Chapter Six.

ANDREW JACKSON.

WAS invited by General Jackson, in October, 1827, to visit him at his home, the Hermitage, fourteen miles above Nashville, on the Cumberland River. Two of my uncles in Kentucky were his warm personal and political friends. His friendship for me was the result of his gratitude to them. It was manifested by repeated acts of personal kindness and political preferment. His wife, aunt Rachael (as she was called), and her nephew, Andrew Jackson Donaldson, constituted the family. They lived plainly and quietly, but very hospitably. There was no formality or ceremony, and their guests very soon felt themselves at home. The general was unreserved in his conversation, and

spoke freely of public men; of his enemies, with bitterress. In the course of the two weeks that I remained with him, he gave me the history of his military life. I was forcibly reminded of a remark of a distinguished lady, who said she was present in a drawing-room in Washington, with a large party of ladies and gentlemen, when General Jackson was requested to give them a description of the battle of New Orleans. She said it was earnest, graphic, eloquent, and a person not knowing General Jackson, would never have supposed the narrator was the hero. He said to me the battle of the night of the 23d of December, if it could be called a battle, saved the city of New Orleans. About four o'clock in the afternoon of the 23d, while at dinner, he was informed that the British troops had landed eighteen miles below the city, and were marching up. He had very few disciplined troops under his command, was hourly expecting several thousand militia from Kentucky and Tennessee, and the salvation of the city depended upon their arrival. He had no breastworks and the ground between the city and the British troops was a level prairie. After a few moments of anxious reflection he gave orders that every man in the city capable of bearing arms, should be ready in two hours to march with such guns as they could get, with or without ammunition. In two hours several thousand citizens were marching down the river, over a prairie bounded on the one side by the river, on the other by an impass able swamp. About twelve o'clock they came within gunshot of the enemy, but being very dark, he could not

be seen. The general gave orders to extend the line from the river to the swamp, and keep up a continuous firing until daybreak and then retreat. The British general supposing the American troops greatly out-numbered his own, retreated before daylight to his shipping, determining to return with his ships. Previous to his return the Kentucky and Tennessee troops had arrived, a breastwork of cotton bags had been constructed, extending from the river to the swamp; and when the enemy returned on the 8th of January, he was swept down like a field of grain, by the scythe of death. He said that while the British troops were lying at anchor, previous to the battle, Governor Clayborne was in the habit of granting passports to his friends to visit the British officers, against which he protested on the ground of their defenceless condition, and the corrupting influence of British gold. The governor replied that he should exercise his discretion. Then said the general, by the Eternal, if you issue another passport I'll hang you between the heavens and the earth.' I said to him, would you have hung him in good earnest? By the Eternal I would have hung him,' and the flashing of his gray eyes proved his earnestness.

His account of his battles with the Indians, some times in the night in the swamps and in rivers, as at the Coosa, was picturesque and almost romantic.

I was frequently with him in his cotton fields, which were white for the harvest, and his servants busily gathering the crop. They were cheerful, and in no dread of the iron-man-iron when his enemies opposed him. His

domestic government was patriarchal, and his subjects loved him; he said that everybody at home governed him, wife, servants and overseer.

I was at the White Sulphur Virginia Springs, in the summer of 1834, where I met Geo. McDuffie, Judge Miller, and Colonel Pierce Butler, nullifiers from South Carolina; with whom I conversed freely, on the subject of nullification. I met there also Alfred Huger, from the same State, who was a member of the State Senate, and the only Union man in it. There was a perfect harmony in our views, on the subject of nullification and secession, and he wrote before I left, a very able letter on the subject. I enclosed the letter to Wm. B. Lewis, General Jackson's confidential friend, and who lived with him in the Presidential mansion. He read the letter to the President, who called for pen, ink, and paper, and addressed a note to the Postmaster-general, directing him to send the commission of Postmaster to Alfred Huger, of Charleston, South Carolina. Being in Washington a few weeks after, I received through Lewis, an invitation from the President to breakfast with him the next morning. Having gotten nearly through the breakfast, the General said to me: "Who did you see at the Springs ?" I said, "I saw some of your nullifying friends from South Carolina." "What did they intend to do," said he, "if I had sent a vessel there to collect the duties?" I replied "that they intended to declare Charleston a free port, and if he sent a vessel there to collect duties, they would call in the aid of the British fleet." He sprang from the table in a towering passion, saying: "By the Eternal! If

Great Britain had dared to send any vessels there for any such a purpose, I would have sunk the fleet!"

One who knew General Jackson better than I did, said of him, he was a man of quick perception, of prompt action, of acute penetration, of unerring judgment of men ; distinguished for grace of manners and polished address. He was steadfast in his friendships, and bitter in his enmities. He could neither brook a rival nor opposition. He had the imperial spirit of a conqueror not to be subdued, and the pride of leadership which could not follow. He was an American, intensely patriotic and national, loving his whole country, its honor, its glory, and especially its union. He lived a life of excitement, of storm and of warfare, and always at the head of his party. Upon the work in hand, he concentrated all his powers of mind and body; and thus inspired, there was no such word as fail. The man, who, rising from a sick bed with a broken arm in a sling, could place himself before a company of insurgent soldiers, holding a pistol in the bridle hand, threaten to shoot down the first man that marched on, had nothing to learn of human audacity. Men of nerve quailed before him, as cowards quail before men of nerve. His air of command was not broken by any familiarity; whoever looked upon him, saw one whom it was better to have as a friend, and dangerous to have as an enemy.

He required of his friends an undeviating fidelity, and he freely gave what he exacted. He could excuse everything in a friend except disloyalty to friendship. That with him was an unpardonable sin. As a military man he was a