it as true in his Life of Jackson .

On tba other side is the general story accepted in the community and not openly contradicted in the hfe of Jackson, although several biographies of him were written in that period, two of them under the immediate supervision of their subject. Jackson himself was, in fact, very clear in his idea of his birthplace. ''I was born," said he on August ii [ 1824, \' ' in South Carolina, as I have been told, at the plantation whereon James Crawford hved, about one mile from the Carolina Road and of the Waxhaw Creek; left that state in 1784." ' This idea was confirmed in many of his important state papers and private letters. In the nullification proclamation and in his will he referred to South Carolina as "my native state."

In later years a spirited controversy, has grown up on this i Jackson to James H. Weatherspoon, of South Caroliaa, Aug. 11,1824, Jackson Mss.See also F. P. Blair to Lewis, Oct. 75, 1859, MssN. Y. Pub. Library; and Jackson , to Kendall. Nov. 2, 1843, {Ciminnali Commerrir> V'h rr> t87o1 in which he speaks of South Carqiina as "my birthplace and of which I am proud."

i point between citizens of the two states. Enthusiasm has abounded, and the argument has followed state lines till much confusion has resulted. Aside from such puzzhng factors, each contention presents some elements of probability. To the writer the weight of evidence seems to favor the South Carolinians. The Leslie tradition rests on an old woman's account of an event which happened when she was a child of seven, an event, too, about which a child could not be well informed. It was weakly corroborated by a statement of Thomas Faulkner, aged seventy; by another man, also a Leslie descendant, who relied on information which he said he had from Sarah Lathen's mother fifty years earlier: and by James D. Craig's statement that he had heard — evidently much earlier than his statement — "a very aged lady," Mrs. Cousar, say that she assisted at the birth at McKemy's house.

The weakness of this evidence lies in the long time which elapsed between the event and the time of its recording. All of it must have been carried many years in the minds of two people, one passing it on when she was very old to another who told it when he was very old. Add to this the enthusiasm which the narrators had for their stor>^ and the lack of critical examination of it when it came from their lips, place against it the clear statement of Jackson made in response to a question which this controversy aroused, that he was born in the house of James Crawford, in South Carolina, and to most men the story will probably appear doubtful. Somewhat more trustworthy is the explicit statement of General Jackson.'

Mrs. Jackson was a pious woman and is said to have fixed in her heart that her youngest son should become a minister, which leads to the suggestion that he must in early life have shown some leaning toward a hfe of public activity. But in his

'The evidence favoring the South Carolina side has been collected by A. S. Salley, jr., and published in the Charleston Sunday News, July 31, 1904. Later contention on the opposite side has added little to Parton; but see Tompkins's History oj Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, II., Chap. \'.

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earliest habits there was httle to confirm her hopes. Of all the wild youths of the neighborhood he was the wildest. The rough sports, passions, and habits of the North Ireland tenantry were planted in the new community, although ideals were being elevated by the development of property and new obhgations.

-J The boy had a sensitive, quick-tempered, persistent, independent, and rather violent disposition; and there was little in the life around him to soften these traits. He had an absorbing passion for excelling among a people whose ideals of excellence expressed themselves in horse-racing, cock-fighting, readiness to fight in defense of what they considered their honor, and in the "rather stilted but genuine habits of the frontier gentleman.

- As he came into the teens he was proficient in the use of heavy oaths, proverbially ready for a quarrel, fond of cock-fighting, already precocious in the knowledge of a horse, and in many other ways developed in waywardness. A moralist might have seei. in this no good results for the boy's future, and for most youths the forecast would have been a good one; but Jackson differed from most people. He was ever filled with a purpose to attain eminence. Vice was not an absorbing trait with him, even when he set at defiance the canons of decorum. He was not addicted to the more animal faults, and his errancy grew out of intellectual qualities rather than appetite. He was destined to shake it off with the advent of serious things, as many another strong-spirited man has done.

The ideals of the Waxhaw settlement did not demand much schooling for the boys. Ability to read and understand indifferent English, to write a legible hand, and to make ordinary b,usiness calculations were then the chief features of our rural education everywhere. It was enough for the ordinary purposes of the mass of American farmers, but it was too httle for a man who was to play a part in the government of the state or nation. Of such instruction a modicum was offered in the upper parts of the Carolinas and of that Andrew got his share, or something less. He was neither studious nor teachable, and what he got came through sheer contact with the process of education. He was mentally an egoist ; that is to say, one who relied on himself. There was no time in his life when he was willing to learn of others. Ideas came to him originally, and in obedience to a strong natural aptness for knowing what he wanted: it was not his nature to take them from others.

To the day of his death Jackson's attainments in scholarship were very meagre. He knew no more Latin than he could pick up in the practice of his profession of lawyer; his spelling and grammar were devoid of regularity and showed the utmost indifference to the rules by which they were determined for other people; and his acquaintance with literature is a negligible quantity in an estimate of his life. Occasionally one finds in his papers some oft-quoted phrase, as, Carthago delenda est, but it is always one which he must have heard on a hundred stumps in Tennessee. Of all his prominent contemporaries his utterances are most barren of allusions which show an acquaintance with poetry, history, or literature; and in comparison with him the grandiose Benton seems a pedant.