Chapter V: Part 5

While Jackson was the friend of young men, especially he was loyal to any who were near his heart. He was like another great man, in a great war, the hero of 1812 and the hero of 1861. Jackson and Grant were true to those who had been true to them. Only a man of small soul forgets the ladder by which he climbs.

The second war with Great Britain had come upon the American people, June 19, 1812. Our country had suffered in its commerce through the continued wars of England with France. Vessels had been searched by the English, to find persons suspected of being British subjects; often American seamen were impressed into their service. On the ocean, the contest between English and American ships became almost constant. While a portion of the States were not in favor of the war, one person was surely in favor, and ready for it; one who had not forgotten the deaths of his mother and brothers in the Revolutionary War; who had not forgotten the wounds on his head and hand. That person was General Jackson.

He at once offered to the Governor of Louisiana, for the defence of New Orleans, three thousand soldiers. The offer was accepted, and he started for Natchez, there to await orders. The men were in the best of spirits, kept hopeful and enthusiastic by the ardor of their commander, who said to them: "Perish our friends--perish our wives--perish our children (the dearest pledges of Heaven)--nay, perish all earthly considerations--but let the honor and fame of a volunteer soldier be untarnished and immaculate. We now enjoy liberties, political, civil, and religious, that no other nation on earth possesses. May we never survive them! No, rather let us perish in maintaining them. And if we must yield, where is the man that would not prefer being buried in the ruins of his country than live the ignominious slave of haughty lords and unfeeling tyrants?"

After a time the "orders" came, but what was the astonishment and indignation of both officers and men to hear that their services were not needed, as the British evidently did not intend to attack New Orleans; that they were to disband and return to Tennessee. Without pay or rations, five hundred miles from home!--Jackson felt that it was an insult. He took an oath that they should never disband till they were at their own doors; that he would conduct his brave three thousand through the wilderness and the Indian tribes, and be responsible for expenses. One hundred and fifty of his men were ill. He put those who could ride on horses, and then, walking at their head, led the gallant company toward home.

The soldiers used to say that he was "tough as hickory;" then "Old Hickory" grew to be a term of endearment, which he bore ever afterward. A month later, and the disappointed soldiers were at Nashville. Before they disbanded, they were marched out upon the public square, and received a superb stand of colors. The needle-work was on white satin; eighteen orange stars in a crescent, with two sprigs of laurel, and the words, "Tennessee Volunteers--Independence, in a state of war, is to be maintained on the battle-ground of the Republic. The tented field is the post of honor. Presented by the ladies of East Tennessee." Under these words were all the implements of war; cannons, muskets, drums, swords, and the like. Jackson and his men never forgot this offering of love, and showed themselves worthy of it in after years.

If Jackson was not needed at New Orleans, he was soon needed elsewhere. Tecumseh, the great Indian chief, saw the lands of his fathers passing into the hands of the white men. He had long been uniting the western tribes from Florida to the northern lakes, and, now that we were at war with England, he believed the hour of their delivery was come. He at once incited the Creeks of Alabama to arms.

In the southern portion of that State, forty miles north of Mobile, stood Fort Mims. The whites had become alarmed at the hostile attitude of the Indians, and over five hundred men, women, and children had crowded into the fort for safety. On the 30th of August, 1813, a thousand Creek warriors in their war paint and feathers, uttering their terrible war-whoops, rushed into the fort, tomahawked the men and women, and trampled the children into the dust. The buildings were burned, and the plain was covered with dead bodies. The massacre at Fort Mims blanched every face and embittered every heart. The Tennesseans offered at once to march against the Creeks. The hot-headed General Jackson had been wounded in a quarrel with Thomas H. Benton, and was suffering from the ball in his shoulder, which he carried there for twenty years. But he put his left arm into a sling, and, though emaciated through long weeks of illness, he led his twenty-five hundred men into the Indians' country.

The provisions did not follow them as had been arranged. Jackson wrote home earnestly for money and food. He said, "There is an enemy whom I dread much more than I do the hostile Creeks, and whose power, I am fearful, I shall first be made to feel--I mean the meagre monster, FAMINE." And yet he encouraged his men with these brave words: "Shall an enemy wholly unacquainted with military evolution, and who rely more for victory on their grim visages and hideous yells than upon their bravery or their weapons--shall such an enemy ever drive before them the well trained youths of our country, whose bosoms pant for glory and a desire to avenge the wrongs they have received? Your general will not live to behold such a spectacle; rather would he rush into the thickest of the enemy, and submit himself to their scalping-knives.... With his soldiers he will face all dangers, and with them participate in the glory of conquest."

The first battle with the Creeks was fought under General John Coffee at Talluschatches, thirteen miles from Jackson's camp, the friendly Creeks leading the way, wearing white feathers and white deer's-tails to distinguish them from the hostile tribes. The whites, maddened by the memory of Fort Mims, fought like tigers; the Indians, sullen and revengeful at the prospect of losing their homes and their hunting-grounds, neither asked nor gave quarter, and fought heroically. Nearly the whole town perished.

On the battle-field was found a dead mother with her arms clasped about a living child. The babe was brought into camp, and Jackson asked some of the Indian women to care for it. "No!" said they, "all his relations are dead; kill him too." The baby was cared for at General Jackson's expense till the campaign was over, and then carried to the Hermitage, where he grew to young manhood as a petted son. The general and his wife gave him the name of Lincoyer. In his seventeenth year he died of consumption, sincerely mourned by his devoted friends.

Following the battle of Talluschatches, General Jackson moved against Talladega, and, after a bloody conflict, rescued one hundred and fifty friendly Creeks. Returning to camp, he found starvation staring him in the face. The men were becoming desperate; yet he kept his cheerfulness, dividing with them the last crust. One morning a gaunt, hungry-looking soldier approached General Jackson as he was sitting under a tree, eating, and asked for some food, saying that he was nearly starving.

"It has been a rule with me," said the general, "never to turn away a hungry man, when it is in my power to relieve him, and I will most cheerfully divide with you what I have." Putting his hand in his pocket, he drew forth a few acorns. "This is the best and only fare I have," he said, and the soldier was comforted.

Many of the men had enlisted for three months only, and were impatient to return home. Finally, the militia determined to return with or without the general's consent. Jackson heard of their intention, and at once ordered the volunteers to detain them, peaceably if they could, forcibly if they must. Then the volunteers, in turn, attempted to go back, but were met by Jackson's firm resolve to shoot the first man who took a step toward home.

"I cannot," he said, "must not believe that the 'Volunteers of Tennessee,' a name ever dear to fame, will disgrace themselves, and a country which they have honored, by abandoning her standard, as mutineers and deserters; but should I be disappointed, and compelled to resign this pleasing hope, one thing I will not resign--my duty. Mutiny and sedition, so long as I possess the power of quelling them, shall be put down; and even when left destitute of this, I will still be found in the last extremity endeavoring to discharge the duty I owe my country and myself." That one word, "duty," was the key-note of Jackson's life. It was his religion--it was his philosophy.

With all Jackson's kindness to his men, they knew that he could be severe. John Woods, a boy not eighteen, the support of aged parents, was shot for refusing to obey a superior officer. That he could have been spared seems probable, but Jackson taught hard lessons to his undisciplined troops, and sometimes in a harsh manner.

In seven months the Creeks had been utterly routed; half their warriors were dead, and the rest were broken in spirit. Weathersford, their most heroic chief, the leader at the Fort Mims massacre, sought General Jackson at his camp.

"How dare you," said Jackson, "ride up to my tent, after having murdered the women and children at Fort Mims?"

"General Jackson, I am not afraid of you," was the reply. "I fear no man, for I am a Creek warrior. I have nothing to request in behalf of myself. You can kill me, if you desire. But I come to beg you to send for the women and children of the war party, who are now starving in the woods. Their fields and cribs have been destroyed by your people, who have driven them to the woods without an ear of corn. I hope that you will send out parties, who will conduct them safely here, in order that they may be fed. I exerted myself in vain to prevent the massacre of the women and children at Fort Mims. I am now done fighting. The Red Sticks are nearly all killed. If I could fight you any longer, I would most heartily do so. Send for the women and children. They never did you any harm. But kill me, if the white people want it done."

"Kill him! kill him!" shouted several voices.

"Silence!" exclaimed Jackson. "Any man who would kill as brave a man as this would rob the dead!"

Weathersford's request was granted, and the women and children of the war party were provided for. The chief died many years afterward, a planter in Alabama, respected by the Americans for his bravery and his honor.

The Creek war over, Jackson went back to Tennessee, a noted, successful soldier. He had not only conquered the Creeks, but he had won for himself the position of major-general in the United States army, having in charge the department of the South. He was now forty-seven, and had indeed reached a high position. Mississippi voted him a sword, and other States sent testimonials of appreciation. All this time he was a constant sufferer in body, and only kept himself from his bed by his indomitable will. The Hermitage could not long keep the ardent, tireless general from the front. He soon established his headquarters at Mobile, and prepared to defend a thousand miles of coast from the British. He had but a small army at his command, and was far from Washington, with scarcely any means of communication. Indeed, the English had captured that city already, and burned most of its public buildings.

The English had attacked Mobile Point, been defeated, and retired to Pensacola, Florida. Spain owned Florida, and was supposed to be neutral, but she was in reality friendly and helpful to England, and allowed her to use the State as a base of operations. Jackson wrote to Washington asking leave to attack Pensacola. The answer did not come back till the war of 1812 was over and Jackson had won renown for himself and his country. He did not wait for an answer, however, but stormed Pensacola, captured it, and then hastened to New Orleans, where he expected the next attack would be made. He used to say to young men, "Always take all the time to reflect that circumstances will permit; but when the time for action has come, stop thinking." And at Pensacola he stopped thinking, and acted. Nothing was ready for his coming, but all eyes turned to the conquerer of the Creeks as the savior of New Orleans. Women gathered around him and looked trustingly toward the erect, self-centred, bronzed soldier. Men flocked willingly to his service, glad to do his bidding. He summoned the engineers of the city and ordered every bayou to be obstructed by earth and sunken logs. The city was put under martial law. No person was permitted to leave the place without a written permit signed by the general or one of his staff. The street lamps were extinguished at nine o'clock, after which hour any person without the necessary permit or not having the countersign was apprehended as a spy and held for examination. All able-bodied men, black and white, were compelled to serve as soldiers or sailors.

He had with him about two thousand troops, and four thousand more within ten or fifteen days' march. Against these, for the most part undisciplined troops, a British force of twenty thousand men was coming, with a fleet of fifty ships, carrying a thousand guns. Much of this army had served under the great Wellington in France; its present leader, General Packenham, was Wellington's brother-in-law. He was only thirty-eight, brave, and the idol of his men. Some of the ships had been with Nelson in the battle of the Nile. The flower of England's army and navy had been sent to conquer the independent and self-reliant Americans.

So certain were the British of conquest that several families were with the fleet, husbands and brothers having been appointed already to civil offices. Another person was also confident of victory--the man who had seen but fourteen months of service, but who from boyhood had never known what it was to be defeated. He inspired others with the same confidence. Says Latour, in his history of the war in West Florida and Louisiana, "The energy manifested by General Jackson spread, as it were, by contagion, and communicated itself to the whole army. There was nothing which those who composed it did not feel themselves capable of performing, if he ordered it to be done. It was enough that he expressed a wish or threw out the slightest intimation, and immediately a crowd of volunteers offered themselves to carry his views into execution."

The English fleet entered Lake Borgne, sixty miles north-east from New Orleans, on December 10, 1814. Twelve days later they had reached the Mississippi River, nine miles below the city. The next day, when Jackson was informed of their approach, he said, bringing his clenched fist down upon the table, "By the Eternal, they shall not sleep on our soil!"

At once, with, as Parton says, that "calm impetuosity and that composed intensity which belonged to him," he sent word to the various regiments to meet him at three o'clock at a specified place. And then he lay down and slept for a short time, his only rest during the next three days and three nights. Few men except General Jackson, with his iron will, could have slept at such a time. A messenger came, sent by some ladies, asking what they should do if the city were attacked.

"Say to them not to be uneasy. No British soldier shall enter the city as an enemy, unless over my dead body," and he kept his word.

At three o'clock the men were hastening on to meet the "red-coats." Twilight came early, and the moon rose dimly over the battle-field. The signal of attack was to be a shot fired from the ship Carolina. At half-past seven, the first gun was heard, then seven others, and the word was given--FORWARD.

And forward they went, with quick steps and eager hearts. A tremendous fire opened upon our artillery-men. The horses attached to the cannon became unmanageable, and one of the pieces was turned over into the ditch. Jackson dashed into the midst of the fray, exclaiming, "Save the guns, my boys, at every sacrifice," and the guns were saved. Men fought hand to hand in the smoke and the darkness; the British using their bayonets, and the Americans their long hunting-knives. Prisoners were taken and retaken. Till ten o'clock the battle raged; when our men fell back upon the Roderiguez canal, to wait till the morning sun should show where to begin the deadly work. When the morning came, the battle-field presented a ghastly appearance. Says a British officer concerning the American dead, "Their hair, eyebrows, and lashes were thickly covered with hoar-frost, or rime, their bloodless cheeks vying with its whiteness. Few were dressed in military uniforms, and most of them bore the appearance of farmers or husbandmen. Peace to their ashes! they had nobly died in defending their country."

The Roderiguez canal was now strongly fortified. Spades, crowbars, and wheelbarrows had been sent from the city. The canal was deepened and the earth thrown up on the side. Fences were torn away, and rails driven down to keep the sand from falling back into the canal. The line of defence, a mile long, was four or five feet high in some places. Cotton bales from a neighboring ship were used.

"Here," said Jackson, "we will plant our stakes, and not abandon them until we drive these 'red-coat' rascals into the river or the swamp."

While these busy preparations were going on, food was brought to General Jackson, which he ate in the saddle. Christmas day came. The English Admiral Cochrane had said, "I shall eat my Christmas dinner in New Orleans." General Jackson heard of it, and remarked, "Perhaps so; but I shall have the honor of presiding at that dinner."

The Americans were ready, but the British did not make the expected attack. Every man was at his post. When an officer, the son of one of Jackson's best friends, said to him, "May I go to town to-day?" the reply was, "Of course, Captain Livingston, you _may_ go; but _ought_ you to go?" The young man blushed, bowed, and returned to duty.

Meantime, the British were not idle. They had determined to silence the guns of the American ships, and, with great toil, had brought up into the swampy ground nine field-pieces, two howitzers, one mortar, a furnace for heating balls, and the necessary ammunition. At dawn on the morning of December 27 the firing began. The Carolina, after a terrific bombardment, blew up. The Louisiana fought her way out into a place of safety.

The days went by slowly under the dreadful suspense. On New Year's day, General Packenham cannonaded the Americans and was driven back. On January 8, the final battle began. Early in the morning, the British moved against the Americans. Jackson walked along the lines, cheering the men, "Stand to your guns. Don't waste your ammunition. See that every shot tells. Give it to them, boys! Let us finish the business to-day."

And every shot did tell. The sharpshooters aimed at the officers, and the batteries mowed down the British regulars. Seeing them falter, Packenham rushed among the men, shouting, "For shame! recollect that you are British soldiers!" Taking off his hat, he spurred his horse to the head of the wavering column. A ball splintered his right arm. Then the Highlanders came to the support of their comrades.

"Hurrah! brave Highlanders!" he said, as a mass of grape-shot tore open his thigh and killed his horse. Another shot struck him, and he was borne under a live-oak to die. The great tree is still standing.

At nine o'clock in the morning the battle was virtually over. The English lost seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred taken prisoners; while the Americans lost but eight killed and thirteen wounded. "The field was so thickly strewn with the dead that, from the American ditch, you could have walked a quarter of a mile to the front on the bodies of the killed and disabled.... The course of the column could be distinctly traced in the broad red line of the victims of the terrible batteries and unerring guns of the Americans. They fell in their tracks; in some places, whole platoons lay together, as if killed by the same discharge."

The news of this great victory at New Orleans astonished the North, and made Jackson the hero of his time. The whole country was proud of a man who could win such a battle, losing the lives of so few of his men. Nearly every State passed resolutions in his praise. The Senate and House of Representatives ordered a gold medal to be struck in his honor. Philadelphia enjoyed a general illumination; one of the transparencies representing the general on horseback in pursuit of the enemy, with the words, "This day shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but He in it shall be remembered." Henry Clay said, "Now I can go to England without mortification."

When Jackson and his army returned to New Orleans, men, women, and children came out to meet them. Young ladies strewed flowers along the way; children crowned the general with laurel, and an impressive service was held in his honor in the Cathedral. He replied, "For myself, to have been instrumental in the deliverance of such a country is the greatest blessing that Heaven could confer. That it has been effected with so little loss--that so few tears should cloud the smiles of our triumph, and not a cypress leaf be interwoven in the wreath which you present, is a source of the most exquisite enjoyment."

Mrs. Jackson and little Andrew, now seven years old, came down from the Hermitage, and his cup of joy was indeed full. To have Rachel's commendation was more than to have that of all of the world besides. The ladies of New Orleans gave to her a valuable set of topaz jewelry, and to the general a diamond pin. A month later, they were at home once more. He had shown the good judgment, the calm bravery, the comprehensive outlook, the quick decision, the tender compassion of the great soldier. Perhaps the busy public life was over--who could tell?

Four months later, General Jackson went to Washington, at the request of the Secretary of War, to arrange about the stations of the army in the South. The journey thither was one constant ovation. At a great banquet tendered him at Lynchburg, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, then seventy-two, gave this toast: "Honor and gratitude to those who have filled the measure of their country's honor." At Washington also he received distinguished attention.

In 1817, the Seminole Indians of Georgia and Alabama had become hostile. General Jackson was the man to conquer them. He immediately marched into their country with eighteen hundred whites and fifteen hundred friendly Indians, and in five months subjugated them.

Florida was purchased in 1819, and two years later Jackson was appointed its governor, with a salary of five thousand dollars. Mrs. Jackson joined him there, but neither was happy, and he soon resigned, and returned with her to the Hermitage. He had built for her a new house, a two-story brick, surrounded by a double piazza. He was at this time frail in health, and did not expect ever to live in the home, but wished it to be made beautiful for her. He hoped now to live a quiet life, enjoying his garden and his farm; but the nation had other plans for him.

In 1823, Jackson was elected to the United States Senate, twenty-six years after his first appearance in that body. He was now prominently mentioned as a candidate for the Presidency. Strange contrast indeed to the days when, bare-footed and orphaned, he struggled for the rudiments of an education.

While he had many ardent friends, he had strong opponents. Daniel Webster said, "If General Jackson is elected, the government of our country will be overthrown; the judiciary will be destroyed;" yet he added, "His manners are more presidential than those of any of the candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly." Jefferson said, "I feel very much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for the place. He has had very little respect for laws or constitution, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible.... He has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man." But the people knew he had conquered the Indians and the British, and they believed in him.

The candidates for the Presidency in 1824 were Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. While Jackson received the largest popular vote, the House of Representatives, balloting by States, elected John Quincy Adams. It was believed that Clay used his influence for Adams against Jackson, and this caused the election of Adams, a scholarly man, the son of John Adams, and long our representative abroad.

Four years later, in 1828, the people made their voices heard at the ballot-box, and Jackson was elected by a large majority. The contest had been exceedingly personal and annoying. The old stories about his marriage were again dragged through the press. Mrs. Jackson, a victim of heart-disease, was unduly troubled, and became broken in health. When he was elected, she said, "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad; for my own part, I never wished it."

Jackson had built for her a small brick church in the Hermitage grounds, and here, where the neighbors and servants gathered, she found her deepest happiness, and sighed for no greater sphere of usefulness. When she urged the general to join her church, he said, "My dear, if I were to do that now, it would be said, all over the country, that I had done it for the sake of political effect. My enemies would all say so. I cannot do it _now_, but I promise you that, when once more I am clear of politics, I will join the church."

The people of Nashville were of course proud that one from their city had been chosen to so high a position, and tendered him a banquet on December 23, the anniversary of the first battle at New Orleans. A few days before this, Mrs. Jackson was taken ill, but she urged her husband to make himself ready for the banquet. While he had watched by her bedside constantly, on the evening of December 22, she was so much better that he consented to lie down on a sofa in an adjoining room. He had not been there five minutes before a cry was heard from Mrs. Jackson. He hastened to her, but she never breathed again.

He could not believe that she was dead. When they brought a table to lay her body upon it, he said tenderly, in a choking voice, "Spread four blankets upon it. If she does come to, she will lie so hard upon the table."

All night long he sat beside the form of his beloved Rachel, often feeling of her heart and pulse. In the morning he was wholly inconsolable, and, when he found that she was really dead, the body could scarcely be forced from his arms.

At the funeral, the road to the Hermitage was almost impassable. The press said of her, "Her pure and gentle heart, in which a selfish, guileful, or malicious thought, never found entrance, was the throne of benevolence.... To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to supply the indigent, to raise the humble, to notice the friendless, and to comfort the unfortunate, were her favorite occupations.... Thus she lived, and when death approached, her patience and resignation were equal to her goodness; not an impatient gesture, not a vexatious look, not a fretful accent escaped her: but her last breath was charged with an expression of tenderness for the man whom she loved more than her life, and honored next to her God." Only such a nature could have held the undivided love of an impetuous, imperious man. Jackson, like so many other unchristian men, had the wisdom to desire and to choose for himself a Christian wife.

He prepared a tomb for her like an open summer-house, and buried her under the white dome supported by marble pillars. On the tablet above her are the words, "Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson.... Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound, but could not dishonor. Even Death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God."

Such a woman need have no fear that she will fade out of a human heart. While Jackson lived, he wore her miniature about his neck, and every night laid it open beside her prayer-book at his bedside. Her face was the last thing upon which his eyes rested before he slept, through those eight years at the White House, and the first thing upon which his eyes opened in the morning. Possibly it is not given to all women to win and hold so complete and beautiful an affection; perchance the fault is sometimes theirs.

Andrew Jackson went to Washington, having grown "twenty years older in a night," his friends said. His nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, and his lovely wife accompanied him. Earl, the artist, who had painted _her_ picture ("her" always meant Rachel with General Jackson), for this reason found a home also at the White House.

The inauguration seemed to have drawn the whole country together. Webster said, "I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." After the ceremony, crowds completely filled the White House.

During the first year of the Presidency, the unfortunate maxim which had found favor in New York politics, "To the victors belong the spoils," began to be carried out in the removal, it is believed, of nearly two thousand persons from office, and substituting those of different political opinions. The removals raised a storm of indignation from the opposite party, which did not in the least disturb General Jackson.

In his first message to Congress, after maintaining that a long tenure of office is corrupting, urging that the surplus revenue be apportioned among the several States for works of public utility, he took strong ground against rechartering the United States Bank. This caused much alarm, for the influence of the bank was very great. Its capital was thirty-five million dollars. The parent bank was at Philadelphia, with twenty-five branches in the large cities and towns. Since Alexander Hamilton's time, a government bank had been a matter of contention. When the second was started in 1816, after the war of 1812, business seemed to revive, but many persons believed, with Henry Clay, that such a bank was unconstitutional, and a vast political power that might be, and was, corruptly used. Complaints were constantly heard that officials were favored.

When the bill to recharter the bank passed Congress, Jackson promptly vetoed the bill. He said, "We can, at least, take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prostitution of our government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many." A few years later he determined to put an end to the bank by removing all the surplus funds, amounting to ten millions, and placing them in certain State banks. When Mr. Duane, the Secretary of the Treasury, would not remove the deposits, General Jackson immediately removed him, putting Roger B. Taney in his place. Congress passed a vote of censure on the President, but it was afterward expunged from the records. Speculation resulted from the distribution of the money; the panic of 1836-37 followed, which the Whigs said was caused by the destruction of the bank, and the Democrats by the bank itself.

The United States Bank was not the only disturbing question in these times. The tariff, which was advantageous to the manufacturers of the North, was considered disadvantageous to the agricultural interests of the South. Bitter feeling was engendered by the discussion, till South Carolina, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, declared that the acts of Congress on the tariff were null and void; therefore, nullification or disunion became the absorbing topic. Then came the great dispute between Robert Y. Hayne and Daniel Webster.

If the nullifiers or believers in extreme States' rights supposed Jackson to be on their side, they were quickly undeceived. When Jefferson's birthday, April 13, was observed in Washington, as it had been for twenty years, Jackson sent the following toast: "OUR FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED." He wrote to the citizens of Charleston, "Every enlightened citizen must know that a separation, could it be effected, would begin with civil discord, and end in colonial dependence on a foreign power, and obliteration from the list of nations." He said, "If this thing goes on, our country will be like a bag of meal with both ends open. Pick it up in the middle or endwise, it will run out."

Still, South Carolina was not to be deterred, with the eloquent Calhoun as her leader, and the Nullification Ordinance was passed November 24, 1832. At once the governor was authorized to accept the service of volunteers. Medals were struck bearing the words, "John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy."

By the time South Carolina was ready to break the laws, another person was ready to enforce them. Jackson at once sent General Scott to take command at Charleston, with gun-boats close by, and sent also an earnest and eloquent protest to the seceding State. Public meetings were held in the large cities of the North. The tariff was modified at the next session of Congress, but the disunion doctrines were allowed to grow till thirty years later, when they bore the bitter fruit of civil war.

When Jackson was asked, years afterward, what he would have done with Calhoun and the nullifiers if they had continued, he replied, "Hung them as high as Haman. They should have been a terror to traitors to all time, and posterity would have pronounced it the best act of my life." When difficulties arose about the Cherokees of Georgia, he removed them to the Indian Territory; a harsh measure it seemed, but perhaps not harder for the tribes than to have attempted to live among hostile whites. When the French king neglected to pay the five million dollars agreed upon for injuries done to our shipping, Jackson recommended to make reprisals on French merchantmen, and the money was paid. The national debt was paid under Jackson, who believed rightly that this, as well as every other kind of debt, is a curse. The Eaton affair showed his loyalty to friends. John H. Eaton, Secretary of War, had married the widow of a purser in the Navy, formerly the daughter of a tavern-keeper in Washington. Her conduct had caused criticism, and the ladies of the Cabinet would not associate with her--even though President Jackson tried every means in his power to compel it, as Eaton was his warm friend.

When the eight years of presidential life were over, Jackson sent his farewell address to the people of the country, who had idolized him, and whom he had loved, he said, "with the affection of a son," and retired to the Hermitage. The people of Nashville met him with outstretched arms and tearful faces. He was seventy years old, _their_ President, and he had come home to live and die with them.

He was now through with politics, and wanted to carry out _her_ wishes, to join the little Hermitage church. The night of decision was full of meditation and prayer. One morning in 1843, the church was crowded to see the ex-President make a public confession of the Christian religion. He went home to read his Bible more carefully than ever--he had never read less than three chapters daily for thirty-five years, such is the influence of early education received at a mother's knee.

The following year, 1844, Commodore Elliot offered the sarcophagus which he brought from Palestine, believed to have contained the remains of the Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus, to President Jackson for his final resting-place.

A letter of cordial thanks was returned, with the words, "I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an emperor or a king. My republican feelings and principles forbid it; the simplicity of our system of government forbids it.... I have prepared an humble depository for my mortal body beside that wherein lies my beloved wife, where, without any pomp or parade, I have requested, when my God calls me to sleep with my fathers, to be laid."

The May of 1845 found General Jackson feeble and emaciated, but still deeply interested in his country, writing letters to President Polk and other statesmen about Texas, hoping ever to avert war if possible. "If not," he said, "let war come. There will be patriots enough in the land to repel foreign aggression, come whence it may, and to maintain sacredly our just rights and to perpetuate our glorious constitution and liberty, and to preserve our happy Union." He made his will, bequeathing all his property to his adopted son, because, said he, "If _she_ were alive, she would wish him to have it all, and to me her wish is law."

On Sunday, June 8, 1845, the family and servants gathered about the great man, who was dying at the age of seventy-eight, having fought against wounds and disease all his life. "My dear children," he said, "do not grieve for me; it is true I am going to leave you; I am well aware of my situation. I have suffered much bodily pain, but my sufferings are but as nothing compared with that which our blessed Saviour endured upon that accursed cross, that all might be saved who put their trust in him.... I hope and trust to meet you all in Heaven, both white and black--both white and black." Then he kissed each one, his eyes resting last, affectionately, upon his granddaughter Rachel, named for his wife, and closely resembling her in loveliness of character; then death came.

Two days before he died, he said, "Heaven will be no Heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there." Who can picture that meeting? He used to say, "All I have achieved--fame, power, everything--would I exchange, if she could be restored to me for a moment." How blessed must have been the restoration, not "for a moment," but for eternity!

The lawn at the Hermitage was crowded with the thousands who came to attend the funeral. From the portico, the minister spoke from the words, "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb."

All over the country, public meetings were held in honor of the illustrious dead; the man who had said repeatedly, "I care nothing about clamors; I do precisely what I think just and right."

"He had had honors beyond anything which his own heart had ever coveted," says Prof. William G. Sumner, in his life of Jackson. "His successes had outrun his ambition. He had held more power than any other American had ever possessed. He had been idolized by the great majority of his countrymen, and had been surfeited with adulation."

Politicians sometimes sneered about his "kitchen cabinet" at Washington, the devoted friends who influenced him but did not hold official position, for, self-reliant though he was to a marvellous degree, he was neither afraid nor ashamed to be influenced by those who loved him. He was absolutely sincere and unselfish. He hated intensely, and loved intensely; with an affection as unchanging as his adamantine will. Patriotic, determined, energetic, and heroic, he attained success where others would have failed. He illustrated Emerson's words, "The man who stands by himself, the universe will stand by him also." Francis P. Blair, his devoted friend, used to say, "Of all the men I have known, Andrew Jackson was the one most entirely sufficient for himself." During his presidency, the steamboat which once conveyed him and his party down the Chesapeake was unseaworthy, and one of the men exhibited much alarm. "You are uneasy," said the general; "you never sailed with _me_ before, I see."

As a soldier, he was a brave, wise, skilful leader; as a statesman, honest, earnest, fearless, true--"I do precisely what I think just and right."

Said a friend who knew him well, "There was more of the woman in his nature than in that of any man I ever knew--more of woman's tenderness toward children, and sympathy with them. Often has he been known, though he never had a child of his own, to walk up and down by the hour with an infant in his arms, because by so doing he relieved it from the cause of its crying; more also of woman's patience and uncomplaining, unnoticing submissiveness to trivial causes of irritation. There was in him a womanly modesty and delicacy.... By no man was the homage due to woman, the only true homage she can receive--faith in her--more devoutly rendered.... This peculiar tenderness of nature entered largely, no doubt, into the composition of that _manner_ of his, with which so many have been struck, and which was of the highest available stamp as regards both dignity and grace."

Much of what he was in character he owed to Rachel Jackson. He once said to a prominent man, "My wife was a pious Christian woman. She gave me the best advice, and I have not been unmindful of it. When the people, in their sovereign pleasure, elected me President of the United States, _she_ said to me, 'Don't let your popularity turn your mind away from the duty you owe to God. Before him we are all alike sinners, and to him we must all alike give account. All these things will pass away, and you and I and all of us must stand before God.' I have never forgotten it, and I never shall."

DANIEL WEBSTER.

In the little town of Salisbury, New Hampshire, now called Franklin, Daniel Webster was born, January 18, 1782, the ninth in a family of ten children. Ebenezer, the father, descended from a sturdy Puritan ancestry, had fought in the French and Indian Wars; a brave, hardy pioneer. He had cleared the wilderness for his log house, married a wife who bore him five children, after which she died, and then married a second time, Abigail Eastman, a woman of vigorous understanding, yet tender and self-sacrificing. Of the five children of the latter wife, three daughters and two sons, Daniel was the fourth, a slight, delicate child, whose frail body made him especially dear to the mother, who felt that at any time he might be taken out of her arms forever.

"In this hut," said Webster, years later, speaking of his father and mother, "they endured together all sorts of privations and hardships; my mother was constantly visited by Indians, who had never gone to a white man's house but to kill its inhabitants, while my father, perhaps, was gone, as he frequently was, miles away, carrying on his back the corn to be ground, which was to support his family."

The father was absent from home, also, on more important errands. When the news of the battle of Bunker Hill thrilled the colonies, Captain Webster, who had won his title in the earlier wars, raised a company, and at once started for the scene of action. He fought at Bennington under Stark, being the first to scale the Tory breastworks, at White Plains, and was at West Point when Arnold attempted to surrender it to the British. He stood guard before General Washington's headquarters, the night of Arnold's treason. No wonder, when Washington looked upon the robust form nearly six feet high, with black hair and eyes, and firm decisive manner, he said, "Captain Webster, I believe I can trust _you_."

And so thought the people of New Hampshire, for they made him a member of both Houses of the State Legislature at various times, and a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas in his own county.

The delicate boy Daniel was unable to work on the farm like his brother Ezekiel, two years older, but found his pleasure and pastime in reading, and in studying nature. The home, "Elms Farm," as it was called later, from the elms about it, was in a valley at a bend of the Merrimac. From here the boy gazed upon Mount Kearsarge, and Mount Washington, the king of the White Mountain peaks, and if he did not dream of what the future had in store for him, he grew broad in soul from such surroundings. Great mountains, great reaches of sea or plain, usually bring great thoughts and plans to those who view them with a loving heart.

Daniel had little opportunity for schooling in those early years. He says, in his autobiography, "I do not remember when or by whom I was taught to read, because I cannot, and never could, recollect a time when I could not read the Bible. I suppose I was taught by my mother, or by my elder sisters. My father seemed to have no higher object in the world than to educate his children to the full extent of his very limited ability. No means were within his reach, generally speaking, but the small town-schools. These were kept by teachers, sufficiently indifferent, in the several neighborhoods of the township, each a small part of the year. To these I was sent with the other children.... In these schools nothing was taught but reading and writing; and as to these, the first I generally could perform better than the teacher, and the last a good master could hardly instruct me in; writing was so laborious, irksome, and repulsive an occupation to me always."

Much of the boy's time was spent in rambles along the Merrimac river, formed by the Winnipiseogee and the Pemigewasset, "the beau ideal of a mountain stream; cold, noisy, winding, and with banks of much picturesque beauty." He loved to fish along the streams, having for company an old British soldier and sailor, Robert Wise. "He was," says Webster, "my Isaac Walton. He had a wife but no child. He loved me, because I would read the newspapers to him, containing the accounts of battles in the European wars. When I have read to him the details of the victories of Howe and Jervis, etc., I remember he was excited almost to convulsions, and would relieve his excitement by a gush of exulting tears. He finally picked up a fatherless child, took him home, sent him to school, and took care of him, only, as he said, that he might have some one to read the newspaper to him. He could never read himself. Alas, poor Robert! I have never so attained the narrative art as to hold the attention of others as thou, with thy Yorkshire tongue, hast held mine. Thou hast carried me many a mile on thy back, paddled me over and over and up and down the stream, and given whole days in aid of my boyish sports, and asked no meed but that, at night, I would sit down at thy cottage door, and read to thee some passage of thy country's glory!"

Daniel heard of battles from another source beside Robert Wise. In the long winter evenings, when the family were snow-bound, Captain Webster would tell stories of the Revolutionary War, and the boy grew patriotic, as he heard of the brave soldiers who died to bring freedom to unborn generations. When he was eight years old, with all the money at his command, twenty-five cents, he went into a little shop "and bought," as he says, "a small cotton pocket-handkerchief, with the Constitution of the United States printed on its two sides. From this I learned either that there was a Constitution, or that there were thirteen States. I remember to have read it, and have known more or less of it ever since." Years afterward he said, "that there was not an article, a section, a clause, a phrase, a word, a syllable, or even a comma, of that Constitution, which he had not studied and pondered in every relation and in every construction of which it was susceptible."

How important a part this twenty-five cent handkerchief played in the lives of the two Webster boys! There is no soil so mellow as that of a child's mind; it needs no enriching save love that warms it like sunshine. What is planted there early, grows rank and tall, and mothers do most of the planting.

The lad's reading in these boyish days was confined mostly to the "Spectator," and Pope's "Essay on Man." The whole of the latter he learned to repeat. "We had so few books," he says, "that to read them once or twice was nothing. We thought they were all to be got by heart." The yearly almanac was regarded as "an acquisition." Once when Ezekiel and he had a dispute, after retiring, as to a couplet at the head of the April page, Daniel got up, groped his way to the kitchen, lighted a candle, looked at the quotation, found himself in the wrong, and went back to bed. But he had inadvertently, at two o'clock at night in midwinter, set the house on fire, which was saved by his father's presence of mind. Daniel said, "They were in pursuit of light, but got more than they wanted."

Exceedingly fond of poetry, at twelve he could repeat many of the hymns of Dr. Watts. Later, he found delight in Don Quixote, of which he says, "I began to read it, and it is literally true that I never closed my eyes until I had finished it; nor did I lay it down, so great was the power of that extraordinary book on my imagination." Later still, Milton, Shakespeare, and the Bible became his inspiration.

Years after, he used to say, "I have read through the entire Bible many times. I now make it a practice to go through it once a year. It is the book of all others for lawyers as well as for divines; and I pity the man that cannot find in it a rich supply of thought, and of rules for his conduct. It fits man for life--it prepares him for death!"