Kifcrrsi&e Biographical 
 NUMBER i. 
 
 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN 
 
ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM GAKROTT BROWN 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 11 East Seventeenth Street 
 Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue 
 
 (Cfce Rtoer.gtDe 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY WILLIAM GARROTT BROWN 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 227627 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE WAXHAWS AND THE WILDERNESS . 1 
 H. CONGBESS: THE BENCH: THE MILITIA . 24 
 
 III. TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA .... 46 
 
 IV. NEW ORLEANS 69 
 
 V. THE SEMINOLES AND THE POLITICIANS . . 87 
 VI. THE WHITE HOUSE 118 
 
ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 THE WAXHAWS AND THE WILDERNESS 
 
 IN Lafayette Square, which fronts the 
 White House at Washington, there is an 
 equestrian statue of a very thin, long-headed 
 old man whose most striking physical charac 
 teristics are the firm chin and lips and the 
 bristling, upright hair. The piece is not a 
 great work of art, but it gives one a strong 
 impression of determination, if not of pug 
 nacity. Scidptors have not the means to 
 represent the human eye, else this impres 
 sion might have been made stronger ; for the 
 old gentleman whose warlike aspect is here 
 reproduced had a glance like a hawk s. He 
 had, moreover, a habit of gazing fixedly at 
 any one who attracted his attention. When 
 
JACKSON 
 
 he was angry, as he was quite frequently, 
 few men could meet his look with composure. 
 When he was in good humor, however, as he 
 usually was when he dealt with his friends, 
 or with women or children, his eyes could be 
 very kindly, and his grim lips could part in 
 a smile that was extremely attractive. 
 
 Not far away is the Treasury building. 
 Were the horseman alive, by merely turning 
 his head he could see its outline through the 
 trees. There is a tradition in Washington 
 that when this old man lived in the White 
 House, and Congress voted to erect a new 
 Treasury building, the old one being burned, 
 there was some question of the exact spot 
 on which it should stand. The question was 
 put to him when he happened to be walk 
 ing near the western end of Pennsylvania 
 Avenue. He struck his cane on the ground 
 and said shortly, " Put it here, sir," and 
 there it stands. Whether or not the story 
 is true, it is characteristic of the man and 
 in keeping with the history of his times ; 
 forGvhen Andrew Jackson was President 
 most things were done at Washington just 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 3 
 
 as he ordered them to be done. His 
 friends declared that this was so because in 
 most things his will stood for the will of the 
 American people ; his enemies, that they 
 were done for no good reason whatever, but 
 only because a despot commanded his slaves 
 to do them. 
 
 To this day there is the same division of 
 opinion. The historians still fight the same 
 battle over him and his doings which hi 
 former times was fought out by famous ora 
 tors in Congress, by the whole people at the 
 polls. It is doubtful, indeed, if there ever 
 will be, until the end of the Republic itself, 
 an end of the dispute over the place which 
 that slender figure with the bristling hair 
 ought to have in American history. Had 
 Andrew Jackson any good claim to statues 
 and monuments, to the first place in the 
 Republic, to popularity such as no other 
 man had enjoyed since Washington, to power 
 such as Washington himself had never exer 
 cised? Did he prove himself worthy of the 
 place and power he held ? To answer either 
 yes or no with assurance one must patiently 
 
4 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 examine more books than Andrew Jackson 
 ever glanced through in his whole life. This 
 little book would hardly contain the full 
 titles of them all. Yet it may perhaps be 
 large enough to let the reader see what man 
 ner of man he was concerning whom so many 
 bitter controversies have raged. Perhaps it 
 may serve to explain how a Scotch-Irish boy, 
 born to the deepest obscurity and the wretch- 
 edest poverty, and blessed, apparently, with 
 no remarkable gifts of mind or body, came 
 to have statues carved in his honor, towns 
 and counties and cities named for him, 
 long books written about him, a great party 
 organized to do his bidding, the whole coun 
 try time and again divided into those who 
 were for him and those who were against 
 him. 
 
 It is quite important, as Mr. Parton, the 
 most painstaking of all his biographers, often 
 observes, that this particular poor boy was of 
 Scotch-Irish stock. That stock is again and 
 again conspicuous in American history, and 
 Andrew Jackson was in many respects the 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 5 
 
 most thoroughly representative Scotch-Irish 
 man of all the notable Americans who can 
 trace their descent to the North of Ireland. 
 Indeed, it may be said that he narrowly es 
 caped being born in the North of Ireland, 
 for his parents were living at Carrickfer- 
 gus until two years before his birth. They 
 landed in America in 1765, and made their 
 home in a Scotch-Irish settlement, the Wax- 
 haws, on the boundary line between the two 
 Carolinas. Andrew Jackson, the father, 
 and Elizabeth Hutchinson, the mother, were 
 married and had two sons before they left 
 Carrickfergus. They were poor, and doubt 
 less came to America for no other reason 
 than to better their fortunes. They were 
 still very poor when, in the early spring of 
 the year 1767, the husband died. A few 
 days later, March 15, a son was born to 
 the widowed Elizabeth, and she named him 
 Andrew. He himself in after years said 
 that his birthplace was to the south of the 
 state line, and called South Carolina his 
 native State ; but Mr. Parton s industrious 
 researches make it seem more probable that 
 
6 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the small log-house in which he was born 
 was north of the line, in Union County, 
 North Carolina. 
 
 The question is of less importance than 
 the fact, of which there is no question, that 
 he was born to the humblest circumstances 
 in a new settlement of a new country, ana 
 that his childhood and boyhood were passed 
 among people of little culture, whose lives 
 were hard and bare. The boy got little 
 education, and never was a scholar. To 
 the day of his death, he wrote the English 
 language with difficulty, making many errors 
 of grammar and spelling, and spoke it with 
 many peculiarities of pronunciation. Of 
 other languages he knew nothing ; of the 
 great body of science, literature, and the 
 arts he knew next to nothing. In fact, he 
 probably got less from books than any other 
 famous man in American history. 
 
 Little is authentically known of his early 
 years. It is clear, however, that he was a 
 mischievous, high-spirited boy, and often 
 got into trouble. At least one anecdote is 
 thoroughly in keeping with his career in 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 7 
 
 manhood. Some of his playmates, so the 
 story goes, once loaded a gun to the muzzle 
 and gave it him to fire. As they expected, 
 it kicked him over, but they missed the fun 
 they looked for. He sprang to his feet 
 white with rage, and exclaimed, with an 
 path, " If one of you laughs, I 11 kill him ! " 
 and no one laughed. The oath itself is 
 not an unimportant part of the story, for it 
 may as well be said at once that Andrew 
 Jackson, until near the end of his life, had 
 many such vices as swearing. He not only 
 swore, but he frequently quarrelled and 
 fought ; he was at one time given to bet 
 ting, particularly on horses ; he drank, and 
 he used tobacco constantly. All of these 
 habits were common in the society to which 
 he was born, and he did not escape them. 
 But some things he did escape. He hated 
 debt all his life, and was willing to do al 
 most anything rather than incur it. He 
 had the greatest reverence for women, and 
 bore himself towards them with a courtesy 
 and tenderness, a knightly purity of thought 
 and word and deed, which the finest gentle- 
 
8 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 man of the most ancient society in the world 
 could not have surpassed. 
 
 When this pleasing fact is stated, one s 
 thoughts turn naturally to his widowed 
 mother, as to the most natural source of 
 such an excellence in the son. All we know 
 of her does indeed indicate that her in 
 fluence on him was both strong and good : 
 but we know very little. She was a simple, 
 uncultivated person, like most of her neigh 
 bors, but her conduct during the harrowing 
 scenes of the revolutionary war makes us 
 think she was in some respects extraordi 
 nary. The struggle was nowhere rougher 
 and fiercer than it was in the Carolinas. The 
 notorious Colonel Tarleton operated in the 
 Waxhaws neighborhood, and many dreadful 
 stories of suffering and cruelty belong to that 
 country and that time. The Jackson family 
 had their full share of the fighting and the 
 suffering. The two older boys, Hugh and 
 Robert, enlisted. Young " Andy " himself, 
 when he was barely in his teens, carried a 
 musket. He and Robert were captured, and 
 were released through the efforts of their 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 9 
 
 mother, who brought about an exchange of 
 prisoners. Soon afterwards, she went on a 
 long and heroic journey to Charleston to 
 nurse the sick Americans confined on the 
 British prison ships there ; and there she fell 
 ill of the ship fever and died. Hugh and 
 Robert both died in the service. 
 
 Andrew was thus left an orphan, weakened 
 in body by the smallpox, which he took while 
 he was in prison. Moreover, he bore on his 
 head the mark of a blow from the sword of 
 a British officer whose boots he had refused 
 to polish. No man ever lived who had a 
 simpler human way of loving those who be 
 friended him and of hating those who hurt 
 him than Andrew Jackson ; and surely few 
 men ever had better excuse than he for hat 
 ing the British uniform. His feeling against 
 the British was one of the things that colored 
 his opinions on public questions; the su 
 preme hour of his life was the hour when, 
 at New Orleans, he had his revenge full 
 measure, heaped up, and running over 
 for all that he had suffered in the Wax- 
 haws. Scholarly historians, passing rapidly 
 
10 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 over the events of his childhood, give many 
 pages of learned criticism to the course he 
 took on great public questions in later years, 
 and gravely deplore the terrible passions 
 that swayed him when, no doubt, he should 
 have been as deliberate and calm as they 
 are while they review his stormy life. But 
 for those who would rather understand than 
 judge him it surely cannot seem a small 
 thing that he started out in life with such a 
 heritage of bitter memories, such a schooling 
 in hatred, as few children were ever cursed 
 with. Passion and revenge are wrong, of 
 course, but the sandy-haired, pockmarked 
 lad of the Waxhaws had better excuse than 
 most boys for failing to learn that lesson. 
 It is doubtful, indeed, if any one ever took 
 the trouble to teach it him. One little 
 thing that stuck in his mind probably hurt 
 worse than the sabre cut on his head. He 
 did not even know where his mother s grave 
 was. 
 
 It does not appear that during the next 
 seven years, while he was growing to man 
 hood, he gave himself with much industry 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 11 
 
 either to study or to work. For six months 
 he was employed in the shop of a saddler, 
 but he seems to have learned more about 
 filling saddles than about making them, for 
 he became somewhat famous as a horseman 
 even in a country where the love of horse 
 flesh was universal. He got acquainted 
 with some wealthy people from Charleston 
 who were exiled until the British evacuated 
 their city, and lived with them a sporting 
 life which was beyond his means. After the 
 peace he made a visit to Charleston, got into 
 debt, got out of it by winning a wager, and 
 grew somewhat graver in consequence of his 
 experience. There is even some reason to 
 believe that he went to work as a school- u* 
 master ; and doubtless some backwoods * 
 schools of that period had masters as igno 
 rant as Andrew Jackson. Finally^ne re 
 solved to study law, and in the whiter of 
 1784-5 started out to find an office in which 
 he might prepare himself for his profession. 
 He found a place in the office of Mr. Spruce 
 McCay, of Salisbury, North Carolina, an \ 
 old-fashioned Southern town, where he made 
 
12- ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Ms home until 1788, when he was admitted 
 to the bar. 
 
 All that is known of his life at Salisbury 
 accords with what is known of his life 
 at the Waxhaws. He was ready for a frolic 
 or a fight at any hour of the day or night ; 
 he excelled in such sports as required 
 swiftness and nerve ; he was fond of practi 
 cal jokes; he was not over fond of study, 
 and never acquired any great knowledge 
 of the law. At twenty, when his studies 
 were finished, he is described as a tall, 
 slender young fellow, with a thin, fair face 
 and deep blue eyes, by no means handsome, 
 but distinguished by considerable grace and 
 dignity of manner ; an exquisite rider and 
 a capital shot ; of an extraordinarily pas 
 sionate temper, yet singularly swift, even 
 when his anger was at white heat, to seize 
 upon the right means to protect himself or 
 discomfit an adversary ; already somewhat 
 of a leader, not by any eminence of talent 
 or knowledge, but because he had a gift of 
 leadership and was always intensely minded 
 to have his way. The year of his admission 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 13 
 
 to the bar, after a brief stay at Martinsville, 
 a small North Carolina town, he got himself 
 appointed solicitor, or public prosecutor, of 
 the western district of Tennessee, and soon 
 set out for the West. 
 
 The appointment of so young a man to 
 such an office seems remarkable until one 
 knows what Tennessee was like at that time, 
 and what duties a solicitor was expected to 
 discharge. The term Tennessee is, in fact, 
 misleading. The region to which Jackson 
 went still belonged to North Carolina, though 
 its inhabitants had but a little while before 
 made an attempt to set up a separate State 
 under the name of Franklin. But of those 
 who made the attempt the great majority 
 had lived in that part of North Carolina s 
 western lands which is now East Tennessee 
 a mountainous region of which Jones- 
 boro, a squatter town of fifty or sixty 
 log-houses, was the metropolis. Nashville, 
 whither Jackson was bound, was nearly two 
 hundred miles west of Jonesboro, and the 
 Nashville settlement was as yet less than 
 ten years old. It was founded in 1779 by 
 
14 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Captain James Robertson with a little com 
 pany of nine. The next year Colonel John 
 Donelson, with a much larger party, in 
 cluding women and children, came from 
 Virginia to join his friend Robertson. His 
 journey was one of the most striking inci 
 dents in the peopling of the West, for it was 
 made in flatboats which passed down the 
 Holston into the Tennessee, down the Ten 
 nessee into the Ohio, up the Ohio into the 
 Cumberland, and up the Cumberland to 
 Nashville. It took four months to cover 
 the two thousand miles or more, and there 
 were bloody fights with Indians, sickness, 
 and death by the way. When, eight years . 
 later, after an overland journey through a 
 wilderness still almost unbroken and still in 
 fested with Indians, Jackson came to Nash 
 ville, he found Mrs. Donelson a widow, for 
 her husband had been murdered ; and he 
 soon became an inmate of her home. 
 
 It was well for a widow in that wild coun 
 try if she could procure men "boarders," 
 even though she might not need to " take 
 boarders " for a living ; for every house- 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 15 
 
 hold needed men to protect it from the In 
 dians. Immigration was increasing con 
 stantly, but the white population was still 
 far too small to be safe. Within seven 
 miles of Nashville, during the years 1780- 
 1794, the Indians killed, on an average, one 
 white person every ten days. 
 
 Life in such a country was even rougher 
 and barer than in the Waxhaws. The 
 houses were chiefly cabins made of unhewn 
 logs, and the things which in older commu 
 nities make the inside of houses attractive 
 were almost wholly wanting. Such mer 
 chandise as was offered to the settlers had 
 to be fetched hundreds of miles, usually 
 from Philadelphia, and grew very dear by 
 the time it reached them. For food, cloth 
 ing, and shelter each family relied mainly 
 on the handiwork of its own members. As 
 in all frontier regions, the population was 
 chiefly male. The brave women who took 
 their share of the common work and hard 
 ship were treated with much respect, and 
 did their part well, no doubt, but they had 
 little leisure for those arts which brighten 
 
16 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the lives and refine the characters of hus 
 bands and children. 
 
 Manners suited conditions. These build 
 ers of the West had more strength than gen 
 tleness, more shrewdness than wisdom, more 
 courage than culture. They were the rough 
 front which American civilization presented 
 to the wilderness and the savage, brave, 
 hard-handed, themselves somewhat affected 
 with the barbarism they came to displace, 
 yet in all essentials of character true repre 
 sentatives of their masterful race. They were 
 mainly of English or Scotch-Irish stock ; and 
 no other breeds of white men have ever 
 shown such capacity as these two for dealing 
 with inferior races and new countries. Their 
 virtues were courage, energy, alertness, in 
 ventiveness, generosity, honesty, truth-speak 
 ing ; their commonest faults were violence, 
 combativeness, lax ways in business, intem 
 perance, narrowness of mind. They hated 
 foreigners and Indians, and were ready to 
 fight any one who behaved like an enemy or 
 a critic ; they held in honor women, their 
 country, and brave men. Shut off from 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 17 
 
 the greater world to the eastward, and hav 
 ing few pleasures such as most Americans 
 may now enjoy, they filled their leisure hours 
 with such sports as hunting, horse-racing, 
 drinking bouts, fights, and lawsuits. The 
 law, indeed, they held in great reverence ; 
 that race mark they had in common with 
 all other societies made up of Englishmen 
 and Americans of English descent. But 
 they were even fonder of fighting than of 
 the law, and the particular laws which were 
 at once hardest to enforce and most in need 
 of enforcement were those very simple laws 
 which set forth the principle that private 
 wrongs must be righted in the courts, which 
 stand for the peace of the State, and not by 
 the " wild justice " of revenge. 
 
 The difficult and dangerous work of keep 
 ing order and of enforcing business obliga 
 tions fell largely to the " solicitor ; " and 
 one need not wonder that there was no great 
 scramble for the office, so that a very young 
 man, with no experience at the bar and 
 little knowledge of law, got the appointment. 
 His duties were simple enough, but he had 
 
18 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 no reason to complain of being left in idle 
 ness. The court records of the period show 
 a picturesque assortment of assaults, street- 
 fights, pistollings, gougings, and the like. 
 Men who took such methods to adjust their 
 differences were not apt to show any great 
 respect to a prosecutor aged twenty-one. 
 The majesty of the law had need of a vig 
 orous rather than a learned representative ; 
 and the representative had need of other 
 weapons than those supplied by the law 
 books if he meant to make his authority re 
 spected and yet keep a whole skin on his 
 body. If he proved weak and timid, he 
 was sure to be despised ; if determined and 
 relentless, he was sure to make enemies ; if 
 incautious and unwary, he would probably 
 get himself shot. It is doubtful, however, 
 if any better man than young Jackson could 
 have been found for the place, and that is 
 almost the same thing as saying that no 
 better place could have been found for him. 
 To the office and his new surroundings he 
 brought the qualities they supremely de 
 manded, a will that no man ever subdued, 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 19 
 
 a desperate courage which not even the Ten- 
 nesseans could match, and a swift, intuitive 
 perception of the way to act in emergencies. 
 According to all accounts, he was success 
 ful from the first in his trying work, and 
 his success in that brought him other work 
 as a lawyer and a rapid rise to prominence 
 in the community. He became well ac 
 quainted, for his work required much travel 
 ling about. He learned the country itself. 
 On his long journeys he was frequently in 
 danger from the Indians, and learned their 
 ways and how to cope with them. Some 
 times he slept alone in the woods, or even 
 lay all night awake, his hand on his rifle. 
 Once his readiness and nerve alone saved 
 himself and a party of travellers from sur 
 prise and massacre. Whether he dealt with 
 Indians who beset his pathway through the 
 wilderness, or white men who would not let 
 the law take its course, it is not on record 
 that he ever turned aside from his purpose. 
 In ten years he was the possessor of a con 
 siderable estate, chiefly in land. And he 
 had not accumulated property by neglecting 
 
20 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 his duties as solicitor. When certain in 
 truders on Indian lands were giving trouble, 
 Governor Blount said : " Let the district 
 attorney, Mr. Jackson, be informed. He 
 will be certain to do his duty, and the 
 offenders will be punished." 
 
 But the district attorney did not escape 
 the consequences of his firmness and cour 
 age. He had so many " difficulties " that 
 even in that country he soon got a reputa 
 tion for readiness to fight. Amass of anec 
 dote and tradition about his early quarrels, 
 has come down to us. Some of these affairs 
 seem to have been undignified and rather 
 ludicrous scuffles : in one of them Jackson 
 overcame a huge antagonist by poking him 
 with the point or, as Jackson himself pro 
 nounced it, the " pint " of a fence rail. 
 Other quarrels followed the dignified pro 
 cedure of the duello. They were all subject 
 to the condemnation which our gentler civil 
 ization pronounces on violence as a means 
 of ending disputes, but no doubt they helped 
 the young lawyer into the prominence he 
 had won by the time Tennessee was ready to 
 become a State. 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 21 
 
 The most important event of this early 
 period of Jackson s life was his marriage. 
 It was first solemnized early in 1791, and a 
 second time in January, 1794. The second 
 ceremony was due to the painful discovery 
 that at the time of the first his wife was not 
 fully released from a former marriage. She 
 was Rachel, daughter of John Donelson, 
 the pioneer, and when Jackson first came to 
 Tennessee she was already married to one 
 Lewis Robards. Robards was a jealous 
 husband. He made charges against his 
 wife concerning several men, and finallv 
 concerning Jackson, although the facts that 
 have come down to us and the opinions of 
 those who knew most about the affair all go 
 to show that Jackson acted as a chivalrous 
 protector of a distressed woman, and never 
 knowingly committed any offence against 
 his accuser s home. Robards and Rachel 
 Donelson had been married in Kentucky, 
 then a part of Virginia, and Virginia had no 
 law of divorce. In 1790 the Virginia leg 
 islature, acting on a petition of Robards, 
 authorized the supreme court of Kentucky 
 
22 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 to try the case and grant him a divorce if it 
 should find his charges against his wife and 
 Jackson to be true. Somehow, Jackson and 
 Mrs. Robards were persuaded that this act of 
 the Virginia legislature was itself a divorce, 
 and so they were married. In 1793, how 
 ever, Robards brought suit before the Ken 
 tucky court, and the court, finding on the 
 facts as they then existed, when the accused 
 couple were living together as man and wife, 
 granted the decree. In order, therefore, to 
 make sure of a legal marriage, Jackson had 
 
 ceremony repeated. 
 
 It was a most unfortunate situation for an 
 honest man and an honest woman, and sad 
 dened a union which was otherwise pure and 
 beautiful ; for to the day of her death Jack 
 son and his wife loved each other most ten 
 derly. It brought into his life a new ele 
 ment of bitterness and passion. Whoever, 
 by the slightest hint, referred to the irregu 
 larity of his marriage, became his mortal 
 enemy. For such he kept his pistols always 
 ready, and more than one incautious man 
 found to his cost what it meant to breathe 
 
THE WAXHAWS: THE WILDERNESS 23 
 
 a word on that forbidden subject. One 
 such man was no less a person than John 
 Sevier, " the Commonwealth Builder," who 
 struck such a good blow for American in 
 dependence at the battle of King s Moun 
 tain in the revolutionary war, and who was 
 Governor of Tennessee when the trouble 
 with Jackson occurred. 
 
 The painful facts of his marriage, and the 
 criticism of his wife, had another effect on 
 Jackson which in time became important to 
 the whole country. Through that experience 
 his chivalrous feeling for women was devel 
 oped into a quixotic readiness to be the cham 
 pion of any woman whom }ie found distressed 
 or slandered/ ?* 
 
II 
 
 CONGKESS: THE BENCH: THE MILITIA 
 
 IN 1796 Jackson took his seat as a mem 
 ber of the convention called to frame a con 
 stitution for the State of Tennessee. He 
 thus entered on a brief career of public ser 
 vice, in the course of which he held three 
 important offices. In the autumn of 1796 
 he was chosen to be Tennessee s first repre 
 sentative in Congress. A year later he was 
 appointed United States Senator, and held 
 the office -until he resigned in April, 1798. 
 From 1798 until 1804, he was a justice of 
 the Supreme Court of Tennessee. 
 
 These were all high places for so young 
 a man, and one naturally expects his bio 
 grapher to linger for many pages over his 
 course while he held them. The fact that 
 he held them is indeed important, for it 
 shows how strongly he had established him 
 self in Tennessee. But very little need be 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 25 
 
 said of what he did while he held them. 
 Indeed, it is amazing how little can be said. 
 
 In the convention he served on the eom- 
 mittee to draft the constitution and took a 
 somewhat prominent part in the debates, 
 and there is also a tradition that he sug 
 gested the name of the State ; but no nota 
 ble feature of the constitution is clearly due 
 to him. It might, however, have been due 
 to the presence in the convention of such 
 fiery spirits as he that it adopted a rule of 
 order which throws into comical prominence 
 the warlike character of early Tennesseans. 
 Rule 8 declared : " He that digresseth from 
 the subject to fall on the person of any mem 
 ber shall be suppressed by the Speaker." 
 
 The scant record of Jackson s services 
 in the House of Representatives and in the 
 Senate is of little importance to us save in 
 three respects. It throws some light on his 
 political opinions at that period ; it gives us 
 a glimpse of him as he appeared against the 
 background of the most elegant society then 
 existing in America, for Congress was sit 
 ting in Philadelphia, which had sixty-five 
 
26 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 thousand inhabitants ? and it led to one or 
 two friendships which had an important 
 bearing on his later career. 
 
 His opinions, however, were not expressed 
 in speeches. He addressed the House but 
 twice, both times on a resolution for paying 
 troops whom General Sevier had led against 
 the Indians without any order from the 
 national government. The resolution passed, 
 and added to Jackson s popularity at home. 
 In the Senate it is not on record that he 
 ever spoke at all. Many years afterwards, 
 Thomas Jefferson, who was Vice-President 
 in 1797-8, gave to Daniel Webster a rather 
 curious explanation of the Tennessee Sena 
 tor s silence. The accuracy of Webster s 
 report of his famous interview with Jeffer 
 son at Monticello in 1824 has been ques 
 tioned, but if it is correct, this is what Jef 
 ferson said of Jackson : u His passions are 
 terrible. When I was president of the 
 Senate, he was Senator, and he could never 
 speak on account of the rashness of his 
 feelings. I have seen him attempt it re 
 peatedly, and as often choke with rage." 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 27 
 
 His votes, however, and a few letters 
 show clearly enough where he stood on the 
 questions of the day. Parties were hardly 
 yet formed under the Constitution, but in 
 the strife between the followers of Hamil 
 ton, who went for a strong national govern 
 ment, and who became the Federalist party, 
 on the one hand, and, on the other hand, 
 the followers of Jefferson, who went for the 
 rights of the States and distrusted a strong 
 national government, and who became the 
 Kepublican party, he sided with Jefferson. 
 Indeed, he belonged to the extreme faction 
 of the Republicans, to which the term " Demo 
 crats " was applied, at first as a reproach. 
 He favored the French, who were at war 
 with England, and opposed the treaty with 
 England which John Jay had just negotiated. 
 He even went so far as to vote, with eleven 
 others, against the address presented to 
 President Washington after his final speech 
 to Congress. The address was mainly given 
 over to thanks for Washington s great ser 
 vices to his country and to praise of his 
 administration. The handful that opposed 
 
28 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 it showed at least courage. One of them, 
 Edward Livingston, of New York, after 
 wards defended himself by drawing a dis 
 tinction between Washington and his ad 
 ministration. At that time the partisans 
 of France were very bitter over the firm 
 course Washington took to keep the coun 
 try out of the European contest, and over 
 the treaty with England. 
 
 Livingston was one of the men with 
 whom Jackson at this time formed a last 
 ing friendship. He was an accomplished 
 gentleman, a very able lawyer, and an ad 
 vanced Kepublican. Another was William 
 Duane, Jefferson s friend, the editor of " The 
 Aurora," a newspaper which helped to build 
 up the Republican party. A third was 
 Aaron Burr, who then stood very high 
 among the Republican leaders, and who 
 excelled all other public men in charm of 
 manner. 
 
 Another leading Republican of the time, 
 Albert Gallatin, recalled Jackson after 
 wards as " a tall, lank, uncouth-looking per 
 sonage, with long locks of hair hanging over 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 29 
 
 his face, and a cue down his back tied in an 
 eel-skin ; his dress singular, his manners 
 and deportment that of a rough backwoods 
 man." Taking this with Jefferson s descrip 
 tion of him, it seems clear that he made no 
 strong impression at Philadelphia, and found 
 himself out of place in the national legisla 
 ture. Who, then, would have dreamed that 
 the accomplished Livingston should win his 
 highest fame by preparing a state paper for 
 this unlettered person s signature ; that this 
 rough backwoodsman should alone of all 
 Americans surpass the polished Burr in the 
 charm of his manners ; that Duane s little 
 son should one day be called by his father s 
 unpromising acquaintance to a place such as 
 even Jefferson s friendship never conferred 
 upon Duane himself. Of all who knew 
 Jackson in Washington, Burr seems to have 
 had the strongest hopes for his future. 
 
 Scant as are the traces of his labors as a 
 legislator, even scanter are the records of 
 his career on the bench during the six years 
 that followed. The reports of the decisions of 
 the Tennessee Supreme Court in this period 
 
SO ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 are extremely meagre ; not one decision is 
 preserved as Jackson s. But the stories 
 told of Judge Jackson, like the stories told 
 of the solicitor, the general, the president, 
 are legion. One must suffice. A gigantic 
 blacksmith named Bean had committed a 
 crime and the sheriff dared not arrest him. 
 " Summon me," said the judge, and himself 
 walked down from the bench, found the 
 criminal, and arrested him. It was while 
 he was judge that his quarrel with John 
 Sevier, who was again governor in 1803, 
 came finally to a head. Two years before, 
 the two men had been rivals for the office 
 of major-general in the militia, and by a 
 single vote Jackson had won, so that he was 
 both general and judge when he and the 
 governor met in what seemed likely to 
 prove a fatal combat. However, neither 
 was killed, and the quarrel was patched up. 
 In 1804 Judge Jackson resigned. He had 
 not yet found his true place in the public 
 service. But he kept his commission in the 
 militia, and those who like to magnify the 
 work of chance may argue that the single 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 31 
 
 vote by which he got that office determined 
 his career. 
 
 But he had years to live before it was 
 made plain to him what his career should 
 be ; and during those years, from 1804 to 
 1813, his energies were given chiefly to 
 planting and business. His affairs had be 
 come somewhat involved while he was a 
 judge, and to restore his fortunes he entered 
 into trade and set up a store. In this and 
 other enterprises a stalwart Tennessean 
 named John Coffee was his partner, and be 
 tween the two there grew a bond of friend 
 ship which lasted until death broke it. 
 Jackson had considerable shrewdness in 
 trade, and his reputation for paying his 
 debts promptly was of great value, but he 
 had more success in planting and stock-rais 
 ing than in any other money-making enter 
 prise. His judgment of horses was excep 
 tionally good. From his famous stallion, 
 Truxton, a great racer in his day, many 
 Tennessee thoroughbreds of the present time 
 are descended. Horse-racing was Jackson s 
 favorite sport, and was a source of profit 
 
30 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 are extremely meagre ; not one decision is 
 preserved as Jackson s. But the stories 
 told of Judge Jackson, like the stories told 
 of the solicitor, the general, the president, 
 are legion. One must suffice. A gigantic 
 blacksmith named Bean had committed a 
 crime and the sheriff dared not arrest him. 
 " Summon me," said the judge, and himself 
 walked down from the bench, found the 
 criminal, and arrested him. It was while 
 he was judge that his quarrel with John 
 Sevier, who was again governor in 1803, 
 came finally to a head. Two years before, 
 the two men had been rivals for the office 
 of major-general in the militia, and by a 
 single vote Jackson had won, so that he was 
 both general and judge when he and the 
 governor met in what seemed likely to 
 prove a fatal combat. However, neither 
 was killed, and the quarrel was patched up. 
 In 1804 Judge Jackson resigned. He had 
 not yet found his true place in the public 
 service. But he kept his commission in the 
 militia, and those who like to magnify the 
 work of chance may argue that the single 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 31 
 
 vote by which he got that office determined 
 his career. 
 
 But he had years to live before it was 
 made plain to him what his career should 
 be ; and during those years, from 1804 to 
 1813, his energies were given chiefly to 
 planting and business. His affairs had be 
 come somewhat involved while he was a 
 judge, and to restore his fortunes he entered 
 into trade and set up a store. In this and 
 other enterprises a stalwart Tennessean 
 named John Coffee was his partner, and be 
 tween the two there grew a bond of friend 
 ship which lasted until death broke it. 
 Jackson had considerable shrewdness in 
 trade, and his reputation for paying his 
 debts promptly was of great value, but he 
 had more success in planting and stock-rais 
 ing than in any other money-making enter 
 prise. His judgment of horses was excep 
 tionally good. From his famous stallion, 
 Truxton, a great racer in his day, many 
 Tennessee thoroughbreds of the present time 
 are descended. Horse-racing was Jackson s 
 favorite sport, and was a source of profit 
 
32 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 also. In 1805 he first occupied the estate 
 which became so well known as " The Her 
 mitage," where he built a block-house of 
 three rooms ; the mansion so often displayed 
 in pictures was not built until 1819. In 
 the log-house, however, no less than in the 
 mansion which was to follow, he offered to 
 guests of high and low degree a hospitality 
 which would have been extraordinary out 
 side of the Southern States. Probably his 
 planter life had some effect on his manners, 
 and helped him to acquire that mingling of 
 cordiality and distinction which in those 
 days gave a peculiar charm to the gentle 
 men of the South. 
 
 Even in his quarrels, violent, passionate, 
 and wilful as he was, he usually bore him 
 self in a way to make a deep impression on 
 the impressionable people among whom he 
 lived. Unfortunately, his quarrels did not 
 grow fewer as he grew older, for he never 
 learned the difference between mere opposi 
 tion to his will, which might be conscien 
 tious and honest, and personal enmity to 
 himself. Like most men of that region and 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 33 
 
 time, he carried his personal feelings, his. 
 likes and dislikes, into all the affairs of life. 
 In 1803-4, when he wished to be governor 
 of Orleans Territory, the Tennessee con 
 gressmen urged President Jefferson to ap 
 point him, but he was represented to the 
 President as "a man of violent passions, 
 arbitrary in his disposition, and frequently 
 engaged in broils and disputes." 
 
 The most celebrated and perhaps the 
 worst of all his quarrels was that with 
 Charles Dickinson, a young man of promi 
 nence, a duellist, and a marvellous shot. It 
 was a long quarrel, beginning, apparently, 
 over a projected race between Truxton and 
 Plow Bay, a horse in which Dickinson was 
 interested. Other persons were involved 
 before the quarrel ended. General Jackson 
 publicly caned one Thomas Swann who had 
 contrived to get himself mixed up in the 
 affair. Coffee, acting as Jackson s friend, 
 had a duel with one McNairy, and was 
 severely wounded. Finally, for no sufficient 
 cause which the printed accounts discover, 
 Jackson and Dickinson met in Kentucky, 
 
34 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 each bent on killing his man. The word 
 being given, Dickinson fired quickly, and 
 with perfect aim ; a puff of dust flew up from 
 the breast of Jackson s coat. But he kept 
 his feet, drew his left arm across his breast, 
 slowly raised his pistol, and pulled the trig 
 ger. The hammer stopped at the half- 
 cock. He cocked it again, aimed deliber 
 ately, fired, and killed his man. His own 
 life he owed to the thinness of his body, for 
 Dickinson had hit the spot where he thought 
 his adversary s heart was beating. Jackson 
 had purposely allowed the other to fire first, 
 expecting to be hit, and fearing that if he, 
 too, fired hurriedly, the shock would spoil 
 his aim. " I should have hit him," he said 
 afterwards, "had he shot me through the 
 brain." It is supposed that his hatred of 
 Dickinson was really due, not to the con 
 fused dispute over the race, but to something 
 Dickinson had said in his cups about Mrs. 
 Jackson. Whatever the provocation, the 
 bloody story is revolting enough; but the 
 picture of Jackson s grim, erect figure, his 
 hawklike eyes terrible with hatred, the ball 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 35 
 
 in his breast, the pistol in his hand, must 
 take its place alongside those other pictures 
 and statues of him which all Americans 
 know, x 
 
 But if Jackson was a terrible enemy, he 
 was also the most faithful of friends. Many 
 men feared and hated him ; many also 
 loved him, and he himself would go as far 
 to help a friend as to crush an enemy. One 
 of his friends was a certain Patten Ander 
 son, who seems always to have been getting 
 into trouble, but whom the general never 
 deserted. Once Anderson got into a fight 
 at one end of a long table where a public 
 dinner was being served, and was in great 
 danger until Jackson, who sat at the other 
 end, noticed the scuffle. " I m coining, 
 Patten," he cried, and promptly leaped on 
 the table and strode through dinner to the 
 rescue. Anderson was killed at last, and 
 Jackson was a witness at the trial of his 
 slayer. He was asked if the unfortunate 
 Anderson was not given in his lifetime to 
 quarrelling. " Sir," said Jackson, " my 
 friend, Patten Anderson, was a natural 
 enemy to scoundrels." 
 
36 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 His friendship for Aaron Burr came 
 very near involving him in serious difficul 
 ties. In 1805, when Burr was on his first 
 visit to the Southwest, he went to Nashville, 
 and was entertained most cordially at The 
 Hermitage. He was there again on his 
 return, and made with his host a contract 
 for boats and supplies to be used in that 
 mysterious enterprise which has so puzzled 
 American historians. Burr declared he had 
 no i designs hostile to the United States, 
 and Jackson believed him. When, a year 
 later, the whole country was in a sort of 
 panic over Burr s suspected treason, Jack 
 son offered to President Jefferson the ser 
 vices of the militia under his command, and 
 promptly took measures to thwart any trea 
 sonable movement that might be afoot in the 
 West ; but he was soon convinced that Burr 
 was suspected unjustly, and never for a mo 
 ment deserted him in his trouble. He went 
 to Richmond to testify at his trial, and 
 while there made a public speech full of 
 bitterness against those who, as he thought, 
 were persecuting his friend. He himself 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 37 
 
 was at first strongly suspected of complicity 
 in Burr s project, but there is absolutely no 
 reason to believe that Andrew Jackson ever 
 in his life looked upon an enemy of his 
 country otherwise than as his own mortal 
 foe. His faults were many, but he loved his 
 country simply, and with all his heart. 
 
 It seems clear, however, that Jackson, 
 and in fact the whole Southwest, sympathized 
 very strongly with the design which many 
 in that quarter at first thought Burr to^en- 
 tertain ; the design, namely, of seizing West 
 Florida or Texas, or perhaps both. The 
 United States were at that time, as they 
 were before and after, very close to war with 
 Spain. Spain still had possession of the 
 Floridas, although the United States claimed 
 that West Florida, extending along the 
 Gulf coast from the Perdido River to the 
 " Island of New Orleans," was included in 
 the Louisiana purchase. To drive the 
 Spaniards out of West Florida was an 
 ardent desire of Jackson s. Ten years be 
 fore, when the Eastern States had shown 
 little interest in the development of the 
 
38 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Southwest, and had seemed to prefer com 
 mercial privileges with the Spanish colonies 
 to the free navigation of the Mississippi, 
 which the Western country needed for its 
 development, Spanish agents had endeav 
 ored to stir up disaffection in the South 
 west, looking to the separation of that 
 region from the Union. At that time, many 
 people in the East, knowing little of the 
 Westerners, had suspected them of lending 
 an ear to Spain s tempting whispers. That 
 was one reason why such a panic arose over 
 Burr, for he had always been a champion of 
 the Southwest, and the pioneers liked him. 
 After the failure and disgrace of Burr the 
 stage was cleared for another leader in the 
 southwestward movement. And who so 
 likely to take the role as the patriotic and 
 warlike general of the Tennessee militia ? 
 
 Jackson had a chance to play that role 
 in a small way when Silas Dinsmore, the 
 United States agent among the Choctaws, 
 whose lands lay in Mississippi Territory, re 
 fused to allow persons to pass through the 
 Choctaw country with negroes unless they 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 39 
 
 showed passports for the negroes. Dins- 
 more had a law of Congress behind him, 
 but a treaty between the United States and 
 the Choctaws provided for a road through 
 the Choc taw country which should be "a 
 highway for citizens of the United States 
 and the Choctaws." Jackson, passing along 
 the road with some slaves, dared the agent 
 to interfere. He also exerted himself to 
 bring about the removal of Dinsmore, and, 
 as his wont was, made a personal matter of 
 the dispute. His feeling was so strong that 
 years afterwards, when Dinsmore, happen 
 ing to meet him, made a courteous advance, 
 the general sternly repelled it. 
 
 The quarrel with Dinsmore occurred in 
 1812. Andrew Jackson was then forty-five 
 years old. He was well known in Tennessee 
 as a successful planter, a breeder and racer 
 of horses, a swearer of mighty oaths, a faith 
 ful and generous man to his friends, a chiv 
 alrous man to women, a hospitable man at 
 his home, a desperate and relentless man in 
 personal conflicts, a man who always did 
 the thing he set himself to do. But as yet 
 
40 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 he had never found anything to do that was 
 important enough to bring him before the 
 country at large. Outside of Tennessee, 
 few men had ever heard his name. At 
 Washington he was probably distrusted, so 
 far as he was known at all, because of his 
 championship of Burr and his quarrel with 
 Dinsmore, and because he had been for 
 Monroe instead of Madison for President. 
 He was ardently in favor of war with 
 Great Britain because of the impressment 
 of American seamen and other grievances 
 which the United States had borne for 
 years, but there seemed to be little likeli 
 hood of his getting a chance to play a part 
 in the war if it should come. The war was 
 declared in June, 1812. A member of 
 Congress, on his way home after voting for 
 the declaration, had a talk with Aaron Burr, 
 who was now living in retirement in New 
 York. " I know," said Burr, " that my 
 word is not worth much with Madison ; but 
 you may tell him from me that there is an 
 unknown man in the West, named Andrew 
 Jackson, who will do credit to a commission 
 in the army." 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 41 
 
 It is said, indeed, that Jackson was twice 
 recommended to President Madison for a 
 commission in the regular army, and twice 
 rejected. Many- years later, Thomas H. 
 Benton told in Congress how he himself, 
 who was in 1812 a young lawyer in Nash 
 ville and a militia officer under Jackson, 
 found in his mail one morning an act of 
 Congress authorizing the President to ac- 
 
 O O 
 
 cept organized bodies of volunteers. It was 
 a raw day in February, but young Benton 
 at once drew up a plan for offering Jack 
 son s militia command to the government, 
 rode to The Hermitage to find the general, 
 " and came upon him," so Mr. Benton s 
 story goes, "in the twilight, sitting alone 
 before the fire, a lamb and a child between 
 his knees. He started a little, called a ser 
 vant to remove the two innocents to another 
 room, and explained to me how it was. The 
 child had cried because the lamb was out in 
 the cold, and begged him to bring it in 
 which he had done to please the child, his 
 adopted son." That is a far pleasanter pic 
 ture than the other we saw just now of Jack- 
 
42 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 son the duellist, but this also is a character 
 istic picture, and should go into the gallery ; 
 for Jackson, like many another man who has 
 been denied children of his own, was singu 
 larly tender with little folk. It is certainly 
 good to be able to think of him, fierce man 
 that he was, as turning from fondling a child 
 to enter on his soldier s career. 
 
 Mr. Benton s account of the matter is 
 ) questioned, but it is certain that Jackson 
 offered his services, with those of 2500 vol 
 unteers, immediately after the declaration 
 of war. The government accepted the offer, 
 but left him in idleness until October, 1812, 
 when the governor of Tennessee was asked 
 for volunteers, ostensibly to reinforce Gen 
 eral Wilkinson at New Orleans. The gov 
 ernor in turn called upon General Jackson, 
 and he, setting to work with the utmost 
 enthusiasm, issued to the volunteers the first 
 of those eminently Jacksonian addresses 
 wherewith he was wont to hearten his fol 
 lowers. On January 7, 1813, the command 
 set forth, the infantry by river, the cavalry, 
 under John Coffee, by land. By the middle 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 43 
 
 of February all were united at Natchez, Mis 
 sissippi, where the expedition was halted 
 to await further orders. Week after week 
 passed by, and finally, late in March, to the 
 general s rage and disgust, he heard from 
 the Secretary of War that the causes of the 
 expedition had ceased to exist, and that he 
 was to consider his command " dismissed 
 from the public service " and not one 
 word as to any provision for getting the 
 men home ! 
 
 Jackson s resolution was instantly taken 
 and firmly carried out. He refused to dis 
 band the men at Natchez, and marched them 
 home, pledging his own credit for the neces 
 sary expenses. His course commanded the 
 approval of the State and won him the de 
 votion of the men. It was the first of many 
 occasions on which, while acting as a military 
 officer, he dared to do the thing he thought 
 to be right, no matter how irregular it was. 
 On the journey home, his soldierly behavior 
 in trying circumstances won him his famous 
 nickname. The men spoke of him as being 
 " tough as hickory," and so came to call him 
 
44 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 " Hickory," and finally, with affection, " Old 
 Hickory." Before he reached Nashville he 
 again offered his command for service in 
 Canada, but no reply came. In May, he 
 dismissed it, and it seemed as if he were not 
 going to have any soldier s career at all. 
 
 Benton, who had served in the expedition 
 as an aid, went to Washington and with diffi 
 culty persuaded the War Department to pay 
 the expenses of the march from Natchez. 
 When he returned to Nashville, it was to 
 find that in a duel between Jesse Benton, 
 his brother, and one Carroll, the general had 
 acted as Carroll s second. A bitter quarrel 
 between Jackson and the Bentons followed ; 
 before it ended, Jackson swore " by the 
 Eternal " he would horsewhip Thomas Ben- 
 ton on sight. They met at a Nashville 
 hotel. Jesse Benton was there, and also John 
 Coffee and Stokeley Hays, friends of Jack 
 son s. There was a rough-and-tumble fight. 
 Thomas Benton fell down a stairway ; Jesse 
 Benton was stabbed ; Jackson was shot in 
 the shoulder and severely wounded. He 
 was put to bed in the old Nashville Inn, a 
 
CONGRESS: BENCH: MILITIA 43 
 
 famous hostelry of the time, and while he 
 lay helpless from a wound so ignobly won, 
 the call was on its way which should at last 
 summon him to the work for which he was 
 fittest. He was to pass from an action such 
 as no biographer can defend to deeds which 
 none can fail to praise. Jackson the duel 
 list must give place to Jackson the soldier. 
 Yet all fighting is akin, and it was but a 
 change of scene and purpose that turned 
 the man of the tavern brawl into the man 
 of The Horseshoe and New Orleans ; for it 
 happened that there was nowhere in the 
 Southwest, perhaps nowhere in the country, 
 any other man quite so sure to have his 
 way, whether in a street fight or in a battle. 
 
Ill 
 
 TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 
 
 THE call that now came to Jackson was 
 chiefly due to a very picturesque character 
 of the times : the man who is said to have 
 been the only rival of Burr and Jackson in 
 the impression he made upon all beholders 
 by his manner and bearing. The call came, 
 indeed, from the southward, but probably it 
 would never have come but for the work of 
 Tecumseh (or Tecumthe), the famous Shaw- 
 nee warrior and orator, whose home was in 
 the Northwest. For years Tecumseh had 
 been striving to unite the red men of the 
 West and South in a supreme effort to 
 roll back the swelling tide of white immi 
 gration. In 1811 he made a pilgrimage to 
 the southern tribes, and his most fervent 
 appeal was to that powerful body of Indians 
 known as the Creek Confederacy, who lived 
 in what is now the eastern part of Alabama 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 47 
 
 and the southwestern part of Georgia. 
 These proud and warlike Indians were 
 divided into two branches. The Upper 
 Creeks had their homes along the Coosa and 
 Tallapoosa rivers, and their villages extended 
 some distance down the Alabama, which is 
 formed by the junction of those two streams. 
 The Lower Creek towns were on both sides 
 of the Chattahoochee, which now separates 
 southern Georgia from southern Alabamao 
 The so-called Confederacy, a loose sort of 
 alliance, claimed for a hunting ground the 
 lands extending westward to the watershed 
 between the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, 
 which unite to form the Mobile. But in 
 the fork of these two rivers and along the 
 f Mobile and the Tombigbee were growing 
 settlements of white men. The growth of 
 these settlements was watched with disfavor 
 and suspicion by the Creeks. A strong party, 
 the Red Sticks, or hostiles, listened readily 
 to Tecumseh s teaching. When he left for 
 his home in the distant Northwest many were 
 already dancing the " war-dance of the 
 Lakes." 
 
48 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 The outbreak of the war with England 
 came in good time for Tecnmseh s plans. 
 He at once put himself in alliance with the 
 British, and in the summer of 1813 the 
 Creek Eed Sticks heard that they could get 
 arms and ammunition at Pensacola, the cap 
 ital of Spanish Florida. Spain was at peace 
 with the United States, but Red Sticks 
 were seen thronging to Pensacola and re 
 turning with arms and ammunition. The 
 whites of the Mobile and Tombigbee 
 country, then part of Mississippi Territory, 
 organized for defence, waylaid a party re 
 turning from Pensacola, and were at first 
 victorious, then defeated, in the so-called 
 Battle of Burnt Corn. Thoroughly alarmed, 
 the settlers now took refuge in stockades 
 and forts. The military authorities of 
 the United States made ready to defend 
 Mobile, but recently seized from the Span 
 iards. At Fort Mims, near the point where 
 the Alabama and Tombigbee form the 
 Mobile, five hundred and fifty-three men, 
 women, and children were pent up in an ill- 
 planned inclosure, defended by a small force 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 49 
 
 under an incompetent though courageous 
 officer named Beasley. On the morning of 
 August 30, 1813, Beasley was writing to 
 his superior, General Claiborne, that he 
 could hold the fort against any number of 
 the enemy. At that very moment a thousand 
 warriors lay hidden in a ravine but a few 
 hundred yards from the open gate of the 
 stockade. Their principal leader was William 
 Weatherford, " the Red Eagle," a half-breed 
 of much intelligence and dauntless courage. 
 At noon, when the drums beat the garrison 
 to dinner, the Indians rushed to the attack. 
 At the end of the hot August day there re 
 mained of the fort but a smouldering heap of 
 ruins, ghastly with human bodies. Only a 
 handful of the inmates escaped to spread the 
 horrible news among the terrified settlers. 
 Swift runners set off eastward, westward, 
 and northward for help. A shudder ran 
 over the whole country. The Southwest 
 turned from the remoter events of the war 
 in Canada to the disaster at home. " The 
 Creeks!" " Weatherf ord ! " "Fort Minis!" 
 were the words on everybody s lips, while 
 
50 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the major-general of the Tennessee militia 
 still lay helpless from his shameful wound. 
 
 From Mississippi on the west, from 
 Georgia on the east, and from Tennessee 
 on the north, volunteer armies were soon 
 on the march for the Creek country. Ten 
 nessee, indeed, sent two different bodies of 
 men. One came from East Tennessee, com 
 manded by General John Cocke ; the other 
 came from West Tennessee, and at its head, 
 pale and weak, his arm in a sling, his shoul 
 der too sore to bear the weight of an epau 
 lette, was Andrew Jackson. He had issued 
 his orders from his bed. When a member 
 of the legislature, come to discuss the ex 
 pedition with him, expressed regret that he 
 would not be able to lead it, the sick man 
 muttered, with the inevitable oath, that he 
 would lead it. But from the beginning to 
 the end of his military service he was pay 
 ing the penalty, not merely of the quarrel 
 ing which had brought him wounds, but of 
 intemperate eating and drinking, which had 
 ruined his digestion. Sometimes he was 
 tortured for hours with pains that could be 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 51 
 
 relieved only by hanging his body, like a 
 garment hung to dry, face downward, over 
 the back of a chair, or, if he were on the 
 march, over a sapling stripped and bent for 
 the purpose. 
 
 By the second week in October, Jackson 
 was at Huntsville, on the Tennessee River. 
 The entire command numbered about 2700. 
 Its supplies were to come by water from 
 Knoxville, in East Tennessee, but the upper 
 part of the river was not navigable by reason 
 of the dryness of the season. Jackson 
 stormed at the delay, but used the time in 
 drilling his men and scouring the country 
 with Coffee s cavalry. Then he cut his way 
 over the mountains to a higher point on the 
 river, hoping to find the supplies. His 
 energy was great, but without food he could 
 not, as he desired, dash at once into the 
 enemy s country. He moved southward 
 when he had food, halted when it gave out, 
 and finally reached the Coosa. From his 
 camp there, which he named Fort Strother, 
 he dispatched Coffee to strike a first blow 
 against the Creek town of Tallusahatchee. 
 
52 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Coffee destroyed the town, and not a war 
 rior escaped, for the whites were bitterly 
 revengeful. A slain mother embracing a 
 living infant was found among the dead. 
 Jackson himself took care of the child, sent 
 it to The Hermitage, and he and his wife 
 reared it to manhood. 
 
 The next blow was struck at Talladega, 
 thirty miles below Fort Strother, where a 
 body of friendly Indians were besieged by 
 a larger body of Red Sticks. Relying on 
 General White, who was in the neighbor 
 hood with a force of Cocke s East Tennes- 
 seans, to protect Fort Strother, Jackson 
 marched by night to Talladega. There, 
 however, a dispatch reached him from 
 White, who announced that he must return 
 to Cocke. So at sunrise Jackson threw 
 himself on the enemy, routed him with great 
 loss, relieved the friendly Indians, and then 
 marched back to camp, to find no provisions, 
 and the sick and wounded as hungry as the 
 rest. From that time the struggle with fam 
 ine was for weeks his principal business. Ill 
 as he was, he and his officers would have 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 53 
 
 nothing the men could not have. A soldier 
 coming to him to beg for food, he thrust his 
 hand into his pocket, drew out some acorns, 
 and courteously invited the man to share his 
 dinner. 
 
 Jackson was disposed to blame General 
 Cocke for the trouble about supplies, be 
 cause Cocke had undertaken to obtain sup 
 plies in Knoxville for both commands ; but 
 it seems clear now that Cocke was not to 
 blame. Soon after the battle of Talladega 
 Jackson s feeling against Cocke was strength 
 ened. The warriors of the Hillabee towns, 
 a part of the Creek Confederacy, sent a mes 
 senger to Jackson to sue for peace. He 
 gave them his terms, and the messenger was 
 returning to the Hillabees when General 
 White, of Cocke s command, ignorant of 
 what was going on, marched upon a Hilla 
 bee town, killed many of the warriors, and 
 captured the women and children. Jackson, 
 grieved and enraged at a blunder which prob 
 ably prolonged the war and certainly made 
 it fiercer, was easily persuaded that Cocke, 
 his inferior officer, was trying to win laurels 
 
54 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 for himself, and in the end his anger led him 
 to do grave injustice to a man who appears 
 to have been faithful and honorable. 
 
 And now for ten weeks the will of An 
 drew Jackson was tried to the uttermost. 
 His starving troops were constantly on the 
 verge of mutiny. The command was made 
 up of two classes, the militia, called into 
 service against the Indians, and the volun 
 teers, who had first enlisted for the expedi 
 tion down the Mississippi. The militia, dis 
 heartened, started for Tennessee. Jackson 
 drew up the volunteers across their path 
 way, and drove them back to camp. Then 
 the volunteers, in their turn, prepared to 
 move northward, and he stopped them with 
 the militia. The mounted men were per 
 mitted to go to Huntsville to get food for 
 their horses, and most of them went on to 
 their homes. The infantry, sullen and dis 
 trustful, were kept in camp only by the pro 
 mise that in two days supplies would come 
 from Nashville, whither Jackson was send 
 ing letter after letter to stir up the authori 
 ties. At the end of two days nothing had 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 55 
 
 come. A few brave men volunteered to de 
 fend the camp while with the rest the gen 
 eral marched northward in search of food. 
 The supplies soon came in sight, and the 
 men were fed ; but now they refused to go 
 back to camp, and again turned northward. 
 Jackson, with Coffee and a handful of others, 
 threw himself in front of them, and with 
 blazing eyes and dreadful oaths cowed them 
 into obedience. Again they threatened mu 
 tiny, and once more, alone, on horseback, a 
 musket in his hand, his disabled arm in its 
 sling, he faced them, and swore he would 
 shoot the first man who stirred. They hesi 
 tated, wavered, yielded. 
 
 Seeing, however, that nothing could be 
 done with the volunteers, Jackson finally 
 permitted them to go, keeping with him the 
 militia and a small body of Cocke s men. The 
 militia claimed that their term would expire 
 January 4, 1814 ; the term of Cocke s men 
 would expire a week later. Anxiously await 
 ing reinforcements, Jackson got, instead, a 
 letter from Governor Blount advising him 
 to give up the struggle. But he would not 
 
56 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 give up ; his magnificent spirit rose higher 
 with every blow. He wrote the governor 
 a letter that taught him his duty. Through 
 the governor, in fact, that letter roused the 
 whole State, and soon a new army was on 
 the way from West Tennessee, while Cocke 
 was marching another force southward from 
 East Tennessee. With some five hundred 
 raw recruits that reached him before Cocke s 
 first command left, Jackson held Fort Stro- 
 ther. He even ventured to make a raid into 
 the enemy s country, aiming at the town of 
 Emuckfau. The Indians attacked him. He 
 repulsed them, but soon made up his mind 
 to return. On his way back, he was again 
 attacked while crossing a creek, his rear 
 guard was driven in, and for a moment a 
 panic and rout was imminent. But the 
 valor of a few men saved the army, and he 
 got safely back to Fort Strother. 
 
 He did not move again until the middle 
 of March, and then he had five thousand 
 men. Cocke, for a speech addressed to his 
 troops when they threatened mutiny, was 
 sent to Nashville under arrest. To stamp 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 57 
 
 out insubordination among the men from 
 West Tennessee, a youth named Woods, 
 who had been found guilty of mutiny, was 
 shot before the whole army. The thirty- 
 ninth regiment of regulars was now a part 
 of the command, and the general proposed 
 to use them, whenever occasion offered, to 
 suppress insubordination among the volun 
 teers. But from this time he had little of 
 that to deal with, and was free to grapple 
 with the Creeks, who had so far held their 
 own against the Georgians and Mississip- 
 pians. 
 
 The centre of their resistance was the 
 Hickory Ground, near the fork of the Coosa 
 and Tallapoosa; but the final blow was 
 struck at a bend in the Tallapoosa midway 
 between its source and mouth. The spot 
 was called by the Indians Tohopeka ; by the 
 whites, The Horseshoe. Across the neck 
 of a small peninsula the hostiles had thrown 
 up a rough line of breastworks. On the 
 banks of the river they had gathered a num 
 ber of canoes. Within the defences was a 
 force of Ked Sticks estimated at nine hun- 
 
58 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 dred, and several hundred women and chil 
 dren. 
 
 Jackson moved down the Coosa to a point 
 nearly even with Tohopeka, established a 
 new camp, and by the evening of March 28 
 he was in front of the enemy with about 
 three thousand men, including a considerable 
 body of friendly Indians. Resolving to make 
 thorough work of it, he dispatched Coffee, 
 with the friendly Indians and the cavalry, 
 to surround the bend on the opposite bank. 
 The next morning, with the artillery, he 
 opened fire on the breastworks. Coffee, 
 meantime, threw a force across the river and 
 attacked the enemy from the rear. The line 
 of breastworks was carried by assault. The 
 slaughter of Creeks was dreadful. As usual, 
 they fought to the last. Five hundred and 
 fifty-seven bodies were found in the bend, 
 and many perished trying to escape across 
 the river. Jackson s loss was about two 
 hundred killed and wounded. 
 
 Tohopeka broke down the organized resist 
 ance of the Indians. When Jackson, a 
 few days later, turned southward, he was 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 59 
 
 able to march on to the Hickory Ground 
 without fighting another battle. The Red 
 Sticks for the most part fled to their kin 
 dred, the Seminoles, in Florida; but some 
 came in and submitted to the iron hand 
 which had crushed them. Jackson had been 
 at the Hickory Ground but a short time when 
 Weatherford himself came in and surren 
 dered. Some of the men, remembering Fort 
 Mims, would have done violence to the fallen 
 chief, but Jackson protected him. Soon 
 afterwards, General Pinckney, of the regular 
 army, arrived at Fort Jackson, which had 
 been built in the river fork, and took com 
 mand. When he ordered the Tennesseans 
 to return to their homes, Jackson went with 
 them, and his fellow citizens at Nashville 
 gave him the first of many triumphal recep 
 tions. His eight months work in the wilder 
 ness had made him easily the first man of 
 Tennessee. Georgia had had a better chance 
 than Tennessee to crush the Indians, for the 
 distance and the natural obstacles were less ; 
 but Georgia had no such leader as Andrew 
 Jackson. Another reward soon reached him. 
 
60 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 In May, General William Henry Harrison 
 resigned his commission, and in his place 
 Jackson was appointed major-general in the 
 army of the United States. He was put 
 in command of the southwestern district, 
 including Mobile and New Orleans. 
 
 But on his way to his post he had to stop 
 again at Fort Jackson and complete his work 
 among the Creeks. Acting under orders 
 from the government, he compelled the 
 chiefs there assembled, practically all of 
 whom had been friendly to the United States 
 during the war, to sign an "agreement and 
 capitulation " by which they ceded to the 
 United States all the land which they had 
 claimed to the west of the Coosa. He car 
 ried the matter through with a high hand, 
 but the Creeks themselves admired him and 
 put into the agreement a cession of land to 
 himself. It was, of course, not permissible 
 for a negotiator to accept such a gift from 
 the other party. However, the land was part 
 of the region claimed by the United States 
 and surrendered by the Creeks, and as a 
 matter of fact, Jackson never got possession 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 61 
 
 of it. This " treaty," as it was improperly 
 called, was signed August 9, 1814, and then 
 Jackson was free to take up his new duties 
 as the defender of the Southwest against the 
 British. 
 
 Up to this time, except for the war with 
 the Creeks and the bloodless capture of 
 Mobile, the Southwest had taken little part 
 in the contest. On land, the war had been 
 mainly an affair of the North, where the 
 Americans had been trying to wrest Canada 
 from the mother country, and of the North 
 west, where the British and the Indians had 
 taken the offensive. The death of Tecumseh 
 at the battle of the Thames, in November, 
 1813, had made an end of that combination, 
 and General William Henry Harrison had 
 won some honor by his management of the 
 campaign. But the several attempts at in 
 vading Canada were neither successful nor 
 glorious. On the whole, the land campaigns 
 of the Americans had been utterly disap 
 pointing. The little American navy had 
 indeed covered itself with glory, both on the 
 high seas and on the Great Lakes ; but from 
 
62 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the seas, where it was vastly overmatched by 
 Great Britain s immense naval resources, it 
 had practically disappeared by the autumn 
 of 1814. Only a few privateers still preyed 
 on British commerce. And now, by the 
 overthrow of Napoleon, Great Britain was 
 left free to employ against America all those 
 ships with which Nelson had won for her the 
 empire of the sea, and those superb soldiers 
 who, under Wellington, had driven the 
 French out of Spain. Regiments of these 
 veterans were sent to Canada. In August, 
 an expedition under General Ross landed on 
 the coast of Chesapeake Bay, defeated an 
 American force at Bladensburg, took Wash 
 ington, and burned the capitol and the Presi 
 dent s mansion. The enemy was stronger 
 than ever, and the United States were at 
 the point of exhaustion. 
 
 Moreover, the ruling class in one impor 
 tant section of the country was rather 
 inclined to weaken than to help the govern 
 ment. The Federalist leaders in New Eng 
 land were against the French, against Presi 
 dent Madison, against the war. They had 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 63 
 
 been in opposition ever since President Jef 
 ferson went into office in 1801. Distrusting 
 the Southwest, and opposing the expansion 
 of the country in that direction, they had 
 talked about a breaking up of the Union 
 when Louisiana was purchased in 1803, and 
 again when the State of Louisiana was admit 
 ted in 1811-12. When the war began, the 
 governors of several New England States 
 refused to turn their militia over to the 
 Union generals. In 1814, several legisla 
 tures, the Massachusetts legislature in the 
 lead, were arranging a convention to propose 
 far-reaching changes in the Constitution of 
 the United States, and many feared that the 
 outcome would be the disruption of the 
 Union and a separate New England confed 
 eration. True, New England men were 
 fighting bravely by land and sea for their 
 country, but the leading Federalists of New 
 England were, as a rule, disaffected. A 
 notable exception was John Quincy Adams, 
 who, distrusting the leaders of his own party, 
 had gone over to the party of Jefferson. 
 The time was now come for the South- 
 
64 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 west, the region so long distrusted, to show 
 whether or not it was loyal to the Union. 
 The British were aiming at that quarter a 
 powerful military and naval force. Evi 
 dently believing the stories of disaffection in 
 the Southwest, they had sent ahead of their 
 expedition printed invitations to the South 
 western people to throw off the yoke of the 
 Union. The Spaniards of the Gulf coast, 
 probably not ignorant of the American de 
 signs on both the Floridas, and resenting 
 the seizure of Mobile, were no better than 
 passive allies of the British, who were thus 
 enabled to use Pensacola as a base for their 
 campaign against Mobile, New Orleans, and 
 the great Mississippi Valley beyond. 
 
 When Jackson reached Mobile, in the 
 middle of August, he was already thoroughly 
 angered with the Spaniards for harboring 
 refugee Creeks and giving them arms. He 
 had always been in favor of seizing the 
 Floridas ; that had been the real object of 
 the expedition down the Mississippi in 1813 
 which he had commanded. The true rea 
 son why he and his army were dismissed at 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 65 
 
 Natchez was that the authorities at Wash 
 ington had changed their mind about seiz 
 ing West Florida. In July, 1814, he wrote 
 to Washington for permission to take Pen- 
 sacola, but no reply came, for the War De 
 partment was occupied with General Eoss. 
 The absurd conduct of a British officer, Colo 
 nel Nichols, who was at Pensacola with a 
 force of British and Indians, occupying one 
 of the two Spanish forts there, and issuing 
 fiery proclamations, was enough to make 
 Jackson act at once, even if he had hesi 
 tated before. He answered the colonel s pro 
 clamations with others equally fiery. But he 
 had to wait for troops, which were to come 
 from the neighboring States of Tennessee, 
 Kentucky, Georgia, and Louisiana. Mean 
 time, in September, a British squadron made 
 a determined attack on Fort Bowyer, at the 
 entrance to Mobile Bay, and was repulsed, 
 with the loss of its flagship, by Major Law 
 rence and a small garrison, a gallant 
 achievement, which made a good beginning 
 of the campaign. At the end of October, 
 Coffee, now a general officer, with nearly 
 
66 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 three thousand Tennesseans, reached the 
 neighborhood of Mobile. With these, and 
 about a thousand of the regulars he had 
 already, Jackson promptly marched on Pen- 
 sacola. One of the forts, and the city it 
 self, he took ; the other fort, Barrancas, was 
 blown up by the British before he could 
 reach it. The enterprise kept him but a 
 week. It was all over before he received, 
 in reply to his own letter of July, a letter 
 from the Secretary of War forbidding him 
 to attack Pensacola. Once again he had 
 taken the responsibility to do what he felt 
 to be necessary. 
 
 By this time the government at Washing 
 ton was alive to the great danger of the 
 Southwest. Hurried orders were sent to the 
 governors of the various States whose militia 
 must be the main reliance for defence. It 
 was suspected that New Orleans would be 
 the first objective of the enemy, and a warn 
 ing came to the city from Jean Lafitte, the 
 leader of a gang of smugglers, whom the 
 British had tried to win over. But the 
 warning was not properly heeded, and Jack- 
 
TOHOPEKA AND PENSACOLA 67 
 
 son himself was slow to make up his mind 
 where the enemy would strike. He lingered 
 at Mobile until November 22, and four days 
 later Sir Edward Pakenham, with a large 
 army and a great fleet, sailed from Jamaica 
 for New Orleans. It was not until Decem 
 ber 2 that a worn, thin man, tired and ill, 
 whom nobody, failing to observe the look in 
 his eyes, would have taken for the conqueror 
 of the Creeks, rode into the curious little 
 city that had been the French and then the 
 Spanish capital of Louisiana, and which was 
 not yet half like an American town. The 
 bulk of its population was still French Cre 
 ole and African ; but among the Americans 
 there was at least one man who already knew 
 something of Andrew Jackson, and who was 
 to know a great deal more. The leader of 
 the New Orleans bar, and the most active 
 of all the citizens in making ready for the 
 enemy, was no other than that Edward Liv 
 ingston, who, with Duane and Burr, had 
 been friendly to the Tennessee Congressman 
 eighteen years before at Philadelphia, ^e 
 invited the new commander to his house, 
 
68 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 where Mrs. Livingston, a social leader in 
 the town, soon discovered that the Indian 
 fighter knew perfectly well how to deport 
 himself in a drawing-room. 
 
IV 
 
 NEW OKLEANS 
 
 A GLANCE at the map will give the reader 
 some idea of the doubts that must have be 
 set Jackson concerning the point at which 
 the enemy would probably attack New Or 
 leans. The island on which the city stands 
 was accessible from the sea by at least three 
 general routes. The British might approach 
 by the Mississippi River, which flows by the 
 city on the west, or over Lake Pontchar- 
 train, which stretches out to the north, or 
 over Lake Borgne, from the southeast. 
 Jackson first inspected Fort St. Philip, sixty 
 miles below, on the river ; besides the fort, 
 there were, for river defences, the schooner 
 Carolina and the sloop Louisiana. His 
 next move was to Lake Pontchartrain, and 
 he was still in that quarter when news 
 came that the enemy had chosen the third 
 
70 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 route and was already on Lake Borgne. 
 The British found there six American gun 
 boats, which were all destroyed or taken 
 after a brief but gallant struggle. That 
 was December 14, and New Orleans was not 
 yet in any good posture of defence. The 
 most natural route from the lake to the 
 immediate neighborhood of the city was up 
 the Bayou Bienvenu, which led to the south 
 ern end of a level plain bounded on the 
 west by the river and on the east by a dense 
 cypress swamp. At the northern end of the 
 plain lay New Orleans, and the distance was 
 but six or seven miles; the plain was in 
 most places about a mile wide. Between 
 the head of the bayou and the city there 
 was not a fort or even a line of intrench- 
 ments. For this state of things Jackson has 
 not escaped blame from military critics. 
 
 But if illness or any other cause had 
 robbed him of his usual energy, the news of 
 the disaster on Lake Borgne was the signal 
 for a change in him and in the situation. 
 Coffee, with part of the Tennessee volunteers, 
 was up the river at Baton Rouge. A hurried 
 
NEW ORLEANS 71 
 
 summons brought him a hundred and twenty 
 miles in two days, and on the 19th he was 
 in camp a few miles above the city with 
 eight hundred men. Two days later came 
 General Carroll and a brigade of Tennessee 
 militia, two thousand strong ; with them 
 came also a squadron of mounted Missis 
 sippi volunteers. Louisiana furnished a 
 thousand militia ; the city of New Orleans 
 five or six hundred volunteers, of whom 
 about a third were mulattoes. Jackson had 
 also two incomplete regiments of regulars 
 numbering together about eight hundred 
 rank and file. A Kentucky brigade of 
 twenty-five hundred men was on the way, 
 but without arms. Of Carroll s men, only 
 one in ten had a musket. To provide arms 
 for these new troops was a difficult matter, 
 and many of the Kentuckians were still 
 unarmed when the final struggle came. The 
 city became panic-stricken and disorderly, 
 and Jackson promptly placed it under mar 
 tial law. 
 
 Such was the situation when, on the morn 
 ing of December 23, the British advance 
 
72 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 party, numbering about seventeen hundred, 
 conveyed in small boats over the shallow 
 Lake Borgne and up the Bienvenu, landed 
 six miles below the city and seized the man 
 sion of Major Villere, a Creole gentleman of 
 the neighborhood. Villere was captured, but 
 escaped, and at half past one o clock Jack 
 son knew in New Orleans that the enemy 
 was at hand. By good luck, Major Latour, 
 a French engineer, and the best historian of 
 the campaign, was among the first to view 
 the invaders, and he gave the general a cor 
 rect idea of their position and numbers. As 
 in all other crises, Jackson s resolve was 
 taken at once. "By the Eternal," he ex 
 claimed, " they shall not sleep on our soil ! " 
 He set his troops in motion for a night at 
 tack. 
 
 Had the British marched on to New 
 Orleans without stopping, it seems probable 
 that they would have taken it that evening. 
 But at nightfall upwards of two thousand 
 Americans were between them and the city. 
 Jackson was on the American right, near the 
 river, with the regulars and the Louisiana 
 
NEW ORLEANS 73 
 
 contingent. Coffee, with his Teunesseans 
 and the Mississippi horsemen, was on the 
 left, next the cypress swamp. Carroll s 
 brigade and the city militia were left to 
 guard New Orleans on the north. The 
 Carolina had crept down the river opposite 
 the enemy s position, and at half past seven 
 one of her guns gave the signal for attack. 
 
 What followed, in the fog and darkness, 
 is not clearly known. The British were sur 
 prised ; but British soldiers are proverbially 
 hard to drive from their own position. The 
 Americans had the advantage of making 
 the attack; but they were nearly all raw 
 troops. Each side was confused and un 
 certain of its own and the enemy s position. 
 Coffee, on the left, drove the British back 
 towards the river, where they were pro 
 tected by an old levee, while the new levee 
 on the bank shielded them from the Louisi 
 ana s fire. On the right, the Americans 
 were repulsed. Reinforcements reached the 
 British "army during the action. At half 
 past nine the attack ceased. The enemy 
 lost two hundred and sixty-seven killed, 
 
74 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 wounded, and missing ; the Americans, two 
 hundred and thirteen. The night attack, 
 however, strengthened the Americans. The 
 enemy, overrating Jackson s force, became too 
 cautious to advance at once, but waited until 
 the entire army should be landed. The 
 Americans gained time to build defenses. 
 
 Jackson chose a line two miles above the 
 battlefield, marked by a shallow canal or 
 ditch which crossed the plain at its narrow 
 est point, from the swamp to the river. 
 Behind the ditch he threw up a parapet. In 
 some places cotton bales were used, for the 
 soil was but three feet deep ; at that depth 
 one found water, as indeed one found water 
 almost everywhere, in the foggy air, in the 
 bayous, the river, the swamps, of that low 
 land about New Orleans. In a few days 
 Jackson s arrangements for defence were 
 completed. Fifteen guns were disposed at in 
 tervals along the line, some of them manned 
 by Lafitte and his buccaneers. The whole 
 force numbered about three thousand, and 
 the Kentuckians, though not all armed, were 
 used as a reserve. On the river the Loui- 
 
NEW ORLEANS 75 
 
 siana and the Carolina gave the enemy much 
 trouble. 
 
 The British army, when completely dis 
 embarked, seemed to justify the Duke of 
 Wellington s confidence that it could rout 
 any American army he ever heard of. Seven 
 thousand trained British soldiers, seamen, 
 and marines, and a thousand West Indian 
 blacks, were assembled at Villere s planta 
 tion, with from twenty-five to thirty guns. 
 There were regiments which had helped 
 Wellington to win Talavera, Salamanca, and 
 Vitoria, and within a few short months some 
 of these same regiments were to stand at 
 Waterloo in that thin red line which Ney 
 and Napoleon s guard could never break. 
 Their general, Pakenham, Wellington s bro 
 ther-in-law, was a distinguished pupil of his 
 illustrious kinsman. Could frontiersmen who 
 had never fought together before, who had 
 never seen the face of a civilized foe, with 
 stand the conquerors of Napoleon ? But two 
 branches of the same stubborn race were 
 represented on that little watery plain. The 
 soldiers trained to serve the strongest will in 
 
76 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the Old World were face to face with the 
 rough and ready yeomanry embattled for 
 defence by the one man of the New World 
 whose soul had most of iron in it. It was 
 Salamanca against Tohopeka, discipline 
 against individual alertness, the Briton of 
 the little Isle against the Briton of the 
 wastes and wilds. But there was one great 
 difference. Wellington, "the Iron Duke," 
 was not there; "Old Hickory" was every 
 where along the American lines. A grave 
 and moderate historian, comparing the de 
 fense of New Orleans with the defence of 
 Washington, finds the two situations not 
 unlike. " The principal difference," he re 
 marks, " was that Jackson commanded." 
 
 Pakenham s first concern was to get rid 
 of the Carolina and the Louisiana. Heavy 
 guns were with great labor hauled from the 
 fleet, and on December 27 the Carolina s 
 crew were forced to abandon her, and the 
 Louisiana was with difficulty got out of 
 range ; but meanwhile Commodore Patter 
 son had mounted a battery across the river 
 which in a measure made up for the ships. 
 
NEW ORLEANS 77 
 
 On the 28th, Pakenham advanced with his 
 whole army, but retired, without making any 
 assault, to await the result of an artillery 
 duel. This was fought on New Year s day, 
 1815. The British used at least twenty- 
 four guns, throwing some three hundred 
 and fifty pounds of metal ; the Americans, 
 fifteen guns, throwing two hundred and 
 twenty-four pounds. On both sides novel 
 defences were employed, cotton bales by 
 the Americans, barrels of sugar by the Brit 
 ish. The bales quickly caught fire, and from 
 that tune were discarded ; the barrels proved 
 as useless as if they had been empty. The 
 result of the action would have been utterly 
 surprising but for the discovery already 
 made in Canada that Americans were better 
 marksmen than British regulars. Three 
 American guns were damaged ; every one 
 of the British batteries was silenced and 
 abandoned. The American loss was thirty- 
 four killed and wounded ; the British, some 
 what heavier. 
 
 Pakenham waited a week for General 
 Lambert to come up with two of his regi- 
 
78 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 ments, and then made his supreme effort. 
 His plan was to advance on both sides of 
 the river. During the night of January 7, 
 Colonel Thornton, with 1200 men, was 
 thrown across to the left bank, where Gen 
 eral David Morgan had 450 Louisiana mili 
 tia, reinforced at the last moment by four 
 hundred Kentuckians. Both British divi 
 sions were to attack before dawn. But the 
 dawn came before Thornton was ready. He 
 was, however, successful in his part of the 
 programme. Morgan was driven back, his 
 guns taken, and the British on the west bank 
 passed up the river a mile beyond Jackson s 
 line. Jackson never forgave the Kentuck 
 ians, although military critics incline to think 
 they did all that should have been expected. 
 But on the east bank it was a different 
 story. At six o clock the main body of 
 the British rushed upon the American lines. 
 General Gibbs, with 2200, sought to pierce 
 the defenses near the swamp. General 
 Keane led 1200 along the river bank. Gen 
 eral Lambert, with the reserve, brought up 
 the rear. The whole force engaged was over 
 
NEW ORLEANS 79 
 
 5000. Gibbs first came under the Ameri 
 can fire. The head of his division melted 
 before it. Gibbs himself fell, mortally 
 wounded. Pakenharn, dashing forward to 
 rally the column, was killed three hundred 
 yards from the lines. Keane, on the British 
 left, was wounded and carried from the field. 
 Nowhere did the enemy pierce or break the 
 line of defense. A brave major did indeed 
 cross the ditch and lift his head above the 
 breastworks; but he lived only long enough 
 to send back word that he died on the para 
 pet like an English soldier. In truth, Pak- 
 enham s assault was a desperate venture, 
 such as British commanders, relying on the 
 valor of their men, have been too often led 
 to make. At eight o clock Jackson walked 
 from end to end of his works, and not a 
 British soldier was anywhere to be seen in 
 an attitude of offence. The smoke of the 
 artillery, clearing, discovered the enemy far 
 distant, in full retreat to his camp, and the 
 battlefield littered with piles of dead and 
 wounded. " I saw," said Jackson, " more 
 than five hundred Britons emerging from 
 
80 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the heaps of their dead comrades, all over 
 the plain, rising up, and still more distinctly 
 visible as the field became clearer, coming 
 forward and surrendering to our soldiers." 
 
 Here was revenge, indeed, for the suffer 
 ings of little Andy in the Waxhaws, for 
 the sabre cut on his head, for his brothers, 
 for his mother. But it is not known that 
 any low word of vengeance passed his lips 
 at the awful sight before him. The British 
 dead were seven hundred, their wounded 
 twice as many, and five hundred were taken. 
 In the American lines on that side of the 
 river eight were killed and thirteen wounded. 
 Such a victory, so cheaply bought, is not 
 paralleled in the warfare of civilized men. 
 Lambert, succeeding Pakenham, recalled 
 Thornton and gave up the important advan 
 tage the British won on the western bank. 
 For ten days the armies lay as they were, 
 and then the enemy withdrew as he had 
 come. A few days later, Fort Bowyer, on 
 Mobile Point, was taken, and then the fight 
 ing ceased. 
 
 During the closing weeks of January, by 
 
NEW ORLEANS 81 
 
 the slow methods of travel prevalent in those 
 days, three messengers were hastening to 
 AVashington with tidings which the wearied 
 President awaited with eagerness or fear 
 according to the quarter from which they 
 came. From Hartford, Conn., where the 
 convention of New England malcontents had 
 sat, he was to learn what demands w r ere made 
 by Americans who chose a time of war to 
 change and weaken, if not indeed to destroy, 
 the constitution of their country. From the 
 American commissioners at Ghent he hoped 
 against hope for news of a peace. To the 
 Southwest he looked with dread, for few had 
 dared to believe that New Orleans could be 
 defended. The three messages arrived al 
 most together, and all three were to stick in 
 men s minds for years to come, and to mould 
 men s thoughts about their country. From 
 Ghent came tidings of a peace, not, indeed, 
 glorious, or such as we had gone to war to 
 win, but better than we had a right to expect. 
 From New Orleans, tidings of a victory so 
 splendid that it stirred the blood and bright 
 ened the eyes of every true American, and 
 
82 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 made it hard to remember that the war had 
 not been altogether glorious. The threaten 
 ing message from Hartford lost its terrors. 
 In the great balance of the sections, the 
 Northeast sank, the Southwest rose. When 
 men recalled the war with shame, it was be 
 cause of Hartford; when they spoke of it 
 with pride, as in time they came to do, it 
 was because they saw, on the parapet of New 
 Orleans, looking out over heaps of British 
 dead, the thin, tall figure of the horseman in 
 Lafayette Square. True, the victory might 
 seem worthless, for the peace was made be 
 fore the battle was fought; but the victor 
 had won for his countrymen something dearer 
 than anything set forth in treaties. He had 
 won them back their good opinion of them 
 selves. In the prosperous years that were 
 to follow, Andrew Jackson, the man of the 
 Southwest, was to stand as no other man 
 could for the American s faith in his country 
 against the world. 
 
 But the victorious general was still the 
 same Andrew Jackson ; he did not leave 
 New Orleans without exhibiting some of the 
 
NEW ORLEANS 83 
 
 characteristics that were so well known in 
 Tennessee. Relaxing none of his vigilance, 
 he kept the city under martial law after the 
 British had sailed, and even after the British 
 admiral had sent him word of the peace. 
 Many New Orleans people protested, and 
 certain of them claimed exemption from the 
 work of defense on the ground that they 
 were citizens of France. All such he ordered 
 out of the city. Mr. Louaillier, a leading 
 citizen, published a protest, and Jackson 
 promptly arrested him. Judge Hall, of the 
 United States District Court, issued a writ 
 of habeas corpus for the prisoner, and Jack 
 son as promptly arrested the judge him 
 self, and did not release him until, early in 
 March, official notice of the peace was re 
 ceived. The judge fined the general a thou 
 sand dollars for contempt of court, and 
 nearly thirty years afterwards the American 
 Congress voted money enough to repay the 
 sum with interest. Between the battle and 
 the news of peace, Jackson also signed the 
 order for the execution of six militiamen 
 whom a court-martial had found guilty of 
 
84 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 mutiny and desertion. There were circum 
 stances which seemed to recommend these 
 men to mercy, and in after years the order 
 was cited along with other things to prove 
 that Jackson was a cruel and arbitrary com 
 mander. 
 
 However, the War Department gave him 
 only the mildest of reproofs for his treatment 
 of the civil authorities at New Orleans, and 
 when he returned to Tennessee it was to a 
 welcome even more heartfelt and stirring 
 than the one he got on his return from the 
 Creek war. In the autumn he was called 
 to Washington to consult with his superiors 
 about putting the army on a peace footing, 
 and on the journey and at the capital he was 
 universally received as the hero of the war. 
 The army was reduced to ten thousand men, 
 and distributed into a northern and a south 
 ern department. The command of the north 
 ern department was given to General Jacob 
 Brown ; Jackson got the southern depart 
 ment. 
 
 It was about this time that Governor 
 Alston, of South Carolina, got a letter from 
 
NEW ORLEANS 85 
 
 his father-in-law, Aaron Burr, of New York, 
 concerning the approaching presidential elec 
 tion. Burr thought Monroe, the leading 
 candidate and the man preferred by Presi 
 dent Madison, too weak a man for the great 
 office. He wanted a man of firmness and de 
 cision, and he added, " that man is Andrew 
 Jackson." But as yet Jackson himself had 
 no such ambition. As late as 1821, in fact, 
 he said, in reply to a suggestion that he 
 might be President : " No, sir ; I know what 
 I am fit for. I can command a body of men 
 in a rough way ; but I am not fit to be 
 President." He cordially supported Monroe 
 in 1816, and after his election wrote to him 
 and made a few suggestions about his ad 
 ministration. One of these suggestions was 
 to appoint a Federalist, Colonel William 
 Drayton, Secretary of War. Jackson de 
 clared that, had he been in command in New 
 England, he would have hanged the leaders 
 of the Hartford Convention ; but he was in 
 favor of recognizing the loyalty of such Fed 
 eralists as had served the country faithfully 
 during the war. That letter to Monroe was 
 
86 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 "copied" for the general by his neighbor 
 and friend, William B. Lewis, as were hun 
 dreds of others. The general himself was a 
 poor writer, and Major Lewis was a skilful 
 man with a pen. He was also an exceedingly 
 clever politician, and he showed his clever 
 ness by keeping a second copy of the letter 
 to Monroe for future use. In the course of 
 the correspondence, Monroe let Jackson know 
 that he himself might be Secretary of War 
 if he chose ; but Jackson was content with 
 his command. 
 
V 
 
 THE SEMINOLES AND THE POLITICIANS 
 
 FOR three years General Jackson was 
 mainly occupied with the duties of a military 
 officer in time of peace ; but he was also 
 employed to make treaties with several In 
 dian tribes, and won another royal welcome 
 home from the Tennesseans by throwing 
 open to settlement large areas of Indian 
 lands. Even in peace, however, he found 
 an opportunity to display his readiness to 
 do the right thing in a way to make trou 
 ble. Being several times annoyed by orders 
 issued direct from the War Department to 
 his inferiors, and seeing clearly that this 
 was not the proper procedure, he issued a 
 general order forbidding his subordinates to 
 obey any commands which did not reach 
 them through him. Calhotm, who became 
 Secretary of War soon afterwards, conceded 
 
88 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 the justice of the general s position, but Jack 
 son s course in the matter was certainly rather 
 high-handed. General Winfield Scott criti 
 cised it in private conversation, and a mis 
 chief-maker brought his words to Jackson s 
 attention. The result was some fiery and 
 abusive letters to Scott, and a challenge to 
 a duel, which Scott, on religious grounds, 
 very properly declined. Jackson also car 
 ried on an angry correspondence with Gen 
 eral Adair, of Kentucky, who defended the 
 Kentucky troops from the charge of cow 
 ardice at New Orleans. 
 
 It was late in the year 1817 before Gen 
 eral Jackson was again called to active ser 
 vice in the field. Once more the call was 
 from the southward, and his old enemies, the 
 Red Sticks, the English, and the Spaniards, 
 were all in some measure responsible for it. 
 A number of Red Sticks had taken refuge 
 with their kinsmen, the Seminoles, in Florida. 
 Colonel Nichols and a small force of British 
 had also remained in Florida some time after 
 the war ended, and had done things of a 
 nature to stir up the Indians there against 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 89 
 
 the Americans across the border. Negro 
 slaves, escaping from American masters, had 
 fled to the Spanish province in considerable 
 numbers, and a bod} 7 of them got possession 
 of a fort on the Apalachicola River which 
 had been abandoned by the British. To 
 add to the disorder of the province, it was 
 frequented by adventurers, some of them 
 claiming to be there in order to lead a revo 
 lution against Spain, some of them probably 
 mere freebooters. The Spanish authorities 
 at Pensacola were too weak to control such 
 a population, and Americans near the border 
 were anxious to have their government inter 
 fere. The negro fort was a centre of law 
 lessness, and some American troops marched 
 down the river, bombarded it, and by a lucky 
 shot blew up its magazine and killed nearly 
 three hundred negroes. Troubles arose 
 with the Indians also, and Fowltown, an 
 Indian village, was taken and burned. A 
 considerable body of Indians took to the 
 war-path, and Jackson was ordered to the 
 scene. 
 
 Impatient as ever with the Spaniards, he . 
 
90 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 wrote to President Monroe : " Let it be sig 
 nified to me through any channel (say Mr. 
 J. Ehea) that the possession of Florida 
 would be desirable to the United States, 
 and in sixty days it will be accomplished." 
 Monroe was ill at the time, and for some 
 reason did not attend to the general s letter 
 for a year. The President was trying to get 
 Florida peaceably, by purchase, and not by 
 conquest. Jackson, however, got the idea 
 that his suggestion was approved, and acted 
 accordingly. 
 
 Eaising troops in Tennessee on his own 
 authority, he marched rapidly to the scene 
 of trouble, crossed the border into Florida, 
 and in a few weeks crushed the Seminoles. 
 Of fighting, in fact, there was very little ; 
 what there was fell almost entirely to the 
 friendly Indians, and not a single American 
 soldier was killed. But Jackson s actions 
 in the campaign brought on the bitterest 
 controversies of his career. By his order 
 four men were put to death, and he cap 
 tured Pensacola again, claiming that some 
 Indians had taken refuge there. Two of 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 91 
 
 the four men were Creek Red Sticks. The 
 other two were white men and British sub 
 jects. One was Alexander Arbuthnot, an 
 old man of seventy, a trader among the In 
 dians, and, so far as is known, a man of good 
 character. He was taken prisoner, how 
 ever, and it is supposed a letter he wrote to 
 his son, telling him to take their merchandise 
 to a place of safety, warned some Indians of 
 Jackson s approach. The other British sub 
 ject was an Englishman named Robert Am- y 
 brister, who had been a lieutenant in the 
 British army. He was nephew to the gov 
 ernor of New Providence, one of the British 
 AVest Indies, and seems to have been in 
 Florida rather in search of adventure than 
 for any clearly ascertainable purpose. A 
 court-martial found Arbuthnot guilty of in 
 citing the Creek Indians to rise against the 
 United States, and of aiding the enemy. 
 Ambrister was found guilty of levying war 
 against the United States. He was first 
 sentenced to be shot ; then, on reconsidera 
 tion, the court changed the sentence to fifty 
 stripes and hard labor for a year. Jackson 
 
92 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 firmly believed that both were British emissa 
 ries, sent to Florida to stir up the Indians. 
 He disapproved the change of Ambrister s 
 sentence, and ordered him to be shot and 
 Arbuthnot to be hanged. 
 
 Such fierce and energetic measures, whe 
 ther justifiable or not, put an end to the 
 disorder on the border, and Jackson was 
 again free to return home a victor. The 
 country was disposed to approve what he 
 had done, but the President and Cabinet 
 saw that grave international questions would 
 be raised ; for Jackson had invaded the soil 
 of a country at peace with the United States, 
 taken possession of its forts, and put to 
 death citizens of another country also at 
 peace with the United States. John C. 
 Calhoun, of South Carolina, the Secretary of 
 War, was in favor of censuring the general 
 for his conduct ; but John Quincy Adams, 
 of Massachusetts, the Secretary of State, 
 thought his acts necessary under the circum 
 stances, and declared himself ready to de 
 fend them. In the end he did defend them 
 so well that neither Spain nor Great Britain 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 93 
 
 made serious trouble over them. The Presi 
 dent and his Cabinet followed Adams s ad 
 vice instead of Calhoun s, and Calhoun him 
 self, as Jackson s superior, wrote to him 
 about the campaign in a friendly way. 
 Jackson naturally thought that Calhoun had 
 been his friend in the Cabinet, and had no 
 reason to suspect that it was Adams who 
 defended, and Calhoun who wished to cen 
 sure him. He did not learn the truth for 
 many years. Had he known it sooner, there 
 is no telling how different the political his 
 tory of the next twenty years might have 
 been. 
 
 For henceforth Jackson was to be a great 
 figure not in warfare but in politics. His 
 military career was practically ended. He 
 kept his commission until July, 1821, but 
 from this time he fought no more battles. 
 He had not, as a soldier, given such evidence 
 of military genius as to set his name along 
 side those of the great captains of history, 
 but he had shown himself a strong and suc 
 cessful leader of men ; in his masterful, often 
 irregular and violent way, he had done his 
 
9i ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 country good service. Were his place in 
 history merely a soldier s, it would be a safe 
 one, though not the highest. But his actions 
 in the field soon gave him the leading part 
 on a different stage. One day in January, 
 1819, he rode up to the house of his neigh 
 bor, Major Lewis, who had just bought a 
 new overcoat, and asked him to get himself 
 another ; the general wanted the one already 
 made to wear on a long journey. " Major," 
 he said, " there is a combination in Wash 
 ington to ruin me. I start to Washington 
 to-morrow." 
 
 The chief of those who, as Jackson firmly 
 believed, were combined to ruin him, was 
 the man who could with best reason be com 
 pared to the hero of New Orleans for the 
 place he had in the affections of the West 
 ern people and as the representative of the 
 new American spirit, born of the second 
 war with Great Britain. If Jackson was 
 the hero of the war, Henry Clay was its 
 orator ; if it was Jackson who sent from one 
 quarter the news of a glorious victory, it 
 was Clay who, with Adams and Gallatin, 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 95 
 
 had secured the peace. Leaving Ghent, 
 Clay was lingering in Paris when he heard 
 the news of New Orleans. " Now," he ex 
 claimed, " I can go to England without mor 
 tification." But the great orator was not 
 in sympathy with Monroe s administration. 
 His enemies declared he was in opposition 
 because he was not asked to be Secretary of 
 State, and because he feared that Adams, 
 who had the place, would become President 
 four years later. However that may have 
 been, it was Clay who led the attack on 
 the administration about the campaign in 
 Florida. Protesting his deep respect for 
 " the illustrious military chieftain " who 
 commanded there, he yet condemned the 
 hanging of the two Red Sticks, the execu 
 tion of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, the tak 
 ing of Pensacola. 
 
 From the moment Jackson read that 
 speech he was Clay s enemy, and a warfare 
 began that lasted twenty-five years. Every 
 man, in fact, who in the course of the long 
 debate that followed condemned the acts of 
 General Jackson in Florida was written 
 
96 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 down an enemy on the tablets of his mem 
 ory. He remained in Washington until 
 the House had voted down every resolution 
 unfavorable to his course, and he had thus 
 won his first victory over Clay. Then he set 
 forth on a northern journey which showed 
 him the immense popularity he had in 
 places like New York, Philadelphia, and 
 Baltimore, and gave him an opportunity to 
 increase it by the fine appearance he made 
 in public. He returned to find that a Sen 
 ate committee had reported unfavorably on 
 his conduct, but the Senate never acted on 
 the report, and on his journey homeward 
 the people gave him every reason to believe 
 that the great majority of his countrymen 
 approved the votes of the lower house. As 
 if to complete his triumph, he was soon 
 called once more to Florida ; and this time 
 he entered Pensacola, not as a soldier invad 
 ing a foreign province, but as the chief 
 magistrate of an American territory. In 
 February, 1821, after so many years of ne 
 gotiation, Florida was bought by the United 
 States. President Monroe appointed Jack- 
 V, 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 97 
 
 son governor and commissioner to receive 
 the province, and he, bidding farewell to 
 the army, entered again upon the duties of 
 a civil office. 
 
 Even in his farewell to his troops, Jack 
 son took occasion to attack a policy recently 
 favored by his superior, General Jacob 
 Brown, and any one who knew Jackson 
 might have guessed that the holding of a 
 civil office would never keep him from vio 
 lent courses, particularly in Pensacola. He 
 held the office only a few months, for he 
 was in wretched health. His wife, who was 
 with him, tells in one of her letters how 
 pale and solemn he was when he rode into 
 Pensacola for the third time, and how ill he 
 was while he was there. He resigned in 
 October, but before he resigned he had 
 made another cause of dispute with Spain. 
 The retiring Spanish governor, Callava, was 
 accused of attempting to carry away papers 
 which were necessary to establish the pro 
 perty rights of a quadroon family. The 
 correspondence on the subject led to a series 
 of misunderstandings, and General Jackson 
 
98 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 was soon convinced that villainy was afoot. 
 The upshot of the dispute was that the 
 American governor put the Spanish gov 
 ernor in jail ; and when the United States 
 judge of West Florida, a curious character 
 named Fromentin, tried to mend the matter 
 with a writ of habeas corpus, he fared little 
 better than Judge Hall of New Orleans had 
 fared before him. 
 
 Mr. Parton s laborious investigation of 
 this comical affair enables him to show 
 that the estate over which the trouble arose 
 was of no value whatever, and that Jack 
 son s chivalrous impulse to defend a fam 
 ily he thought wronged led him into a 
 very arbitrary and indefensible action. As 
 usual, his motives were good, but his tem 
 per was not improved by his illness or by 
 the fact that Callava, who seems to have 
 been a worthy gentleman, was a Spaniard, 
 and had been governor of Florida. Jackson 
 had a rooted dislike of Spanish governors, 
 and doubtless congratulated himself and the 
 country that there would be no more of 
 them in Florida, when, for the last time, he 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 99 
 
 turned northward from Pensacola to seek 
 The Hermitage and the rest which his dis 
 eased body sorely needed. 
 
 The Hermitage was by this time a good 
 place to rest in, for it had grown to be a 
 Southern plantation home, quite unlike the 
 bare homes which sheltered the first settlers 
 of that neighborhood, and it had its full 
 share of the charm that belonged to that 
 old Southern life. It was the seat of an 
 abundant hospitality. The fame of its mas 
 ter drew thither interesting men from a dis 
 tance. His benevolence, and the homely 
 charity of his wife, made it a resort for 
 many of the neighborhood whom they two 
 had befriended, for young people fond of 
 the simple amusements of those days, and 
 for ministers of the Gospel, whom Mrs. 
 Jackson, an extremely pious woman, liked 
 especially to have about her. For his wife s 
 sake, the general built a tiny church on the 
 estate, and always treated with profound 
 respect the religion which he himself had 
 not professed, but which he honored because 
 Mrs. Jackson was a Christian. Indeed, 
 
100 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 there is nothing in the man s whole life 
 more honorable than his perfect loyalty to 
 her. She was a simple, uncultivated, kind- 
 hearted frontier woman, no longer attrac 
 tive in person, and a great contrast to the 
 courtly figure by her side when she and the 
 general were in company. It is certainly 
 true that the two used to smoke their reed 
 pipes together before the fire after dinner, 
 and that custom, to one ignorant of Ameri 
 can life in the Southwest, would stamp them 
 as persons of the lowest manners. Yet it is 
 also true that " Aunt Rachel," as Mrs. Jack 
 son was commonly called by younger people 
 of the neighborhood, was loved and honored 
 by all who knew her. The general had not 
 merely fine manners, but that which is finer 
 far than the finest manners : he had kindness 
 for his slaves, hospitality for strangers, gen 
 tleness with women and children. Lafay 
 ette was at The Hermitage in 1825, and his 
 noble nature was drawn to Jackson in a 
 way quite impossible to understand if he 
 was nothing more than the vindictive duel 
 ist, the headstrong brawler, the crusher out 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 101 
 
 of Indians, the hater of Britons and Span 
 iards, which we know that he was. Lafay 
 ette found at The Hermitage the pistols 
 which he himself had given to Washington 
 and which, with many swords and other 
 tokens of the public esteem, had come to the 
 hero of New Orleans. The friend of Wash 
 ington declared that the pistols had come 
 to worthy hands, notwithstanding that his 
 host was equally ready to display another 
 weapon with the remark, " That is the pistol 
 with which I killed Mr. Dickinson." 
 
 It seems clear that Jackson honestly meant 
 to spend the rest of his days at the Hermit 
 age. His friend Eaton, a Senator from 
 Tennessee, had already written his life down 
 to New Orleans, and probably he would 
 have been content, so far as his public 
 career was concerned, to let finis follow the 
 name of his greatest victory. But Eaton 
 himself, and Major Lewis, and other friends, 
 and the vast public which his deeds had 
 stirred, would not let him alone. Within a 
 year of his retirement, a group of his friends 
 were working shrewdly to make him Presi- 
 
102 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 dent of the United States. In 1823, John 
 Williams, who was an enemy to Jackson, 
 came before the Tennessee legislature for re 
 election to the United States Senate. Jack 
 son s friends were determined to beat him, 
 and found they could do it in only one way. 
 They elected Jackson himself. In that, as 
 in all the clever political work that was done 
 for him, Major Lewis was the leading man. 
 Before the time came to choose a successor 
 to President Monroe in 1824, Tennessee 
 had declared for her foremost citizen, and 
 Pennsylvania, to the surprise of the country, 
 soon followed the lead. The sceptre was 
 about to pass from the Virginian line, and 
 from all the great sections of the Union 
 distinguished statesmen stepped forward to 
 grasp it. From Georgia came William H. 
 Crawford, a practiced politician ; from South 
 Carolina, John C. Calhoun, the subtlest of 
 reasoners ; from Kentucky, Henry Clay, the 
 orator; from Massachusetts, John Quincy 
 Adams, the best drained of public servants. 
 Only Tennessee offered a soldier. 
 
 It was twenty-six years from the end of 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 103 
 
 Jackson s first service in Congress to his 
 second appearance in the Senate. Again 
 he showed himself unfit to shine as a legis 
 lator, but in spite of that he was now clearly 
 the most marked figure in the upper house. 
 None of his rivals were Senators. Clay was 
 the Speaker of the House ; Adams, Craw 
 ford, and Calhoun were in the Cabinet. 
 Jackson probably did not occupy more than 
 ten minutes of the Senate s time during the 
 whole session, but his fame and his can 
 didacy made his votes on the tariff and 
 internal improvements important data to 
 politicians. The country was already en 
 tered upon the second period of its history, 
 in which there was to be no French party 
 and no English party; in which a voter 
 should choose his party on account of its 
 position on such questions as the tariff, in 
 ternal improvements, and the bank, or on 
 account of the general view of the Constitu 
 tion which it favored. But as yet no clear 
 division into such parties had come about. 
 The old Federalist party was no longer in 
 the field, and no other had arisen to take its 
 
104 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 place. It was a time of personal politics. 
 The first question was, Who is to succeed 
 Monroe ? and the next question, Who is to 
 succeed the successor of Monroe ? 
 
 Jackson found some firm friends awaiting 
 him in Washington, and he soon added to 
 their number by becoming reconciled to 
 some old enemies. Among the old friends 
 was Livingston, now Congressman from Lou 
 isiana. One of the old enemies was the Sen 
 ator from Missouri, whose chair was next 
 his own ; for the Senator from Missouri, a 
 rising man in Washington, was Thomas H. 
 Benton. According to Ben ton s account, 
 Jackson made the first advance, and they 
 were soon on friendly terms, though Benton 
 continued to support Clay, whose niece he 
 had married. General Winfield Scott made 
 an overture, and Jackson cordially responded. 
 Even with Henry Clay he was induced by 
 mutual friends to stand on a footing of 
 courteous friendliness, though there never 
 was any genuine friendship between them. 
 
 Against Crawford, the Georgian candidate, 
 and at first the leading candidate of all, he 
 
SEHItfOLES AND POLITICIANS 105 
 
 had a grudge that dated from 1815. Craw 
 ford was Secretary of War at that time, and, 
 contrary to Jackson s advice, had restored 
 to the Cherokees certain lands which Jack 
 son had got from the Creeks by the treaty 
 of Fort Jackson, but which the Cherokees 
 claimed. When Crawford offered himself 
 against Monroe in 1816, Jackson was ar 
 dently for the Virginian ; and now, when it 
 was apparent that the caucus of Republican 
 Senators and Representatives would probably 
 nominate Crawford, Jackson s friends joined 
 the friends of other candidates in opposing 
 the caucus altogether, so that in the end only 
 sixty-six persons attended it, and its action 
 was deprived of the weight it had formerly 
 had in presidential contests. Before the 
 election, Crawford was stricken with paraly 
 sis, and this greatly weakened his chances. 
 
 Both Calhoun and Adams were on friendly 
 terms with Jackson. Jackson still supposed 
 that Calhouu had defended the Florida cam 
 paign in the Cabinet. His good feeling 
 toward the South Carolinian was doubtless 
 strengthened when Calhoun, who had relied 
 
106 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 on the support of Pennsylvania, gracefully 
 yielded to Jackson s superior popularity in 
 that quarter, and withdrew from the contest. 
 It was then generally agreed that he should 
 be Vice-President, and probably General 
 Jackson, like many others, was willing that 
 he should restore the old order of things 
 according to which the Vice- President, in 
 stead of the Secretary of State, stood in line 
 of succession to the presidency. 
 
 Adams was Secretary of State, and as such 
 he had rendered Jackson important services 
 by defending his actions in Florida. Adams, 
 in diplomacy, believed in standing up for his 
 own country quite as resolutely as the fron 
 tier general did in war. Nor were they far 
 apart on the tariff and internal improve 
 ments, the domestic questions of the day. 
 Adams s diary for this period shows a good 
 feeling for Jackson. In honor of the gen 
 eral, Mrs. Adams gave a great ball January 
 8, 1824, the anniversary of New Orleans. 
 
 The election turned, as so many others 
 have turned, on the vote of New York, which 
 Martin Van Buren, an astute politician, was 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 107 
 
 trying to carry for Crawford. He did not 
 succeed, and there was no choice by the peo 
 ple. Jackson led with ninety-nine votes in 
 the electoral college ; Adams had eighty- 
 four, Crawford forty-one, Clay thirty-seven. 
 In some States the electors were still chosen 
 by the legislature. Outside of those States 
 Jackson had fifty thousand more votes than 
 Adams, and Adams s vote was nearly equal 
 to Crawford s and Clay s combined. For 
 Yice-President, Calhoun had a large ma 
 jority. 
 
 Under the Constitution, the House of 
 Representatives had now to choose a Presi 
 dent from the three leading candidates. 
 Clay was Speaker, and had great influence 
 over the House, but his own name had to be 
 dropped. Beaten himself, he had the power 
 to make any one of his three rivals President 
 of the United States. 
 
 It was a trying situation for him and for 
 the three citizens whose fate he seemed to 
 hold in his hands. Crawford was so ill 
 that Clay could not seriously consider him. 
 Adams had never liked Clay, though they 
 
108 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 generally agreed about public questions, and 
 the ardent Kentuckian could never have 
 found the cold manners of the New England 
 statesman attractive. But from the first he 
 preferred Adams to Jackson, thinking a 
 mere " military chieftain " unfit for the of 
 fice. On the 9th of February, Adams was 
 elected. That evening he and Jackson met 
 at a presidential reception. Of the two, the 
 defeated Westerner bore himself far more 
 graciously than the successful candidate from 
 New England. 
 
 Up to this time, no unseemly conduct 
 could be charged against any one of the four 
 rivals. But the human nature of these men 
 could not bear to the end the strain of such 
 a rivalry. For many years the jealousy and 
 hatred and suspicion it gave birth to were 
 to blacken American politics. Jackson was 
 guilty of a grave injustice to Clay and 
 Adams ; and they, by a political blunder, de 
 livered themselves into his hands. Jackson 
 and his friends charged them with u bargain 
 and corruption." Adams, by appointing Clay 
 Secretary of State, and Clay, by accepting 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 109 
 
 the office, gave their enemies the only evi 
 dence they ever had to offer of the truth of 
 the charge. Every other semblance of a 
 proof was shown to be worthless, and the 
 characters of the two men have convinced 
 all candid historians that the charge was 
 false. But there was no way to prove that 
 the charge was false. Jackson believed it, 
 and from this time he made war on Clay 
 and Adams. * He believed he had a wrong to 
 right, a combination of scoundrelly enemies 
 to overthrow, a corrupted government to 
 purify and save. The election had shown 
 him to be the most popular of all the candi 
 dates, and his friends, of whom Benton was 
 now the foremost, contended that the House 
 ought to have chosen him in obedience to the 
 people s will. Until he should be elected, 
 he and his followers seemed to feel that the 
 people were hoodwinked by the politicians. 
 
 Hitherto, since his second entrance into 
 public life, he had borne himself as became 
 a soldier whose battles were already fought. 
 Webster had written of him : " General 
 Jackson s manners are more presidential 
 
110 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 than those of any other candidate. He is 
 grave, mild, and reserved." But now he 
 was once more the Jackson of the tavern 
 brawl, of the Dickinson duel. Politics had 
 come to be a fight, and his friends had no 
 more need to urge him on. He resigned his 
 place in the Senate, and was at once, for the 
 second time, nominated for President by the 
 Tennessee legislature. With untiring in 
 dustry and great political shrewdness, Lewis, 
 Eaton, Benton, Livingston, and others of his 
 friends set to work to get him elected. The 
 campaign of 1824 was no sooner ended than 
 the campaign of 1828 was begun. 
 
 It was an important campaign because it 
 went far to divide the old Republican party, 
 to which all the candidates of 1824 had be 
 longed, into the two parties which were to 
 battle for supremacy throughout the next 
 quarter of a century. The division was 
 partly a matter of principles and policies, 
 but it was also a matter, of organization. 
 
 As to principles and measures, Adams 
 was disposed to revive those policies which 
 the old Federalist party had adopted in the 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 111 
 
 days of its power. He had left that party 
 in 1808, not because he had given up its 
 early principles, but because he believed 
 that its leaders, particularly in New Eng 
 land, in their bitter opposition to Jefferson, 
 had gone to the point where opposition to 
 the party in power passes into disloyalty 
 to the country. In the Republican party 
 he always acted with those men who, like 
 Henry Clay, favored a strong government 
 at Washington and looked with distrust on 
 any attempt of a State to set up its own 
 powers against the powers of the United 
 States. As President, he wished the gov 
 ernment to take vigorous measures for de 
 fense, for developing the country by internal 
 improvements, for protecting American in 
 dustries by heavy duties on goods imported 
 .from other countries. He thought that the 
 public lands should be sold at the highest 
 prices they would bring, and the money used 
 by the general government to promote the 
 public welfare. He had no doubt as to the 
 government s power to maintain a national 
 bank, and thought that was the very best 
 way to manage the finances. 
 
112 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Jackson himself was not a free-trader, 
 and had committed himself to a " proper " 
 tariff on protection lines ; but during the 
 campaign he was made to appear less of 
 a tariff man than Adams. He had also 
 voted for certain national roads and other 
 internal improvements, but he had not com 
 mitted himself sweepingly to that policy. 
 He doubted the constitutionality of a na 
 tional bank. As to the public lands, he 
 favored a liberal policy, with the object of 
 developing the western country by attract 
 ing settlers rather than raising money to be 
 spent by the government. On the general 
 question of the powers of the government he 
 stood for a stricter construction of the Con 
 stitution and greater respect for the rights 
 of the States than Adams believed in. So, 
 notwithstanding Jackson s tariff views, the 
 mass of the people held him a better repre 
 sentative of Jeffersonian Democracy than his 
 rival. 
 
 But a party is an organization, and not 
 merely a list of principles. It is, as some 
 one has said, a crowd, and not merely a 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 113 
 
 creed. Jackson s managers so organized his 
 supporters that they became a party in that 
 sense much more clearly than in the sense 
 of holding the same views. Committees 
 were formed all over the country somewhat 
 on the order of the committees of corre 
 spondence of Revolutionary times. News 
 papers were set up to attack the adminis 
 tration and hold the Jackson men together. 
 Everywhere Jackson was represented as the 
 candidate of the plain people against the 
 politicians. In all such work Major Lewis 
 was active and shrewd, and before the end 
 of the campaign, from another quarter of 
 the union, Jackson won a recruit who was 
 already a past master in all the lore of party 
 politics. Martin Van Buren was a pupil 
 in the political school of Aaron Burr, and 
 was recognized as the cleverest politician of 
 a State in which the sort of politics that 
 is concerned with securing elections rather 
 than fighting for principles had grown into 
 a science and an art. New York was then 
 thought a doubtful State, and the support 
 of Van Buren was of the utmost value. 
 
114 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 It is probable that so far as Adams and 
 Jackson differed on questions of principle 
 and policy, a majority of the people were 
 with Jackson. But it is also clear that the 
 campaign was fought out as a sort of per 
 sonal contest between the Southwestern sol 
 dier and the two statesmen whom he accused 
 of bargain and corruption. It was a cam 
 paign of bitter personal abuse on both sides. 
 Adams, perhaps the most rigidly conscien 
 tious statesman since Washington, was ac 
 cused of dishonesty, of extravagance, of 
 riches, of debt, of betraying his old friends, 
 the Federalists, of trying to bring Federalists 
 back into power. Against Jackson his ene 
 mies brought up his many fights and duels, 
 his treatment of Judge Hall and Judge Fro- 
 mentin, the execution of Woods and the six 
 militiamen, of the two Indians, of Arbuthnot 
 and Ambrister. Handbills were distributed, 
 each decorated with a coffin bearing the 
 name of one of his victims. His private life 
 was attacked. The scandal of his marriage 
 was blazoned in newspapers and pamphlets. 
 Even the unknown grave of his mother was 
 not spared. 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 115 
 
 So it became largely a question of the 
 two men. and which the people liked best. 
 Adams, coldly virtuous, woidd not turn his 
 finger to make himself better liked ; even if 
 he had attempted the arts of popularity, he 
 was, of all the eminent men of our history, 
 the least endowed with charm of manner, 
 speech, and bearing. He sternly refused to 
 appoint any man to office for supporting 
 him, or to turn any man out of office for 
 opposing him. He could not be winning or 
 gracious on public occasions. Ezekiel, the 
 shrewd old brother of Daniel Webster, wrote 
 to him after the election that even in New 
 England men supported Adams " from a 
 cold sense of duty, and not from any liking 
 of the man." It took a New England con 
 science to hold a follower in line for the New 
 England candidate. The man of the South 
 west won many a vote where the voter s con 
 science did but half consent. Wherever he 
 went, he made bitter enemies or devoted 
 friends, rather than cold critics and luke 
 warm admirers. Adams was an honest 
 man, but nobody had ever called him " Old 
 
116 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Hickory." He was an ardent patriot, and 
 could point to many wise state papers he 
 had written, to a report on weights and 
 measures which had cost him four years of 
 patient labor ; but he could not, like his 
 rival, journey down the Mississippi and cele 
 brate the anniversary of a great victory in 
 the city he had saved. His followers might 
 ably defend his course on public questions, 
 but what was it all worth if the people kept 
 on shouting, " Hurrah for Jackson " ? 
 
 Of all the sections of the country only 
 New England gave Adams a solid support. 
 Jackson swept the West and South and car 
 ried the great States of Pennsylvania and 
 New York. In Tennessee, nineteen men out 
 of twenty voted for him. There is a story 
 of a traveller who reached a Tennessee town 
 the next day and found the whole male popu 
 lation pursuing with tar and feathers two 
 reckless citizens who had voted against " the 
 general." In the electoral college he had 
 one hundred and seventy-eight votes to Ad 
 ams s eighty-three. Calhoun was again 
 chosen Vice-President. 
 
SEMINOLES AND POLITICIANS 117 
 
 The poor boy had won his way to the 
 White House, but it was a worn old man, 
 bowed down with a heavy sorrow, who jour 
 neyed across the mountains to take the great 
 prize. The cruel campaign scandal about 
 his marriage had aggravated a heart trouble 
 from which his wife had long suffered. She 
 died in December, and his grief was appal 
 ling to those who gathered at The Hermitage 
 to do honor to " Aunt Kachel." It was not 
 in Jackson s nature, as indeed it would not 
 have been in the nature of many men, to 
 forget, in his grief, the enemies who had 
 helped to cause it. His old age, like his 
 youth, was to be cursed with hatred and the 
 thought of revenge. 
 
VI 
 
 THE WHITE HOUSE 
 
 MARCH 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson became 
 President of the United States. A great 
 crowd of strange-looking men went to see 
 him inaugurated. "They really seem to 
 think," wrote Webster, " that the country 
 has been rescued from some great danger." 
 Whoever else may have thought so, Jackson 
 certainly held that opinion. As his wont 
 was, he saw the danger and the villainy 
 which he thought himself commissioned to 
 destroy in the person of a man ; and that 
 man was Henry Clay. Martin Van Buren 
 was to succeed Clay as Secretary of State in 
 the new Cabinet, but he did not reach Wash 
 ington until after the 4th of March. Jack 
 son accordingly sent his friend, Colonel Ham 
 ilton, of New York, to the State Department, 
 ordering him to take charge there the instant 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 119 
 
 he should hear the gun which was to announce 
 that the new President had taken the oath 
 of office. 
 
 Jackson and Clay were, in fact, the lead 
 ers of the two parties into which the old 
 Republican party was now divided. Their 
 rise to leadership meant that a new set of 
 public men and a new set of questions had 
 come to the front; it meant a more thor 
 oughgoing experiment of democracy than 
 had yet been tried in America. Adams s 
 administration is properly considered to have 
 been the last of one series and Jackson s the 
 first of another. Under the earlier Presi 
 dents, national affairs were committed mainly 
 to a few trained statesmen, the people simply 
 approving or disapproving the men and the 
 measures brought before them, but not of 
 themselves putting forward candidates for 
 the higher offices or in any wise initiating 
 policies. The rule of the people was thus a 
 passive sort of rule, a rule by consent. But 
 with the wide prevalence of manhood suf 
 frage, and the prominence of domestic ques 
 tions, of questions concerning the business 
 
120 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 and the daily life of the Republic, and 
 with the disappearance of the profound ques 
 tions concerning the organization of the gov 
 ernment and the nature of government in 
 general, the people began to assert them 
 selves. Under Jackson and his successors, 
 they made themselves felt more and more at 
 Washington ; their opinions and sentiments, 
 their likes and dislikes, their whims and 
 prejudices, were projected into their gov 
 ernment. Henceforth, public men were to 
 be powerful not so much in proportion to 
 their knowledge of statecraft as in propor 
 tion to their popularity. They must repre 
 sent the popular will, or commend them 
 selves and their policies to popular favor. 
 The public men of the old order, like Adams, 
 might be wise and faithful, but they lacked 
 Clay s and Jackson s sympathetic under 
 standing of the common people. And of 
 the two new leaders Jackson had by far 
 the stronger hold on the popular mind and 
 heart. The people had sent him to Wash 
 ington because he was of them and like 
 them, and because they liked him. Both he 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 121 
 
 and they felt that he was their President, 
 and he held himself responsible to them 
 only. 
 
 It seemed, too, that with the new ques 
 tions and the new men there was coming a 
 new sort of politics. Jackson meant to serve 
 the people faithfully, but he entered upon 
 the duties of his great office in the spirit of 
 a victorious general. The sort of politics 
 most in accord with his feeling was the sort 
 of politics which prevailed in New York and 
 Pennsylvania. Jackson once declared, " I 
 am not a politician, but if I were, I should 
 be a New York politician." Before long, a 
 leading New York politician, Senator Marcy, 
 expressed the sentiment of his fellows when 
 he said, " To the victors belong the spoils." 
 That was a sentiment which a soldier Pre 
 sident could understand. In that letter to 
 Monroe which Major Lewis wrote for him 
 twelve years before, and which won him votes, 
 he had urged that partisan considerations 
 should not control appointments ; but before 
 he had been President a year he removed 
 more men from office than all his predeces- 
 
122 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 sors had removed since the beginning of the 
 government. When he left Washington, the 
 practice of removing and appointing men for 
 political reasons was so firmly established 
 that the patient work of reform has not to 
 this day destroyed it. That, to many histo 
 rians, was the gravest fault of Jackson s 
 ^ administration. It was, however, merely New 
 York methods applied to national politics, 
 and it was a perfectly natural outcome of 
 Jackson s conviction that the people had sent 
 him there to drive out the men who had 
 control of the government. 
 
 In fact, unless we understand President 
 Jackson himself, we cannot possibly under 
 stand his administration ; for President Jack 
 son, though he was now somewhat subdued 
 in manner, and " By the Eternal " was not 
 quite so often on his lips, was still Jackson 
 of the duelling pistol and Jackson of the 
 sword ; and he was also still the Jackson 
 whom Benton saw with the lamb and the 
 child between his knees. All men were still 
 divided for him into friends and enemies. 
 The party opposed to him came soon to call 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 123 
 
 itself the National Republican Party, and 
 later the Whig Party, while his own follow 
 ers were called Democratic Republicans, or 
 Democrats. But to Jackson the National 
 Republicans were the friends of Henry Clay, 
 as the Democrats were his own friends. So, 
 too, of the great questions he had to deal 
 with. In every case he was fighting not 
 merely a policy or an institution but a man. 
 
 For a time, however, his arch-enemy, Clay, 
 disappeared from the scene. Until the au 
 tumn of 1831, he was in retirement in Ken 
 tucky. Jackson had the field to himself, 
 and was at first occupied with his friends 
 rather than his enemies. 
 
 Van Buren, as Secretary of State, was the 
 head of the new Cabinet. The other mem 
 bers were not men of great distinction. They 
 had, however, one thing in common: in one 
 way or another, they had all opposed Mr. 
 Clay. On other points they differed. Half 
 of them were friends of Calhoun, and wished 
 to see him President after Jackson. They 
 were also divided into married men and a 
 widower, Mr. Van Buren being the widower. 
 
124 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 That, as things turned out, was a very im 
 portant division indeed. 
 
 Jackson did not treat his Cabinet as other 
 Presidents had treated theirs. He had a 
 v soldier s idea of organization, and did not 
 think it necessary to consult the Cabinet 
 members about all the measures he planned. 
 He treated them somewhat as a general 
 treats his inferior officers, though with sev 
 eral of them, especially Van Buren and Ea 
 ton, his relations were very cordial and inti 
 mate. When he wished advice, however, he 
 was more apt to seek it of his friend, Major 
 Lewis, whom he had persuaded to accept 
 an appointment, and who lived with him at 
 the White House, or of Isaac Hill, who 
 had come to Washington after fighting the 
 Adams men in New Hampshire, or of Amos 
 Kendall, who had dared to oppose Clay in 
 Kentucky, or of General Duff Green, editor 
 of " The Telegraph," the Jackson organ. 
 These men, personal friends of the Presi 
 dent, came to be called the " Kitchen Cabi 
 net ; " and at least three of the four were 
 shrewd enough to justify any President in 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 125 
 
 consulting them. Hill and Kendall were 
 both New England men by birth, and had 
 all the industry and sharpness of mind pro 
 verbially characteristic of Yankees. Even 
 Major Lewis did not surpass Kendall in 
 political cleverness and far-sightedness ; he 
 was a " little whiffet of a man," but before 
 long the opposition learned to see his hand 
 in every event of political importance any 
 where in the country. If a Democratic con 
 vention in Maine framed a resolution, or a 
 newspaper in New Orleans changed its policy, 
 men were ready to declare that it was Ken 
 dall who pulled the wire. Historians are 
 fond of saying that it was such men as Ken 
 dall and Lewis who really ruled the country 
 while Jackson was President ; and it is true 
 that by skilful suggestions, by playing upon 
 his likes and dislikes, much could be done 
 with him. But it is equally true that when 
 he was once resolved on any course his friends 
 could no more stop him than his enemies 
 could. A clerk in the State Department 
 won his favor by a happy use of the phrase, 
 " I take the responsibility," and from that 
 
126 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 time was safe even against the displeasure of 
 Secretary Van Buren. A member of Con 
 gress began a successful intrigue for office 
 by begging for his father the pipe which the 
 President was smoking, ashes and all. A 
 clerk in the War Department attracted his 
 attention by challenging a man to a duel, 
 and so started himself on a career that ended 
 in the Senate. Secretary Van Buren called 
 on Peggy Eaton and supplanted Calhoun as 
 the heir apparent to the presidency. Jack 
 son in good humor was the easiest of victims 
 to an artful intriguer ; but, unlike the weak 
 kings whom scheming ministers have shaped 
 to their purposes, he could not be stopped 
 when once he was started. 
 
 It was Peggy Eaton who made a division 
 between the married men and the widower 
 of the Cabinet. She was the wife of Sena 
 tor Eaton, who was now Secretary of War, 
 and the widow of a naval officer named 
 Timberlake. Her father was a tavern- 
 keeper named O Neill, and both Jackson 
 and Eaton had lived at his tavern when 
 they were Senators, and Mrs. O Neill had 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 127 
 
 been kind to Mrs. Jackson. The O Neills 
 had no place in Washington society, and 
 there were ugly stories about the conduct of 
 Mrs. Timberlake with Senator Eaton before 
 the death of Timberlake, who killed himself 
 at sea. Washington society believed these 
 stories. President Jackson refused to be 
 lieve them, and became Mrs. Eaton s cham 
 pion. His zeal in her cause knew no 
 bounds, and he wished his secretaries and 
 their wives to help him. But the Cabinet 
 ladies woidd not visit or receive Mrs. Eaton, 
 and their husbands refused to interfere. 
 Calhoun, the Vice-President, also declined 
 to take up Mrs. Eaton s cause. Mr. Van 
 Buren, a widower, showed the lady marked 
 attention. 
 
 For once in his life, Andrew Jackson was 
 defeated. Creeks and Spaniards and Red 
 coats he could conquer, but the ladies of 
 Washington never surrendered, and Peggy 
 Eaton, though her affairs became a national 
 question, never got into Washington society. 
 Jackson, however, did not forget who had 
 been his friends in a little matter any more 
 
128 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 than if it had been the greatest affair of 
 state. 
 
 It was already a question whether Cal- 
 houn or Van Buren should lead the Jackson 
 party at the end of the one term which 
 Jackson had declared to be the limit of 
 his stay in the White House. Calhoun s 
 friends in the Cabinet, and General Duff 
 Green, of " The Telegraph," were active in 
 his interest. Van Buren, however, was con 
 stantly growing in favor with the President. 
 When at last Jackson discovered that Cal- 
 houn, as a member of Monroe s Cabinet, 
 had wished to censure him for his conduct 
 in Florida, he and the Vice-President broke 
 forever. Meantime, a great public question 
 had arisen on which the two men stood out 
 as representatives of two opposite theories of 
 the Union. The estrangement begun over 
 Peggy Eaton widened into a breach be 
 tween a State and the United States, be 
 tween the nullifier of the laws and the 
 defender of the Union. 
 
 For the pendulum had swung, and it was 
 no longer the Federalist merchants of New 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 129 
 
 England, but the planters of the South, and 
 particularly of South Carolina, who were 
 discontent with the policy of the govern 
 ment. New England had turned to manu 
 factures some of the energy she had formerly 
 given to commerce and seafaring, and was 
 now in favor of a protective tariff. Web 
 ster, her foremost man at Washington, had 
 voted against the tariff of 1816, but had 
 changed his mind and supported a higher 
 tariff in 1824, and a still higher in 1828. 
 The planters of the South had not found it 
 easy to develop manufactures with their 
 slave labor. They had little or nothing, 
 therefore, to protect against the products of 
 European countries. On the contrary, they 
 exported much of their cotton to England, 
 and imported from England and other coun 
 tries many of the things they consumed. 
 Accordingly, they were, as a rule, opposed 
 to the whole system of tariff taxation, and 
 desired free trade. Many of them also op 
 posed the system of internal improvements, 
 both on constitutional grounds and because 
 they felt that the tariff made them pay more 
 
130 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 than their share of the expense of such un 
 dertakings. 
 
 On the question of internal improvements 
 Jackson soon took a stand entirely pleasing 
 to the opponents of the system. In his first 
 message to Congress he declared against it, 
 and when Congress passed a bill subscribing 
 money to the stock of the Maysville and 
 Lexington road, one of the chief internal 
 improvements so far undertaken, and an 
 enterprise specially favored by Clay, he 
 promptly vetoed it. Other such measures 
 he vetoed unless it was clear that a two- 
 thirds majority in each House would pass 
 them over his veto. He preferred that the 
 money received from the sale, of public lands 
 should be distributed among the States, be 
 lieving that they, instead of the general 
 government, should undertake the improve 
 ments necessary to the development of the 
 country. 
 
 Jackson had, indeed, great respect for the 
 rights of the States under the Constitution, 
 and warned Congress not to go beyond the 
 powers which were clearly given to the gen- 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 131 | 
 
 eral government. The State of Georgia had I 
 long been discontent because the Indians 1 
 were not removed from her borders, and the 
 President sympathized strongly with her 
 feeling. As soon as he was elected, the 
 Georgia legislature passed an act dividing 
 up the Cherokee country into counties, and 
 extending over them the civil laws of the 
 State. The act was plainly contrary to trea 
 ties between the Indians and the Federal 
 government, but the President refused to in 
 terfere. On the contrary, he withdrew all 
 United States troops from the Indian coun 
 try, and left the State to deal with the In 
 dians as it chose. Later on, the Supreme 
 Court of the United States decided that the 
 Georgia law was unconstitutional because it 
 took away the treaty rights of the Chero- 
 kees. " John Marshall has made his de 
 cision," said Jackson, "now let him enforce 1 
 it." The President, in fact, was heartily in I 
 favor of removing the Indians, and before 
 he went out of office the last of the Southern 
 tribes had given up its old home for a new 
 one in the West. 
 
132 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 Jackson s collision with Chief Justice 
 Marshall over this question had very far- 
 reaching effects, which historians have some 
 what neglected in their study of the conse 
 quences of his course on other questions. 
 No statesman, no President, had done so 
 much as the great Chief Justice to make 
 the general government strong and to re 
 strain the States. Jackson, disagreeing with 
 some of Marshall s views, never lost an op 
 portunity to put on the bench a man of his 
 own way of thinking. The result was that 
 many years later, when, in a great crisis, the 
 supporters of the national government and 
 the leaders of States about to break away 
 from the Union looked to the Supreme 
 Court to decide between them, the voice 
 that came from the august tribunal spoke 
 words which Marshall and Story would never 
 have uttered, but which the champions of 
 the States heard with delight. 
 
 On these important questions, then, Presi 
 dent Jackson acted like an extreme Jeffer- 
 sonian Democrat. But the South Carolin 
 ians soon found that if he was ready to keep 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 133 
 
 the general government from interfering with 
 any right that could reasonably be claimed 
 for a State, he was equally ready to stand 
 up for the Union when he thought a State 
 was going too far. 
 
 He had nothing to do with the tariff of 
 1828. In his first message he suggested that 
 some modifications of it were desirable, and 
 pointed out that the public debt would soon 
 be paid, and it would be advisable to reduce 
 certain of the duties. But modification was 
 too mild a word to suit the South Caroli 
 nians. The law was the outcome of the 
 clamor of many selfish interests, and Con 
 gressmen opposed altogether to protection 
 had helped to make it as bad as possible, 
 hoping that it might in the end be defeated. 
 AVhen it passed, the South Carolina legisla 
 ture vigorously protested, and began at once 
 to debate about the best plan of resistance. 
 The plan finally preferred was for the State 
 to declare the law unconstitutional, and 
 therefore null and void, and call on other 
 States to join in the declaration. If the 
 national government tried to enforce the law 
 
134 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 in South Carolina, she would protect her 
 citizens, and as the final resort withdraw 
 from the Union. The plan was first placed 
 before the American people in an " Exposi 
 tion and Protest " adopted by the South 
 Carolina legislature in 1828 ; and the real 
 author of that famous document, though the 
 fact was not then known, was the Vice-Presi- 
 dent, Calhoun. The associate of Clay in 
 those acts which had made a beginning of 
 internal improvements and of protection, 
 long a statesman of the strong-government 
 school, Calhoun had been led by the distress 
 and discontent of his own people to examine 
 the Constitution again, " in order," as he 
 said afterwards, " to ascertain fully the na 
 ture and character of our political system," 
 and had now come to a change of views. 
 
 The nullification doctrine came before 
 Congress in the whiter of 1829-30, and was 
 debated in the most famous of American 
 debates. Clay was not there to speak for 
 his tariff system, but a greater orator than 
 Clay took up the challenge. In the greatest 
 of all American orations since Patrick Henry 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 135 
 
 spoke for liberty, Webster spoke for union 
 and liberty, and Americans will never for 
 get his words until liberty and union are 
 alike destroyed. Jackson was the last man 
 in the country to miss their force. No orator 
 himself, he yet knew how to give words the 
 power of a promised or a threatened deed. 
 Not long after the debate, there was a public 
 dinner of the States -Rights men in Wash 
 ington to celebrate Jefferson s birthday. 
 Jackson did not attend, but he sent a toast, 
 and probably the seven words of his toast 
 were more confounding to the nullifiers than 
 all the stately paragraphs of Webster s ora 
 tion. It was : " Our Federal Union : it must 
 be preserved." Calhoun s toast was : " The 
 Union, next to our liberties the most 
 dear," and Jackson, who was just learning 
 that he had been mistaken about Calhoun in 
 1818, began now to see clearly that the great 
 South Carolinian was in sympathy with the 
 nullifiers. Many South Carolinians, how 
 ever, were still hoping that the President 
 would not take any active measures to defeat 
 their plan. Some of them went on hoping 
 
136 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 until the Fourth of July, 1831, when there 
 was read, at a public dinner of Union men 
 at Charleston, a letter from Jackson which 
 left no doubt of what he meant to do if they 
 kept on. He was going to enforce the laws 
 and preserve the Union. 
 
 Having by this time broken utterly with 
 Calhoun, he desired to rid himself of those 
 cabinet members who were Calhoun s friends, 
 and to that end took the bold and unexam 
 pled step of changing his cabinet entirely, 
 only Barry, the postmaster-general, being 
 kept in office. Van Buren fell readily into 
 the plan, gave up his portfolio, and was at 
 once appointed minister to Great Britain. 
 Edward Livingston took his place. A 
 change in the "Kitchen Cabinet" followed. 
 General Duff Green would not desert Cal 
 houn, and so " The Telegraph " ceased to be 
 the organ of the administration. Instead, 
 Francis P. Blair, of Kentucky, who, like 
 Amos Kendall, had been first the friend and 
 then the enemy of Clay, was called to Wash 
 ington, and set up " The Globe," which soon 
 became a power for Jackson. Nor were 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 137 
 
 these the only consequences of the break 
 with Calhoun. Jackson and his closest 
 friends were by this time bent on making 
 Van Buren, instead of Calhoun, President 
 after Jackson, but were doubtful of their 
 ability to accomplish it at the next election. 
 The President was therefore persuaded to 
 run again. The Democrats in the legisla 
 ture of Pennsylvania, acting on a hint from 
 Lewis, sent him an address urging him to 
 stand. If for a time he hesitated, he ceased 
 to hesitate when it became apparent that 
 Clay was going to be the candidate of the 
 National Republicans. Clay, yielding to 
 the appeals of his party friends, reappeared 
 in the Senate at the opening of Congress in 
 December, 1831, and now the duel between 
 the two great party leaders grew fiercer than 
 ever. 
 
 Clay returned to the Senate to find his 
 tariff policy attacked by the nullifiers, his 
 internal improvements policy blocked by the 
 President s vetoes, and still a third policy 
 which he and his party firmly supported vig 
 orously attacked by the terrible man in the 
 
138 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 White House. The National Bank was in 
 danger. Its charter expired in 1836, and 
 the President in both his annual messages 
 had gravely questioned the wisdom of grant 
 ing another. He questioned the constitution 
 ality of setting up such an institution, and 
 he questioned the value and safety of the 
 Bank as it existed. December 12, 1831, the 
 National Republicans, assembled in their 
 first national convention at Baltimore, nomi 
 nated Clay for President, and called 011 the 
 people to defeat Andrew Jackson in order 
 to save the Bank. Jackson dauntlessly ac 
 cepted the issue and gave the country to 
 understand that either he or the Bank must 
 go to the wall. For the time, even Calhoun 
 and the nullifiers yielded the first place 
 among his enemies to Clay, Biddle, and the 
 Bank. 
 
 Biddle was president of the Bank, a hand 
 some, accomplished man, a graceful writer, 
 and a clever, though not always a safe finan 
 cier. His ready pen first brought him into 
 disfavor. Isaac Hill and Levi Woodbury, 
 the Democratic Senators from New Hamp- 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 139 
 
 sliire, made complaints of Jeremiah Mason, 
 an old Federalist, who was president of the 
 Branch Bank at Portsmouth. Their charges 
 were various, but they and others gave Jack 
 son the idea that the Branch Bank in New 
 Hampshire had used its power to oppose his 
 friends and to help the Adams men. Biddle 
 was called on to investigate. He did so, and 
 defended Mason against all the charges. A 
 long correspondence ensued, and Biddle went 
 from Philadelphia, where the head Bank was, 
 and made a visit to Portsmouth. His letters 
 to the Secretary of the Treasury were cour 
 teous, well written, but also defiant. It was 
 the Jackson men, he said, who were trying 
 to draw the Bank into politics, and the Bank 
 had constantly refused to go into politics in 
 any way. He made out a very good case 
 indeed, but the longer the correspondence 
 lasted the stronger grew Jackson s convic 
 tion that the Bank was in politics, that it was 
 fighting him, that it was corrupt, that it was 
 dangerous to the liberties of the plain people 
 who had sent him to the White House. 
 Congress took up the matter, and committees 
 
140 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 of both Houses reported in favor of the Bank. 
 The Supreme Court had already decided that 
 the act establishing it was constitutional. 
 
 Clay boldly determined to force the fight 
 ing both on the tariff and on the Bank. 
 The great measures of the Congress of 
 1831-2 were a new tariff law and a new 
 Bank charter. The public debt was now 
 nearly extinguished, and it was clearly ad 
 visable to reduce the revenue ; but Clay and 
 his followers made the reductions almost en 
 tirely on articles not produced in America, 
 and so, in defiance of the nullifiers, made the 
 new tariff as protective as the old. Jackson 
 had gradually given up most of his protec 
 tion ideas, and so the tariff did not please 
 him. Clay, in fact, declared that for his 
 "American system," as he called it, "he 
 would defy the South, the President, and the 
 Devil." Jackson was further defied by the 
 Senate when it refused to confirm the nomi 
 nation of Van Buren to be minister to Great 
 Britain. The struggle raged through the 
 whole session. Benton sturdily defended 
 the President ; Clay, Webster, and Calhoun 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 141 
 
 were all, in one way or another, against him. 
 It was a great session for the orators, and so, 
 far as Congress was concerned Clay had his 
 way. But Lewis and Kendall were not idle ; 
 they were working not on Congress but on 
 the people. In May, the Democrats nomi 
 nated Jackson for President and Van Bureii 
 for Vice-President. In July, Congress fin 
 ished its work with the Bank charter, and 
 Jackson promptly answered with a veto, and 
 so the two parties went to the country. 
 
 Jackson went into the campaign with an 
 advantage drawn from his successful conduct 
 of two foreign negotiations. His adminis 
 tration had secured from England an agree 
 ment by which the trade with the West 
 Indies, closed to Americans ever since the 
 Revolution, was opened again, and from 
 France a promise to pay large claims for 
 spoliations on American commerce which 
 had been presented many times before. He 
 was also undoubtedly supported by the great 
 majority of the people in the stand he took 
 against the nullifiers. What the people 
 would decide about the tariff was doubtful ; 
 
142 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 but as between a system, even though it were 
 called the American system, and an old hero, 
 the Democrats were not afraid of the peo 
 ple s choice. The great fight was over the 
 Bank, and on that question Jackson was sup 
 ported by the prejudices of the poor, who 
 thought of the Bank merely as a rich men s 
 institution, by the fears of the ignorant, who 
 believed the Bank to be a mysterious and 
 monstrous affair, and by the instinct of lib 
 erty in many others, who, though they did 
 not believe the charges against Biddle, did 
 feel that there was danger in so powerful a 
 financial agency so closely connected with 
 the government. 
 
 Moreover, the opposition was divided. A 
 party bitterly opposed to Free Masonry had 
 sprung into existence, and Jackson was a 
 Mason. But the Anti-Masons, instead of 
 supporting Clay, nominated a third candi 
 date. South Carolina threw her votes away 
 on a fourth. 
 
 Jackson got 219 electoral votes to 49 for 
 Clay, 11 for Floyd, the nullification candi 
 date, and seven for Wirt, the Anti-Mason 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 143 
 
 candidate. His popular vote was more than 
 twice Clay s, and he actually carried the New 
 England States of Maine and New Hamp 
 shire. If, during his first term, he exer 
 cised his great office like a general, he en 
 tered upon the second with even a firmer 
 belief that he ought to have his way in all 
 things. The people had given an answer to 
 Clay and Biddle and Calhoun and Marshall ; 
 to the corrupters of the government and the 
 enemies of the President; to the nullifiers 
 of the law and the slanderers of Peggy 
 Eaton. He understood his overwhelming 
 victory as the people s warrant to go on with 
 all he had begun. 
 
 But neither the nullifiers nor the Bank 
 were willing to give up. In November, 1832, 
 a South Carolina convention passed an ordi 
 nance, to go into effect February 1, 1833, 
 nullifying the tariff law, and took measures 
 to defend its action by force. Jackson 
 promptly sent Winfield Scott to South Caro 
 lina to make ready for fighting, employed a 
 confidential agent to organize the Union men 
 in the State, and called on Edward Living- 
 
144 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 ston to help him with an address to his mis 
 guided countrymen. The pen of Livingston 
 and the spirit of Jackson, working together, 
 made the Nullification Proclamation a great 
 state paper. It was a high-minded appeal 
 to the second thought and the better nature 
 of the Carolinians ; an able statement of the 
 national character of the government ; a firm 
 defiance to all enemies of the Union. It 
 was the most popular act of the administra 
 tion, and brought to its support men who 
 had never supported it before. Benton and 
 Webster joined hands ; even Clay, who, like 
 Jackson, loved his country with his whole 
 heart, supported the President. Calhoun, 
 alone of all his famous contemporaries, stood 
 out against him. He left the Vice-Presi 
 dent s seat, came down upon the floor as a 
 Senator, and defended nullification against 
 all the famous orators who crowded to assail 
 it. 
 
 The President called on Congress to pro 
 vide the means to enforce the law, and a so- 
 called force bill was introduced. The Caro 
 linians were defiant, and the country seemed 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 145 
 
 on the verge of civil war ; but Clay, by the 
 second of his famous compromises, avoided 
 the struggle. A new tariff law, providing 
 for a gradual reduction of duties, was passed 
 along with the force bill. The Carolinians 
 chose the olive branch instead of the sword. 
 The nullifiers first postponed and then re 
 pealed their ordinance. 
 
 Jackson was a national hero as he had 
 never been before. In the summer of 1833, 
 he made a journey to the Northeast, and U 
 even New England made him welcome. 
 Harvard College made him a Doctor of 
 Laws. As he rode through the streets of 
 Boston, a merchant of Federalist traditions, 
 who had closed his windows to show his prin 
 ciples, peeped through, and Jackson s bear 
 ing so touched him that he sent a child to 
 wave the old gentleman a handkerchief. 
 Andy of the Waxhaws was at the summit 
 of his career. No other American could 
 rival him in popularity ; no other American 
 had ever had such power over his country 
 men since Washington frowned at the whis 
 per that he might be a king. 
 
146 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 But the great man was only a man, after 
 all. He was in wretched health throughout 
 his first term, and at times it did not seem 
 that he could possibly live through it. His 
 old wounds troubled him, and one day he 
 laid bare his shoulder, gripped his cane with 
 his free hand, and a surgeon cut out the ball 
 from Jesse Benton s pistol. He was too ill 
 to finish his New England tour, and has 
 tened back to Washington. 
 
 But his opponents had little reason to 
 rejoice in his illness. The summer was not 
 spent before he had made up his mind to do 
 the most daring act of his public life. He 
 had vetoed the Bank s new charter, but the 
 Bank itself was not destroyed. The public 
 funds were still in its keeping ; its power in 
 the business world was as great as ever. He 
 believed, moreover, that Biddle was using 
 money freely to fight him, and would sooner 
 or later get what he wanted from Congress. 
 He prepared, therefore, to crush the Bank by 
 withdrawing the deposits of public money 
 and giving them into the keeping of other 
 banks throughout the country. Blair, in 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 147 
 
 " The Globe," set to work to convince the 
 people that the Bank was not sound, and 
 that the public funds were unsafe. Kendall 
 was sent about the country to examine other 
 banks. Congress voted against removing 
 the deposits, but the old charter authorized 
 the Secretary of the Treasury to do it, and 
 the Secretary of the Treasury was now Wil 
 liam Duane, of Philadelphia, a son of Jack 
 son s early friend. There had been some 
 changes in the cabinet after the second 
 inauguration, Livingston had been appointed 
 minister to France, the Secretary of the 
 Treasury transferred to the State Depart 
 ment, and Duane called to the Treasury. 
 
 But Duane would not fall in with the 
 President s plan. He did not believe the 
 deposits were in danger, and refused to 
 sign an order for removal. Jackson argued, 
 then grew angry, and finally dismissed him. 
 Duane defended his course ably. Lewis also 
 advised against removal. Benton favored it, 
 but in this he was almost alone among the 
 leading public men. Jackson, however, was 
 started, and he could not be stopped. Roger 
 
148 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 B. Taney, of Maryland, the Attorney-Gen 
 eral, was made Secretary of the Treasury, 
 and on September 26, 1833, three days after 
 Duane s dismissal, the order was signed and 
 a series of changes began that did not end 
 until the whole financial system of the coun 
 try was changed. 
 
 When Congress met, it proved to be, 
 everything considered, probably the ablest 
 legislature ever assembled in America. 
 There were brilliant men of a new genera 
 tion in the lower House, and Adams also 
 was there. In the Senate, the great three 
 were still supreme, and were now united 
 against the President. The debates were 
 long and furious. A panic throughout the 
 country added to the excitement. Clay led 
 the attack, Calhoun and Webster supported 
 it ; Benton bore the brunt of it. In the 
 House, the Jackson men had a majority ; in 
 the Senate, the opposition. The Senate 
 refused to confirm the nomination of Taney 
 to be Secretary of the Treasury, and voted 
 that the President had taken upon himself 
 powers not given by the Constitution. The 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 149 
 
 President sent in a fiery remonstrance, and 
 the Senate voted not to receive it. Benton 
 at once moved that the resolution of censure 
 be expunged from the record, and declared 
 he would keep that motion before the Senate 
 until the people, by choosing a Jackson ma 
 jority of Senators, should force it through. 
 
 The session closed with nothing done for 
 the Bank, and nothing ever was done for it. 
 When its charter expired in 1836, it got an 
 other from Pennsylvania, and kept going for 
 some years. But Jackson had given it a 
 deathblow. It fell into dangerous finan 
 cial practices, failed, started again, failed a 
 second time, staggered to its feet once more, 
 and then went down in utter ruin and dis 
 grace. 
 
 Its ruin was not accomplished without 
 great disturbance to financial conditions. 
 The country had been prosperous a long 
 time. Money had been plentiful. Specu 
 lation had been the order of the day. The 
 " pet banks," chosen to be the depositories of 
 the government money, were badly managed. 
 The surplus, distributed among the States, 
 
150 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 strengthened the impulse to wild specula 
 tion. Paper money was too plentiful. A 
 dangerous financial condition prevailed, into 
 whose causes and consequences we cannot 
 here inquire. That and many other aspects 
 of Jackson s administration can be satisfac 
 torily treated only at considerable length. 
 Jackson himself attributed all the trouble 
 to Biddle and Clay; Biddle, he declared, 
 was trying to ruin the country for revenge. 
 The President even suspected Clay of set 
 ting on an insane person who attempted 
 his life. He took no measures of a na 
 ture to restore health to business until near 
 the end of his term. Then, acting as 
 usual on his own responsibility, he issued 
 a circular commonly called the " Specie Cir 
 cular," requiring payments for public lands, 
 which had formerly been made in bank 
 paper, to be made in coin. That was like 
 the thunderclap which precedes the storm : 
 but the storm broke on his successor, not 
 on him. 
 
 For a time it seemed as if he might also 
 bequeath to his successor a foreign war. 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 151 
 
 France had agreed to pay the spoliation 
 claims, but the French Chambers failed to 
 appropriate the money. Louis Philippe, the 
 king, suggested to Livingston, the Ameri 
 can Minister, that a stronger tone from the 
 United States might stir the Chambers to 
 action. Jackson was the last man in the 
 world to hurt a cause by taking too mild a 
 tone. In his message of 1834 to Congress, 
 he took a tone so strong that it made the 
 French Chambers too angry to pay. There 
 upon, he suggested reprisals. The House, 
 led by Adams, who never fell behind Jack 
 son on a question of foreign relations, sus 
 tained the President. The Senate took no 
 action. The French Chambers finally passed 
 an appropriation, but with a proviso that no 
 money should be paid until satisfactory ex 
 planations of the President s message were 
 received. Jackson had no notion of apolo 
 gizing, and feeling was rising in both coun 
 tries. Diplomatic relations were broken off, 
 and war was apparently very close, when, in 
 the winter of 1835-6, England offered to 
 mediate. An expression in Jackson s mes- 
 
152 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 sage of 1835, not meant as an apology, was 
 somehow construed as such by the French 
 ministry, and France agreed to pay. 
 
 The final settlement came at the very end 
 of Jackson s administration. The presiden 
 tial election of 1836 had fulfilled his wish 
 that Van Buren should be his successor. In 
 January, 1837, the resolution of censure was 
 solemnly expunged from the records of the 
 Senate. That body being now controlled by 
 his friends, and his enemy, John Marshall, 
 being dead, he named Taney Chief Jus 
 tice, and the nomination was confirmed. He 
 issued a farewell address to the people, after 
 the manner of Washington, and stood, a 
 white-haired, impressive figure, to watch the 
 inauguration- of Van Buren; then he jour 
 neyed home to The Hermitage to receive his 
 last glorious welcome from his neighbors. 
 
 It was the most triumphant home-coming 
 of them all. He had beaten all his enemies. 
 Clay, wearied out with politics, was again in 
 retirement ; Adams, whom he found a Presi 
 dent, was leading a minority of representa 
 tives in a new sectional struggle, the fight 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 153 
 
 against slavery ; Calhoun, whom he found 
 but one step from the presidency, was a 
 gloomy and tragical figure, the Ishmael of 
 American politics. As for his friends, he 
 left them in power everywhere, in con 
 gress, on the bench, in the White House. 
 To friends and enemies he had been like 
 fate. 
 
 There was left for him a peaceful old age, 
 and a calm and happy deathbed. Neigh 
 bors, political associates, old comrades, fa 
 mous foreigners, visited The Hermitage to 
 see the man who had played so great a part 
 in history. Like Jefferson at Monticello, he 
 guided with his counsel the party he had 
 led. The long struggle over slavery was 
 now begun, and soon the annexation of Texas 
 took the first place among public questions. 
 The old man had encouraged Houston to go 
 to Texas, and had done all he could, and 
 more than any other President would have 
 dared, to forward the movement for inde 
 pendence. Now that Texas was ready to 
 come into the Union, he heartily favored 
 annexation. In 1844, Clay and Polk were 
 
154 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 candidates for the presidency, and Jackson s 
 influence, still a power, was freely exerted 
 for Polk and annexation. It was as if Clay, 
 now an old man also, were once more about 
 to lift the cup to his lips, and the relentless 
 hand of Andrew Jackson dashed it to the 
 ground. 
 
 Yet Andrew Jackson declared before he 
 died that he forgave all his enemies. He 
 had promised his wife, whose picture he 
 wore in a great locket next his heart, whose 
 Bible he read every day at the White House, 
 that when he should be free of politics he 
 would join himself to the church ; if, he said, 
 he made a profession while he was still be 
 fore the people, his enemies would accuse 
 him of hypocrisy. He kept his word. Trem 
 bling and weeping, he stood before the altar 
 in the tiny church he had built for her and 
 took the vows of a Christian. It had been 
 hard for him to say that he forgave his ene 
 mies ; hardest of all, to say that he forgave 
 those who had attacked him while he was 
 serving his country in the field. But after 
 a long pause he told the minister he thought 
 he could forgive even them. 
 
THE WHITE HOUSE 155 
 
 June 8, 1845, in his seventy-ninth year, 
 he died. His last words to those about him 
 bade them meet him in heaven. 
 
 What is the rightful place in history of 
 the fiery horseman in front of the White 
 House ? The reader must answer for himself 
 when he has studied for himself all the great 
 questions Jackson dealt with. Such a study 
 will surely show that he made many mis 
 takes, did much injustice to men, espoused 
 many causes without waiting to hear the 
 other side, was often bitter, violent, even 
 cruel. It will show how ignorant he was on 
 many subjects, how prejudiced on others. It 
 will show him in contact with men who sur 
 passed him in wisdom, in knowledge, in fair 
 ness of mind. It will deny him a place 
 among those calm, just great men who can 
 see both sides and yet strive ardently for 
 the right side. 
 
 But the longest inquiry will not discover 
 another American of his times who had in 
 such ample measure the gifts of courage and 
 will. Many had fewer faults, many superior 
 
156 ANDREW JACKSON 
 
 talents, but none so great a spirit. He was 
 the man who had his way. He was the 
 American whose simple virtues his country 
 men most clearly understood, whose tres 
 passes they most readily forgave ; and until 
 Americans are altogether changed, many, 
 like the Democrats of the Twenties and 
 Thirties, will still "vote for Jackson," - 
 for the poor boy who fought his way, step 
 by step, to the highest station ; for the sol 
 dier who always went to meet the enemy 
 at the gate; for the President who never 
 shirked a responsibility ; for the man who 
 would not think evil of a woman or speak 
 harshly to a child. Education, and training 
 in statecraft, would have saved him many 
 errors ; culture might have softened the 
 fierceness of his nature. But untrained, 
 uncultivated, imperfect as he was, not one 
 of his great contemporaries had so good a 
 right to stand for American character. 
 
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