Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Yet, the walls of Monticello, that afterwards looked down upon so much sorrow and so much joy, must have long remembered the home-coming of master and mistress, for the young husband found a bottle of old wine "on a shelf behind some books," built a fire in the open fireplace, and "they laughed and sang together like two children."

And that life upon the hills proved very nearly ideal. They walked and planned and rode together, and kept house and garden books in the most minute fashion.

Births and deaths followed each other at Monticello, but there was nothing else to mar the peace of that happy home. Between husband and wife there was no strife or discord, not a jar nor a rift in that unity of life and purpose which welds two souls into one.

Childish voices came and went, but two daughters grew to womanhood, and in the evening, the day's duties done, violin and harpsichord sounded sweet strains together.

They reared other children besides their own, taking the helpless brood of Jefferson's sister into their hearts and home when Dabney Carr died. Those three sons and three daughters were educated with his own children, and lived to bless him as a second father.

One letter is extant which was written to one of the nieces whom Jefferson so cheerfully supported. It reads as follows:

"PARIS, June 14, 1787.

"I send you, my dear Patsey, the fifteen livres you desired.
You propose this to me as an anticipation of five weeks'
allowance, but do you not see, my dear, how imprudent it is
to lay out in one moment what should accommodate you for
five weeks? This is a departure from that rule which I wish
to see you governed by, thro' your whole life, of never
buying anything which you have not the money in your pocket
to pay for.

"Be sure that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in
debt than to do without any article whatever which we may
seem to want.

"The purchase you have made is one I am always ready to make
for you because it is my wish to see you dressed always
cleanly and a little more than decently; but apply to me
first for the money before making the purchase, if only to
avoid breaking through your rule.

"Learn yourself the habit of adhering vigorously to the
rules you lay down for yourself. I will come for you about
eleven o'clock on Saturday. Hurry the making of your gown,
and also your redingcote. You will go with me some day next
week to dine at the Marquis Fayette. Adieu, my dear
daughter,

"Yours affectionately,
"TH. JEFFERSON"

Mrs. Jefferson's concern for her husband, the loss of her children, and the weary round of domestic duties at last told upon her strong constitution.

After the birth of her sixth child, Lucy Elizabeth, she sank rapidly, until at last it was plain to every one, except the distracted husband, that she could never recover.

Finally the blow fell. His daughter Martha wrote of it as follows:

"As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness or anxiety.
He nursed my poor mother in turn with Aunt Carr, and her own
sister--sitting up with her and administering her medicines
and drink to the last.

"When at last he left his room, three weeks after my
mother's death, he rode out, and from that time, he was
incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain."

Shortly afterward he received the appointment of Plenipotentiary to Europe, to be associated with Franklin and Adams in negotiating peace. He had twice refused the same appointment, as he had promised his wife that he would never again enter public life, as long as she lived.

Columbia

She comes along old Ocean's trackless way--
A warrior scenting conflict from afar
And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar
Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray;
Her foaming path to triumph none may stay
For in the East, there shines her morning star;
She feels her strength in every shining spar
As one who grasps his sword and waits for day.

Columbia, Defender! dost thou hear?
The clarion challenge sweeps the sea
And straight toward the lightship doth she steer,
Her steadfast pulses sounding jubilee;
Arise, Defender! for thy way is clear
And all thy country's heart goes out to thee.

The Story of a Daughter's Love

Aaron Burr was past-master of what Whistler calls "the gentle art of making enemies!" Probably no man ever lived who was more bitterly hated or more fiercely reviled. Even at this day, when he has been dead more than half a century, his memory is still assailed.

It is the popular impression that he was a villain. Perhaps he was, since "where there is smoke, there must be fire," but happily we have no concern with the political part of his life. Whatever he may have been, and whatever dark deeds he may have done, there still remains a redeeming feature which no one has denied him--his love for his daughter, Theodosia.

One must remember that before Burr was two years old, his father, mother, and grandparents were all dead. He was reared by an uncle, Timothy Edwards, who doubtless did his best, but the odds were against the homeless child. Neither must we forget that he fought in the Revolution, bravely and well.

From his early years he was very attractive to women. He was handsome, distinguished, well dressed, and gifted in many ways. He was generous, ready at compliments and gallantry, and possessed an all-compelling charm.

In the autumn of 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of the "lines" in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived across the Hudson, some fifteen miles from shore, and the river was patrolled by the gunboats of the British, and the land by their sentries.

In spite of these difficulties, however, Burr managed to make two calls upon the lady, although they were both necessarily informal. He sent six of his trusted soldiers to a place on the Hudson, where there was an overhanging bank under which they moored a large boat, well supplied with blankets and buffalo robes. At nine o'clock in the evening he left White Plains on the smallest and swiftest horse he could procure, and when he reached the rendezvous, the horse was quickly bound and laid in the boat. Burr and the six troopers stepped in, and in half an hour they were across the ferry. The horse was lifted out, and unbound, and with a little rubbing he was again ready for duty.

Before midnight, Burr was at the house of his beloved, and at four in the morning he came back to the troopers awaiting him on the river bank, and the return trip was made in the same manner.

For a year and a half after leaving the army, Burr was an invalid, but in July, 1782, he married Mrs. Prevost. She was a widow with two sons, and was ten years older than her husband. Her health was delicate and she had a scar on her forehead, but her mind was finely cultivated and her manners charming.

Long after her death he said that if his manners were more graceful than those of some men, it was due to her influence, and that his wife was the truest woman, and most charming lady he had ever known.

It has been claimed by some that Burr's married life was not a happy one, but there are many letters still extant which passed between them which seemed to prove the contrary. Before marriage he did not often write to her, but during his absences afterward, the fondest wife could have no reason to complain.

For instance:

"This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday
evening," he wrote her at one time. "Where did it loiter so
long?

"Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health
and cheerfulness. I then contemplate nothing so eagerly as
my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and
dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared
for me.

"Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as
melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is
incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the
mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe
of sentiment and love."

He always wrote fondly of the children:

"My love to the smiling little girl," he said in one letter.
"I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and
fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting."

After five years of married life the wife wrote him as follows:

"Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction, a
sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It
wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was
replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection.
I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and
mingle it with common ideas."

Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the most virulent character. Everything that money or available skill could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and painful illness, in the spring of 1794.

They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little Theodosia was first laid in her father's arms, all that was best in him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that was best in him responded to her baby smile.

Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him, Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father's side and shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.

When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother wrote to the father, saying:

"Your dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of
without an apparent melancholy; insomuch, that her nurse is
obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself
avoid the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole
day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment
is not of a common nature."

And again:

"Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day,
calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to
be filled by any of the family."

The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to read Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time were not neglected. When she was at school, the father wrote her regularly, and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for its affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar, instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his ideal woman.

She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her father's. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance--the air of mastery over all situations--which she doubtless inherited from him.

When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson's Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. "Dreary, solitary, comfortless--it was no longer home."

After her mother's death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to the heart.

For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston. The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake unreservedly into his heart. "If I can see without prejudice," he said, "there never was a finer boy."

His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to his daughter--a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he himself had taught her.

She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe, indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.

The girl's heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her absolute faith, so that all the world might see.

When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable separation. Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they should see each other no more.

During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr. Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman's heart strained beneath the burden. Her health failed, her friends shrank from her, yet openly and bravely she clung to her father.

Public opinion showed no signs of relenting, and his evil genius followed him across the sea. He was expelled from England, and in Paris he was almost a prisoner. At one time he was obliged to live upon potatoes and dry bread, and his devoted daughter could not help him.

He was despised by his countrymen, but Theodosia's adoring love never faltered. In one of her letters she said:

"I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at
every misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,
you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other men--I
contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that a very little
superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
superior being, such enthusiasm does your character excite
in me.

"When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my
best qualities appear! My own vanity would be greater if I
had not been placed so near you, and yet, my pride is in our
relationship. I had rather not live than not to be the
daughter of such a man."

She wrote to Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and resume the practice of his profession. "If worse comes to worst," she wrote, "I will leave everything to suffer with you."

He landed in Boston and went on to New York in May of 1812, where his reception was better than he had hoped, and where he soon had a lucrative practice. They planned for him to come South in the summer, and she was almost happy again, when her child died and her mother's heart was broken.

She had borne much, and she never recovered from that last blow. Her health failed rapidly, and though she was too weak to undertake the trip, she insisted upon going to New York to see her father.

Thinking the voyage might prove beneficial, her husband reluctantly consented, and passage was engaged for her on a pilot-boat that had been out privateering, and had stopped for supplies before going on to New York.

The vessel sailed--and a storm swept the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. It was supposed that the ship went down off Cape Hatteras, but forty years afterward, a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on his death-bed that he was one of a crew of mutineers who took possession of the _Patriot_ and forced the passengers, as well as the officers and men, to walk the plank. He professed to remember Mrs. Alston well, and said she was the last one who perished. He never forgot her look of despair as she stepped into the sea--with her head held high even in the face of death.

Among Theodosia's papers was found a letter addressed to her husband, written at a time when she was weary of the struggle. On the envelope was written: "My Husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this to be read immediately and before my burial."

He never saw the letter, for he never had the courage to go through her papers, and after his death it was sent to her father. It came to him like a message from the grave:

"Let my father see my son, sometimes," she had written. "Do
not be unkind to him whom I have loved so much, I beseech of
you. Burn all my papers except my father's letters, which I
beg you to return to him."

A long time afterward, her father married Madame Jumel, a rich New York woman who was many years his junior, but the alliance was unfortunate, and was soon annulled. Through all the rest of his life, he never wholly gave up the hope that Theodosia might return. He clung fondly to the belief that she had been picked up by another ship, and some day would be brought back to him.

Day by day, he haunted the Battery, anxiously searching the faces of the incoming passengers, asking some of them for tidings of his daughter, and always believing that the next ship would bring her back.

He became a familiar figure, for he was almost always there--a bent, shrunken little man, white-haired, leaning heavily upon his cane, asking questions in a thin piping voice, and straining his dim eyes forever toward the unsounded waters, from whence the idol of his heart never came.

For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.

The Sea-Voice

Beyond the sands I hear the sea-voice calling
With passion all but human in its pain,
While from my eyes the bitter tears are falling,
And all the summer land seems blind with rain;
For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea,
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.

The tide comes in. The moonlight flood and glory
Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss,
And I can hear the passionate sweet story
Of waves that waited round her for her kiss.
Sweetheart, they love you; silent and unseeing,
Old Ocean holds his court around you there,
And while I reach out through the dark to find you
His fingers twine the sea-weed in your hair.

The tide goes out and in the dawn's new splendour
The dreams of dark first fade, then pass away,
And I awake from visions soft and tender
To face the shuddering agony of day
For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.

The Mystery of Randolph's Courtship

It is said that in order to know a man, one must begin with his ancestors, and the truth of the saying is strikingly exemplified in the case of "John Randolph of Roanoke," as he loved to write his name.

His contemporaries have told us what manner of man he was--fiery, excitable, of strong passions and strong will, capable of great bitterness, obstinate, revengeful, and extremely sensitive.

"I have been all my life," he says, "the creature of impulse, the sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and uncontrollable sensations, and of a poetic temperament."

He was sarcastic to a degree, proud, haughty, and subject to fits of Byronic despair and morbid gloom. For these traits we must look back to the Norman Conquest from which he traced his descent in an unbroken line, while, on the side of his maternal grandmother, he was the seventh in descent from Pocahontas, the Indian maiden who married John Rolfe.

The Indian blood was evident, even in his personal appearance. He was tall, slender, and dignified in his bearing; his hands were thin, his fingers long and bony; his face was dark, sallow, and wrinkled, oval in shape and seamed with lines by the inward conflict which forever raged in his soul. His chin was pointed but firm, and his lips were set; around his mouth were marked the tiny, almost imperceptible lines which mean cruelty. His nose was aquiline, his ears large at the top, tapering almost to a point at the lobe, and his forehead unusually high and broad. His hair was soft, and his skin, although dark, suffered from extreme sensitiveness.

"There is no accounting for thinness of skins in different
animals, human, or brute [he once said]. Mine, I believe to
be more tender than many infants of a month old. Indeed I
have remarked in myself, from my earliest recollection, a
delicacy or effeminacy of complexion, which but for a spice
of the devil in my temper would have consigned me to the
distaff or the needle."

"A spice of the devil" is mild indeed, considering that before he was four years old he frequently swooned in fits of passion, and was restored to consciousness with difficulty.

His most striking feature was his eyes. They were deep, dark, and fiery, filled with passion and great sadness at the same time. "When he first entered an assembly of people," said one who knew him, "they were the eyes of the eagle in search of his prey, darting about from place to place to see upon whom to light. When he was assailed they flashed fire and proclaimed a torrent of rage within."

The voice of this great statesman was a rare gift:

"One might live a hundred years [says one,] and never hear
another like it. The wonder was why the sweet tone of a
woman was so harmoniously blended with that of a man. His
very whisper could be distinguished above the ordinary tones
of other men. His voice was so singularly clear, distinct,
and melodious that it was a positive pleasure to hear him
articulate anything."

Such was the man who swayed the multitude at will, punished offenders with sarcasm and invective, inspired fear even in his equals, and loved and suffered more than any other prominent man of his generation.

He had many acquaintances, a few friends, and three loves--his mother, his brother, and the beautiful young woman who held his heart in the hollow of her hand, until the Gray Angel, taking pity, closed his eyes in the last sleep.

His mother, who was Frances Bland, married John Randolph in 1769, and John Randolph, of Roanoke, was their third son.

Tradition tells us of the unusual beauty of the mother--

"the high expanded forehead, the smooth arched brow; the
brilliant dark eyes; the well defined nose; the full round
laughing lips; the tall graceful figure, the beautiful dark
hair; an open cheerful countenance--suffused with that deep,
rich Oriental tint which never seems to fade, all of which
made her the most beautiful and attractive woman of her
age."

She was a wife at sixteen, and at twenty-six a widow. Three years after the death of her husband, she married St. George Tucker, of Bermuda who proved to be a kind father to her children.

In the winter of 1781, Benedict Arnold, the traitor who had spread ruin through his native state, was sent to Virginia on an expedition of ravage. He landed at the mouth of the James, and advanced toward Petersburg. Matoax, Randolph's home, was directly in the line of the invading army, so the family set out on a cold January morning, and at night entered the home of Benjamin Ward, Jr.

John Randolph was seven years old, and little Maria Ward had just passed her fifth birthday. The two children played together happily, and in the boy's heart was sown the seed of that grand passion which dominated his life.

After a few days, the family went on to Bizarre, a large estate on both sides of the Appomattox, and here Mrs. Tucker and her sons spent the remainder of the year, while her husband joined General Greene's army, and afterward, the force of Lafayette.

In 1788, John Randolph's mother died, and his first grief swept over him in an overwhelming torrent. The boy of fifteen spent bitter nights, his face buried in the grass, sobbing over his mother's grave. Years afterward, he wrote to a friend, "I am a fatalist. I am all but friendless. Only one human being ever knew me. _She_ only knew me."

He kept his mother's portrait always in his room, and enshrined her in loving remembrance in his heart. He had never seen his father's face to remember it distinctly, and for a long time he wore his miniature in his bosom. In 1796, his brother Richard died, and the unexpected blow crushed him to earth. More than thirty years afterward he wrote to his half-brother, Henry St. George Tucker, the following note:

"DEAR HENRY

"Our poor brother Richard was born in 1770. He would have
been fifty-six years old the ninth of this month. I can no
more.

"J. R. OF R."

At some time in his early manhood he came into close relationship with Maria Ward. She had been an attractive child, and had grown into a woman so beautiful that Lafayette said her equal could not be found in North America. Her hair was auburn, and hung in curls around her face; her skin was exquisitely fair; her eyes were dark and eloquent. Her mouth was well formed; she was slender, graceful, and coquettish, well-educated, and in every way, charming.

To this woman, John Randolph's heart went out in passionate, adoring love. He might be bitter and sarcastic with others, but with her he was gentleness itself. Others might know him as a man of affairs, keen and logical, but to her he was only a lover.

Timid and hesitating at first, afraid perhaps of his fiery wooing, Miss Ward kept him for some time in suspense. All the treasures of his mind and soul were laid before her; that deep, eloquent voice which moved the multitude to tears at its master's will was pleading with a woman for her love.

What wonder that she yielded at last and promised to marry him? Then for a time everything else was forgotten. The world lay before him to be conquered when he might choose. Nothing would be too great for him to accomplish--nothing impossible to that eager joyous soul enthroned at last upon the greatest heights of human happiness. And then--there was a change. He rode to her home one day, tying his horse outside as was his wont. A little later he strode out, shaking like an aspen, his face white in agony. He drew his knife from his pocket, cut the bridle of his horse, dug his spurs into the quivering sides, and was off like the wind. What battle was fought out on that wild ride is known only to John Randolph and his God. What torture that fiery soul went through, no human being can ever know. When he came back at night, he was so changed that no one dared to speak to him.

He threw himself into the political arena in order to save his reason. Often at midnight, he would rise from his uneasy bed, buckle on his pistols, and ride like mad over the country, returning only when his horse was spent. He never saw Miss Ward again, and she married Peyton Randolph, the son of Edmund Randolph, who was Secretary of State under Washington.

The entire affair is shrouded in mystery. There is not a letter, nor a single scrap of paper, nor a shred of evidence upon which to base even a presumption. The separation was final and complete, and the white-hot metal of the man's nature was gradually moulded into that strange eccentric being whose foibles are so well known.

Only once did Randolph lift even a corner of the veil. In a letter to his dearest friend he spoke of her as:

"One I loved better than my own soul, or Him who created it.
My apathy is not natural, but superinduced. There was a
volcano under my ice, but it burnt out, and a face of
desolation has come on, not to be rectified in ages, could
my life be prolonged to patriarchal longevity.

"The necessity of loving and being loved was never felt by
the imaginary beings of Rousseau and Byron's creation, more
imperiously than by myself. My heart was offered with a
devotion that knew no reserve. Long an object of
proscription and treachery, I have at last, more mortifying
to the pride of man, become an object of utter
indifference."

The brilliant statesman would doubtless have had a large liberty of choice among the many beautiful women of his circle, but he never married, and there is no record of any entanglement. To the few women he deemed worthy of his respect and admiration, he was deferential and even gallant. In one of his letters to a young relative he said:

"Love to god-son Randolph and respectful compliments to Mrs.
R. She is indeed a fine woman, one for whom I have felt a
true regard, unmixed with the foible of another passion.

"Fortunately or unfortunately for me, when I knew her, I
bore a charmed heart. Nothing else could have preserved me
from the full force of her attractions."

For much of the time after his disappointment, he lived alone with his servants, solaced as far as possible by those friends of all mankind--books. When the spirit moved him, he would make visits to the neighbouring plantations, sometimes dressed in white flannel trousers, coat, and vest, and with white paper wrapped around his beaver hat! When he presented himself in this manner, riding horseback, with his dark eyes burning, he was said to have presented "a most ghostly appearance!"

An old lady who lived for years on the banks of the Staunton, near Randolph's solitary home, tells a pathetic story:

She was sitting alone in her room in the dead of winter, when a beautiful woman, pale as a ghost, dressed entirely in white, suddenly appeared before her, and began to talk about Mr. Randolph, saying he was her lover and would marry her yet, as he had never proved false to his plighted faith. She talked of him incessantly, like one deranged, until a young gentleman came by the house, leading a horse with a side-saddle on. She rushed out, and asked his permission to ride a few miles. Greatly to his surprise, she mounted without assistance, and sat astride like a man. He was much embarrassed, but had no choice except to escort her to the end of her journey.

The old lady who tells of this strange experience says that the young woman several times visited Mr. Randolph, always dressed in white and usually in the dead of winter. He always put her on a horse and sent her away with a servant to escort her.

In his life there were but two women--his mother and Maria Ward. While his lips were closed on the subject of his love, he did not hesitate to avow his misery. "I too am wretched," he would say with infinite pathos; and after her death, he spoke of Maria Ward as his "angel."

In a letter written sometime after she died, he said, strangely enough: "I loved, aye, and was loved again, not wisely, but too well."

His brilliant career was closed when he was sixty years old, and in his last illness, during delirium, the name of Maria was frequently heard by those who were anxiously watching with him. But, true to himself and to her, even when his reason was dethroned, he said nothing more.

He was buried on his own plantation, in the midst of "that boundless contiguity of shade," with his secret locked forever in his tortured breast. "John Randolph of Roanoke," was all the title he claimed; but the history of those times teaches us that he was more than that--he was John Randolph, of the Republic.

How President Jackson Won His Wife

In October of 1788, a little company of immigrants arrived in Tennessee. The star of empire, which is said to move westward, had not yet illumined Nashville, and it was one of the dangerous points "on the frontier."

The settlement was surrounded on all sides by hostile Indians. Men worked in the fields, but dared not go out to their daily task without being heavily armed. When two men met, and stopped for a moment to talk, they often stood back to back, with their rifles cocked ready for instant use. No one stooped to drink from a spring unless another guarded him, and the women were always attended by an armed force.

Col. John Donelson had built for himself a blockhouse of unusual size and strength, and furnished it comfortably; but while surveying a piece of land near the village, he was killed by the savages, and his widow left to support herself as best she could.

A married daughter and her husband lived with her, but it was necessary for her to take other boarders. One day there was a vigorous rap upon the stout door of the blockhouse, and a young man whose name was Andrew Jackson was admitted. Shortly afterward, he took up his abode as a regular boarder at the Widow Donelson's.

The future President was then twenty-one or twenty-two. He was tall and slender, with every muscle developed to its utmost strength. He had an attractive face, pleasing manners, and made himself agreeable to every one in the house.

The dangers of the frontier were but minor incidents in his estimation, for "desperate courage makes one a majority," and he had courage. When he was but thirteen years of age, he had boldly defied a British officer who had ordered him to clean some cavalry boots.

"Sir," said the boy, "I am a prisoner of war, and I claim to be treated as such!"

With an oath the officer drew his sword, and struck at the child's head. He parried the blow with his left arm, but received a severe wound on his head and another on his arm, the scars of which he always carried.

The protecting presence of such a man was welcome to those who dwelt in the blockhouse--Mrs. Donelson, Mr. and Mrs. Robards, and another boarder, John Overton. Mrs. Donelson was a good cook and a notable housekeeper, while her daughter was said to be "the best story teller, the best dancer, the sprightliest companion, and the most dashing horsewoman in the western country."

Jackson, as the only licensed lawyer in that part of Tennessee, soon had plenty of business on his hands, and his life in the blockhouse was a happy one until he learned that the serpent of jealousy lurked by that fireside.

Mrs. Robards was a comely brunette, and her dusky beauty carried with it an irresistible appeal. Jackson soon learned that Captain Robards was unreasonably and even insanely jealous of his wife, and he learned from John Overton that before his arrival there had been a great deal of unhappiness because of this.

At one time Captain Robards had written to Mrs. Donelson to take her daughter home, as he did not wish to live with her any longer; but through the efforts of Mr. Overton a reconciliation had been effected between the pair, and they were still living together at Mrs. Donelson's when Jackson went there to board.

In a short time, however, Robards became violently jealous of Jackson and talked abusively to his wife, even in the presence of her mother and amidst the tears of both. Once more Overton interfered, assured Robards that his suspicions were groundless, and reproached him for his unmanly conduct.

It was all in vain, however, and the family was in as unhappy a state as before, when they were living with the Captain's mother who had always taken the part of her daughter-in-law.

At length Overton spoke to Jackson about it, telling him it was better not to remain where his presence made so much trouble, and offered to go with him to another boarding-place. Jackson readily assented, though neither of them knew where to go, and said that he would talk to Captain Robards.

The men met near the orchard fence, and Jackson remonstrated with the Captain who grew violently angry and threatened to strike him. Jackson told him that he would not advise him to try to fight, but if he insisted, he would try to give him satisfaction. Nothing came of the discussion, however, as Robards seemed willing to take Jackson's advice and did not dare to strike him. But the coward continued to abuse his wife, and insulted Jackson at every opportunity. The result was that the young lawyer left the house.

A few months later, the still raging husband left his wife and went to Kentucky, which was then a part of Virginia. Soon afterward, Mrs. Robards went to live with her sister, Mrs. Hay, and Overton returned to Mrs. Donelson's.

In the following autumn there was a rumour that Captain Robards intended to return to Tennessee and take his wife to Kentucky, at which Mrs. Donelson and her daughter were greatly distressed. Mrs. Robards wept bitterly, and said it was impossible for her to live peaceably with her husband as she had tried it twice and failed. She determined to go down the river to Natchez, to a friend, and thus avoid her husband, who she said had threatened to haunt her.

When Jackson heard of this arrangement he was very much troubled, for he felt that he had been the unwilling cause of the young wife's unhappiness, although entirely innocent of any wrong intention. So when Mrs. Robards had fully determined to undertake the journey to Natchez, accompanied only by Colonel Stark and his family, he offered to go with them as an additional protection against the Indians who were then especially active, and his escort was very gladly accepted. The trip was made in safety, and after seeing the lady settled with her friends, he returned to Nashville and resumed his law practice.

At that time there was no divorce law in Virginia, and each separate divorce required the passage of an act of the legislature before a jury could consider the case. In the winter of 1791, Captain Robards obtained the passage of such an act, authorising the court of Mercer County to act upon his divorce. Mrs. Robards, hearing of this, understood that the passage of the act was, in itself, divorce, and that she was a free woman. Jackson also took the divorce for granted. Every one in the country so understood the matter, and at Natchez, in the following summer, the two were married.

They returned to Nashville, settled down, and Jackson began in earnest the career that was to land him in the White House, the hero of the nation.

In December of 1793, more than two years after their marriage, their friend Overton learned that the legislature had not granted a divorce, but had left it for the court to do so. Jackson was much chagrined when he heard of this, and it was with great difficulty that he was brought to believe it. In January of 1794, when the decree was finally obtained, they were married again.

It is difficult to excuse Jackson for marrying the woman without positive and absolute knowledge of her divorce. He was a lawyer, and could have learned the facts of the case, even though there was no established mail service. Each of them had been entirely innocent of any intentional wrong-doing, and their long life together, their great devotion to each other, and General Jackson's honourable career, forever silenced the spiteful calumny of his rivals and enemies of early life.

In his eyes his wife was the soul of honour and purity; he loved and reverenced her as a man loves and reverences but one woman in his lifetime, and for thirty-seven years he kept a pair of pistols loaded for the man who should dare to breathe her name without respect.

The famous pistol duel with Dickinson was the result of a quarrel which had its beginning in a remark reflecting upon Mrs. Jackson, and Dickinson, though a crack shot, paid for it with his life.

Several of Dickinson's friends sent a memorial to the proprietors of the _Impartial Review_, asking that the next number of the paper appear in mourning, "out of respect for the memory, and regret for the untimely death, of Mr. Charles Dickinson."

"Old Hickory" heard of this movement, and wrote to the proprietors, asking that the names of the gentlemen making the request be published in the memorial number of the paper. This also was agreed to, and it is significant that twenty-six of the seventy-three men who had signed the petition called and erased their names from the document.

"The Hermitage" at Nashville, which is still a very attractive spot for visitors, was built solely to please Mrs. Jackson, and there she dispensed gracious hospitality. Not merely a guest or two, but whole families, came for weeks at a time, for the mistress of the mansion was fond of entertaining, and proved herself a charming hostess. She had a good memory, had passed through many and greatly varied experiences, and above all she had that rare faculty which is called tact.

Though her husband's love for her was evident to every one, yet, in the presence of others, he always maintained a dignified reserve. He never spoke of her as "Rachel," nor addressed her as "My Dear." It was always "Mrs. Jackson," or "wife." She always called him "Mr. Jackson," never "Andrew" nor "General."

Both of them greatly desired children, but this blessing was denied them; so they adopted a boy, the child of Mrs. Jackson's brother, naming him "Andrew Jackson," and bringing him up as their own child.

The lady's portrait shows her to have been wonderfully attractive. It does not reveal the dusky Oriental tint of her skin, the ripe red of her lips, nor the changing lights in her face, but it shows the high forehead, the dark soft hair, the fine eyes, and the tempting mouth which was smiling, yet serene. A lace head-dress is worn over the waving hair, and the filmy folds fall softly over neck and bosom.

When Jackson was elected to the Presidency, the ladies of Nashville organized themselves into sewing circles to prepare Mrs. Jackson's wardrobe. It was a labour of love. On December 23, 1828, there was to be a grand banquet in Jackson's honour, and the devoted women of their home city had made a beautiful gown for his wife to wear at the dinner. At sunrise the preparations began. The tables were set, the dining-room decorated, and the officers and men of the troop that was to escort the President-elect were preparing to go to the home and attend him on the long ride into the city. Their horses were saddled and in readiness at the place of meeting. As the bugle sounded the summons to mount, a breathless messenger appeared on a horse flecked with foam. Mrs. Jackson had died of heart disease the evening before.

The festival was changed to a funeral, and the trumpets and drums that were to have sounded salute were muffled in black. All decorations were taken down, and the church bells tolled mournfully. The grief of the people was beyond speech. Each one felt a personal loss.

At the home the blow was terrible. The lover-husband would not leave his wife. In those bitter hours the highest gift of his countrymen was an empty triumph, for his soul was wrecked with the greatness of his loss.

When she was buried at the foot of a slope in the garden of "The Hermitage," his bereavement came home to him with crushing strength. Back of the open grave stood a great throng of people, waiting in the wintry wind. The sun shone brightly on the snow, but "The Hermitage" was desolate, for its light and laughter and love were gone. The casket was carried down the slope, and a long way behind it came the General, slowly and almost helpless, between two of his friends.

The people of Nashville had made ready to greet him with the blare of bugles, waving flags, the clash of cymbals, and resounding cheers. It was for the President-elect--the hero of the war. The throng that stood behind the open grave greeted him with sobs and tears--not the President-elect, but the man bowed by his sixty years, bareheaded, with his gray hair rumpled in the wind, staggering toward them in the throes of his bitterest grief.

In that one night he had grown old. He looked like a man stricken beyond all hope. When his old friends gathered around him with the tears streaming down their cheeks, wringing his hand in silent sympathy, he could make no response.

He was never the same again, though his strength of will and his desperate courage fought with this infinite pain. For the rest of his life he lived as she would have had him live--guided his actions by the thought of what his wife, if living, would have had him do--loving her still, with the love that passeth all understanding.

He declined the sarcophagus fit for an emperor, that he might be buried like a simple citizen, in the garden by her side.

His last words were of her--his last look rested upon her portrait that hung opposite his bed, and if there be dreaming in the dark, the vision of her brought him peace at last.

The Bachelor President's Loyalty to a Memory

The fifteenth President was remarkable among the men of his time for his lifelong fidelity to one woman, for since the days of knight-errantry such devotion has been as rare as it is beautiful. The young lawyer came of Scotch-Irish parentage, and to this blending of blood were probably in part due his deep love and steadfastness. There was rather more of the Irish than of the Scotch in his face, and when we read that his overflowing spirits were too much for the college in which he had been placed, and that, for "reasons of public policy," the honours which he had earned were on commencement day given to another, it is evident that he may sometimes have felt that he owed allegiance primarily to the Emerald Isle.

Like others, who have been capable of deep and lasting passion, James Buchanan loved his mother. Among his papers there was found a fragment of an autobiography, which ended in 1816, when the writer was only twenty-five years of age. He says his father was "a kind father, a sincere friend, and an honest and religious man," but on the subject of his mother he waxes eloquent:

"Considering her limited opportunities in early life [he
writes], my mother was a remarkable woman. The daughter of a
country farmer, engaged in household employment from early
life until after my father's death, she yet found time to
read much, and to reflect deeply on what she read.

"She had a great fondness for poetry, and could repeat with
ease all the passages in her favorite authors which struck
her fancy. These were Milton, Pope, Young, Cowper, and
Thompson.

"I do not think, at least until a late period in life, she
had ever read a criticism on any one of these authors, and
yet such was the correctness of her natural taste, that she
had selected for herself, and could repeat, every passage
in them which has been admired....

"For her sons, as they grew up successively, she was a
delightful and instructive companion.... She was a woman of
great firmness of character, and bore the afflictions of her
later life with Christian philosophy.... It was chiefly to
her influence, that her sons were indebted for a liberal
education. Under Providence I attribute any little
distinction which I may have acquired in the world to the
blessing which He conferred upon me in granting me such a
mother."

If Elizabeth Buchanan could have read these words, doubtless she would have felt fully repaid for her many years of toil, self-sacrifice, and devotion.

After the young man left the legislature and took up the practice of law, with the intention of spending his life at the bar, he became engaged to Anne Coleman, the daughter of Robert Coleman, of Lancaster.

She is said to have been an unusually beautiful girl, quiet, gentle, modest, womanly, and extremely sensitive. The fine feelings of a delicately organized nature may easily become either a blessing or a curse, and on account of her sensitiveness there was a rupture for which neither can be very greatly blamed.

Mr. Coleman approved of the engagement, and the happy lover worked hard to make a home for the idol of his heart. One day, out of the blue sky a thunderbolt fell. He received a note from Miss Coleman asking him to release her from her engagement.

There was no explanation forthcoming, and it was not until long afterward that he discovered that busy-bodies and gossips had gone to Miss Coleman with stories concerning him which had no foundation save in their mischief-making imaginations, and which she would not repeat to him. After all his efforts at re-establishing the old relations had proved useless, he wrote to her that if it were her wish to be released from her engagement he could but submit, as he had no desire to hold her against her will.

The break came in the latter part of the summer of 1819, when he was twenty-eight years old and she was in her twenty-third year. He threw himself into his work with renewed energy, and later on she went to visit friends in Philadelphia.

Though she was too proud to admit it, there was evidence that the beautiful and high-spirited girl was suffering from heartache. On the ninth of December, she died suddenly, and her body was brought home just a week after she left Lancaster. The funeral took place the next day, Sunday, and to the suffering father of the girl, the heart-broken lover wrote a letter which in simple pathos stands almost alone. It is the only document on this subject which remains, but in these few lines is hidden a tragedy:

"LANCASTER, December 10, 1819.

"MY DEAR SIR:

"You have lost a child, a dear, dear child. I have lost the
only earthly object of my affections, without whom, life now
presents to me a dreary blank. My prospects are all cut off,
and I feel that my happiness will be buried with her in her
grave.

"It is now no time for explanation, but the time will come
when you will discover that she, as well as I, has been
greatly abused. God forgive the authors of it! My feelings
of resentment against them, whoever they may be, are buried
in the dust.

"I have now one request to make, and for the love of God,
and of your dear departed daughter, whom I loved infinitely
more than any human being could love, deny me not. Afford me
the melancholy pleasure of seeing her body before its
interment. I would not, for the world, be denied this
request.

"I might make another, but from the misrepresentations that
have been made to you, I am almost afraid. I would like to
follow her remains, to the grave as a mourner. I would like
to convince the world, I hope yet to convince you, that she
was infinitely dearer to me than life.