History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 35

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1013

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The schools, then, contributed little to the equipment of this eager boy for the battle of life. He derived much from the honest and pure people among whom he was brought np. Their instinct of honesty was strong in him always. He imbibed a reverence for the character of woman, and a love of purity, which, amid all his wild ways, kept him stainless. In this particular, we believe, he was without reproach from youth to old age. He deeply loved his mother, and held her memory sacred to the end of life.

He used often to speak of the courage she displayed when left without a protector in the wilderness, and would some- times clinch a remark or an argument by saying, "That I learned from my good old mother." He once said, in speaking of his mother, "One of the last injunctions given me by her was never to institute a suit for assault and battery or for defamation ; never to wound the feelings of others, nor suffer my own to be outraged; these were her words to me; I remember them well, and have never failed to respect them ; my settled course through life has been to bear them in mind, and never to insult or wantonly to as- sail the feelings of any one; and yet many conceive me to be a most ferocious animal, insensible to moral duty, and regardless of the laws both of God and man."

When the Revolution had reached that part of South Carolina where young Jackson resided, he was a youth of thirteen years of age. Robert was too young to be a sol- dier, but his oldest brother, Hugh, had two years before joined the army under Col. Davie, had fought at the battle of Stono, and died after the action from heat and fatigue. After the terrible havoc of the 29th of May, 1780, by Tarleton's dragoons in the Waxhaw settlement, Robert and Andrew assisted their mother in taking care of the wounded in the old wooden church of the neighborhood. Upon the great disaster of the war in the South, the defcat of Gen. Gates, Aug. 16, 1780, the boys and their mother abandoned their home for a safer retreat north of the scene of war.

A vivid picture is given by Parton, from the memory of Mrs. Susan Smart, of Charlotte, of the appearance of young Andrew as he made his way northward on that memorable occasion :

"Time,-late in the afternoon of a hot, dusty September day in 1780. Place,-the high-road, five miles below Charlotte, where Mrs. Smart then lived, a saucy girl of fourteen, at the house of her parents. The news of Gates' defeat had flown over the country, but every one was gasp- ing for details, especially those who had fathers and brothers in the patriot army. The father and brother of Mrs. Smart were in that army, and the family, as yet, knowing nothing of their fate,-a condition of suspense to which the women of the Carolinas were well used during the Revolutionary war. It was the business of Susan, during those days, to take post at one of the windows, and there watch for travelers coming from the south, and, upon spying one, to fly out upon him and ask him for news from the army, and of the corps to which her father and brother were attached. Thus posted, she descried, on the afternoon to which we have referred, riding rapidly on a ' grass pony' (one of the ponics of the South Carolina swamps, rough, Shetlandish, wild), a tall, slender, 'gangling fellow ;' legs long enough to meet under the pony almost; damaged wide-brimmed hat flapping down over his face, which was yellow and worn ; the figure covered with dust; tired-look- ing, as though the youth had ridden till he could scarcely sit on his pony,-the forlornest apparition that ever revealed itself to the eyes of Mrs. Susan Smart during the whole of her long life. She ran out to the road and hailed him. He reined in his pony, when the following brief conversa- tion ensued between them :

" She .- Where are you from ?

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" He .- From below.

" She .- Where are you going?

" He .- Above.

" She .- Who are you for ?

" He .- The Congress.

" She .- What are you doing below ?

" He .- Oh, we are popping them still.

" She (to herself) .- It is mighty poor popping such as you will do, anyhow. (Aloud.) What's your name ?

" He .- Andrew Jackson.

"She asked him respecting her father's regiment, and he gave her what information he possessed. He then gal- loped away towards Charlotte, and Susan returned to her house to tell her news and ridicule the figure he had cut,- the gangling fellow on the grass pony. Years after she used to laugh as she told the story ; and later, when the most thrilling news of the time used to come to Charlotte associated with the name of Andrew Jackson, still she would bring out her little tale, until at last, she made it get votes for him for the Presidency."

At the time Jackson appeared on the " grass pony" he was going to Mrs. Wilson's, a relative, who lived a few miles above Charlotte. He stayed there and did chores for his board a few weeks, his mother and Robert being either there or at some other house in the neighborhood. In Feb- ruary, 1781, Mrs. Jackson and her sons and many of the neighbors returned to the ravaged homes at Waxhaw. The desultory war between Whigs and Tories was soon re- newed in that section. Robert and Andrew were taken prisoners at the house of their cousin, Lieut. Thomas Craw- ford, who lay ill from a wound received the day before from a party of dragoons. Before the family had suspicion of danger, the house was surrounded and the doors secured. Regardless of the fact that the house was occupied by the defenseless wife and young children of a wounded soldier, the dragoons, brutalized by mean partisan warfare, began to destroy with wild riot and noise the contents of the house. Crockery, glass, and furniture were dashed to pieces, beds emptied, the clothing of the family torn to rags, even the clothes of the infant, which Mrs. Crawford carried in her arms, were not spared. While this destruction was going on, the officer in command of the party ordered Andrew to clean his high jack-boots, which were well splashed and crusted with mud. The reply which the boy made was worthy of a prince : " Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and claim to be treated as such."

The fate of the brothers was next to suffer as prisoners at Camden. The wounded Lieut. Crawford, the Jacksons, and some two hundred and fifty other prisoners, were con- fined in a contracted inclosure around the Camden jail; no beds of any description, no medical attendance, nor means of dressing their wounds; their only food a scanty supply of bad bread. They were even robbed of part of their clothing. The three relatives were separated as soon as their relationship was discovered. Miserable among the miserable, gaunt, yellow, hungry, and sick, robbed of his jacket and socks, ignorant of his brother's fate, chafing with suppressed fury,-Andrew passed now some of the most wretched days of his life. Ere long the smallpox broke out among the prisoners, and raged unchecked by medicine.

Thus they remained, the sick, the dying, and the dead to- gether. Andrew for some time escaped the contagion. While in this prison-camp he took his first lesson in recon- noitring an army on the field of battle. Gen. Greene, having arrived with a force superior to that of Lord Raw- don's, which occupied Camden, encamped on a slight emi- nence in front of the jail-yard, which was only hidden from full view of the prisoners by a high board-fence which surrounded the inclosure. All the prisoners were overjoyed with the prospect of being speedily released from their suf- ferings, as the news of Gen. Greene's arrival spread among them. Andrew looked for a crevice in the board-fence, through which he might feast his longing eyes on the camp of the soldiers, but he could find nonc. In the course of the night, however, he managed, with the aid of an old razor blade, which had been generously bestowed upon the prisoners as a meat-knife, to hack out a knot from the fence. The morning light found him spying out the American position with eager eye. What he saw that morning through the knot-hole of his prison was his second lesson in the art of war. An impressive lesson it proved, and one he never forgot. There was the American encampment spread out in full view before him at the distance of a mile. Gen. Greene, being well assured of Rawdon's weakness, and anticipating nothing so little as an attack from a man whom he supposed to be trembling for his own safety, neglected precautions against surprise. At ten in the morning, when Rawdon led out his nine hundred men to the attack, An- drew, mad with vexation, saw Greene's men scattered over the hill, cleaning their arms, washing their clothes, and playing games, totally unprepared to resist. Rawdon, by taking a circuitous route, was enabled to break upon Greene's left with all the effect of a surprise. From his knot-hole the excited youth saw the sudden smoke of mus- ketry, the rush of the Americans for their arms, the hasty falling-in, the opening of Greene's fire, the fine dash of American horse upon Rawdon's rear, the wild flight of horses running riderless about the hill, the fire slackening, and, alas ! receding, till Rawdon's army swept over the hill and vanished on the other side, Greene in full retreat before him. The prisoners were in despair. Andrew's spirits sank under this accumulation of miseries, and he began to sicken with the first symptoms of the smallpox. Robert was in a condition stilll worse.' The wound in his head had never been dressed, and had not healed. He, too, re- duced as he was, began to shiver and burn with the fever that announces the dread disease. Another week of prison- life would have probably consigned both boys to the grave.

But they had a friend outside,-their mother, who at this crisis of their fate strove with the might of love for their deliverance. Learning of their forlorn condition, this heroic woman went to Camden and succeeded, after a time, in effecting an exchange of prisoners between a Wax- haw captain and a British general. The Whig captain gave up thirteen soldiers, whom he had captured in the rear of the British army, and received in return the two sons of Mrs. Jackson and five of her neighbors." Through forty miles of lonely wilderness the little company made their way home, Robert Jackson being supported on a horse by one of the exchanged prisoners, and Andrew, bare-headed, bare-

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footed, and without a jacket, the fever of the smallpox raging in his veins, dragged himself wearily along on foot. Part of their journey was through a cold, drizzling rain, which aggravated the disease. In two days after they reached home Robert was a corpse, and Andrew was raving in delirium. He remained an invalid for several months. Andrew was no sooner out of danger than his brave mother resolved to go to Charleston to minister to the sufferings of her sister's sons, who were prisoners on the loathsome prison- ships in that harbor. She made the journey, one hundred and sixty miles, probably on horseback, with two or three other women bound on a like mission, ministered to the prisoners, and was seized with the ship fever, of which she died shortly after at the house of a relative, William Bar- ton, a few miles out of Charleston.

We have thus traced the thread of events to the most sad and lonely period in the life of our hero,-a period when all of the family but himself had fallen, and left him alone in the world, doubly bereaved in the loss of his mother and his brothers. "It was not in the nature of Jackson not to mourn deeply for such a mother, and as he lay recovering by slow degrees from his illness, he had leisure to dwell upon her virtues and his own unhappiness. It was always a grief to him that he did not know where her remains were laid. As late in life as during his Presi- dency he set on foot some inquiries respecting the place of her burial, with the design of having her sacred dust re- moved to the old church-yard at Waxhaw, where he wished to erect a monument to both his parents. It was too late. No exact information could be obtained, and the project was given up. No stone marks the burial-placo either of his father, mother, or brothers."

We must sum up rapidly some of the events of his life. He read law in Salisbury, N. C., in the office of Judge Spruce McCay during the years 1785 and 1786. Forty- five years after this period, when some one from Salisbury reminded him of his residence in that town, he said, with a smile and a look of retrospection on his aged face, " Yes, I lived at old Salisbury. I was but a raw lad then, but I did my best."

The advent of Gen. Jackson to Tennessee occurred in the year 1788, immediately after the settlement of the difficulties between North Carolina and her western coun- ties growing out of the formation of the independent "State of Franklin." John McNairy, a friend of Jack- son's and former associate with him in the study of law, was appointed judge of the Superior Court for the western district. Jackson was invested with the office of prosecu- ting attorney for the same district. This office was not in request nor desirable in the then new state of the country, but Jackson accepted it because he had determined to seek his fortune in his profession in the new country, about which such glowing accounts were rife in the Carolinas. Thomas Searcy, another of Jackson's friends, was appointed clerk of the court. Three or four more of his young acquaint -. ances, lawyers and others, resolved to go with him. The party rendezvoused at Morgantown in the spring or early summer of 1788, mounted and equipped for a ride over the mountains to Jonesboro', then the chief halting-place for companies bound to lands on the Cumberland River.

This cavalcade of judge, attorney, clerk, and lawyers wended their way in double file along the usual road, each riding his own horse, a pack-horse or two carrying the effects of the learned judge. Every horseman had in his own saddle- bags a small wallet in which he carried letters from citizens in the old State to settlers in Tennessee. Jonesboro' at this time was a place of fifty or sixty log houses, and a new court-house had been erected, but it was an edifice of unhewn logs, sixteen feet square, and without windows or floor. The judge and his party waited several weeks at Jonesboro' for the assembling of a sufficient number of immigrants and for the arrival of a guard from Nashville to escort them. This was a military guard provided by the people of Davidson County to defend the immigrants against the Indians.

The State Gazette of North Carolina, of Nov. 28, 1788, announcing the departure of Judge McNairy's com- pany for Nashville, has the following : " Notice is hereby given that the new road from Campbell's Station to Nash- ville was opened on the 25th of September, and the guard attended at that time to escort such persons as were ready to proceed to Nashville ; that about sixty families went on, amongst whom were the widow and family of the late Gen. Davidson, and John McNairy, judge of the Superior Court; - and that on the 1st day of October next the guard will attend at the same place for the same purpose."

The date above given fixes the time very nearly when Gen. Jackson arrived at Nashville. He remained here discharging the functions of his office as district attorney and practicing at the bar till the State was admitted into the Union, when he was elected its first representative in Congress, and served till March 3, 1797. In the next Congress he was United States senator, and served about one year, when he resigned his seat to accept the appoint- ment tendered him by Governor Sevier in the following letter :

" KNOXVILLE, 29th August, 1798.

"SIR,-It has been communicated to me by several re- spectable characters that was you appointed one of the judges of the Superior Court of Law and Equity, they have reason to believe that you would accept such appoint- ment. This information is truly satisfactory to the execu- tive, and I have the pleasure of adding that your acceptance of the office, I have reason to believe, will give general satisfaction.

"I will do myself the honor of informing you that in case the office of judge of the Superior Court of Law and Equity meets your approbation, you will please consider yourself as already appointed. I hope the pleasure of seeing you at the next term of the Superior Court to be holden at this place, where I intend myself the honor of presenting you with the commission. Your answer is re- quested.

" I have the honor to be, sir, " With much respect and esteem, " Your most ob' hume svt, " JOHN SEVIER.

"THE HON'BLE ANDREW JACKSON, ESQ."

Gen. Jackson accepted the appointment, which he held

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till subsequently elected to the same judicial office by the Legislature, and remained upon the bench till 1804. It was while he was judge of the Superior Court of Law and Equity that the well-known quarrel occurred between him and Governor Sevier.

It may sound strange, in view of Gen. Jackson's many conflicts during the early part of his life, to say that he was not a quarrelsome man ; but we verily believe, after a close and impartial study of his character, that such was not the fact. He was a man of the most marked and chivalrous sense of honor, especially in relation to the duty of defend- ing those dependent upon him, or in any way related to him ; and he frequently got into difficulties, not on his own account, but by espousing the cause of others when their characters were in any way assailed or traduced. In the case of the quarrel with Sevier, there can be little doubt that this lay at the bottom of it. It was charged that cer- tain land-speculators in Tennessee were engaged in the for- gery of North Carolina land-warrants. These fraudulent warrants were largely sold, and the consternation among the settlers was great when the report of the probable worth- lessness of their titles was mooted. Governor Sevier, from some apparently suspicious circumstances, was implicated in the matter, while a near relative of Mrs. Jackson was in- dicted for his supposed complicity with it. Gen. Jackson de- nounced the fraud with unsparing severity, and used all his influence and authority to bring the offenders to justice. He fully believed Governor Sevier guilty, and attributed the involvement of his connection to his influence and ex- ample.

" About this time (1803) Sevier was again a candidate for Governor, having been out of the office one term, on account of ineligibility under the Constitution of Tennessee. Gen. Jackson bitterly opposed him. In the fall of that year he was holding court at Knoxville, the capital of the State. The Legislature was in session. On the first day of the term of court, Governor Sevier had an appointment to speak in the public square. Political excitement ran high, and the town was filled with people. While he was haranguing his audience and vehemently defending himself, the court adjourned, and Judge (General) Jackson, with others, passed out and joined the throng who were listening to the speech. As soon as the Governor observed him he began to denounce him in the strongest language, and applied to him the most opprobrious epithets. Jackson, as opportu- nity offered, retorted in kind, and the unseemly altercation was maintained for several minutes. At length the Gov- ernor made an offensive allusion to Mrs. Jackson.

" This aroused the general's uncontrollable wrath, and he made frantic efforts to reach the speaker, although armed with nothing but a cane, whilst his antagonist, in his excite- ment, was flourishing a sword, a weapon usually worn by gentlemen in those days. Pistols were drawn by the friends of the parties, and a bloody riot seemed for a while inevi- table, and was only prevented by the active exertions of cooler-minded men. The Governor continued to hurl his anathemas towards the general as the latter was led from the scene, vociferated his readiness to meet him on 'the field of honor,' and tauntingly defied him to invite him there. On the following day the general challenged him."

We give, from the original papers published recently in the Cincinnati Commercial, the correspondence entire :

I. " KNOXVILLE, Oct. 2, 1803.

"SIR: The ungentlemanly expression and gasgonading conduct of yours, relative to me yesterday, was in true character of yourself, and unmasked you to the world, and plainly shows that they were the ebulitions of a base mind, goaded with stubborn proofs of fraud, and flowing from a source devoid of any refined sentiment or delicate sensation.

" But, sir, the voice of the people has made you a Gov- ernor. This alone makes you worthy of any notice, or the notice of any Gentleman. For the Office I have respect, and as such I only deign to notice you and call upon you for that satisfaction and explanation that your ungentle- manly conduct and expressions require. For this purpose I request an interview, and my friend, who will hand you this, will point out the time and place, when & where I shall expect to see you with your friend and no other per- Bon. My friend and myself will be armed with Pistols,- you cannot mistake me or my meaning.

" I am, &c., &c., AND'W JACKSON. " Gov. JOHN SEVIER."

II.

"SIR: Yours to-day by Andr Whithe, Esqr., I have received, and am pleased with the contents, so far as re- spects a personal. interview.

" Your ungentlemanly and Gasgonading conduct of yes- terday, and indeed at all other times, heretofore, have un- unmasked yourself to me and to the world. The voice of the Assembly has made you a Judge, and this alone has made you worthy of my notice or any other gentleman ; to the office I have respect, and this alone makes you worthy of my notice.

" I shall wait on you with pleasure at any time and place not within the State of Tennessee, attended by my friend with pistols, presuming you know nothing about the use of any other arms. . Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina are in our vicinity, and we can easily repair to either of those places, and conveniently retire into the inoffending Government. You cannot nfistake me or my meaning.

" Yours, &c., &c., JOHN SEVIER.

" Hon. A. JACKSON."

III.

"OCTR. 3d, 1803.

"MR. RAULINGS,

"SIR: Your note without date handed by Capt. Sparks, and which I suppose was wrote this morning, is now be- fore me, and I am happy to find that the interview pro- posed by me in my note of yesterday, is pleasing to you, but I am sorry, sir, that the answer has been so long upon its passage, and that my friend Mr. A. White was obliged to call so often on yesterday. You say you will wait on me at any time and place not within the State of Tennessee.

" This, sir, I view as a mere subterfuge ; your attack was in the town of Knoxville ; in the town of Knoxville did you take the name of a Lady into your polluted lips; in the

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town of Knoxville did you challenge me to draw, when you were armed with a cutlass and I with a cain-and now sir in the Neighborhood of Knoxville you shall atone for it or I will publish you as a coward and a poltroon.

" I now call upon you, that you will this day meet me in the manner prescribed by my note of yesterday. If it will obviate your sqeemish fears, I will set out immediately to the nearest part of the Indian boundry line, on receiving an answer to this note. To travel to Georgia, Virginia or North Carolina, is a proposition made by you to evade the thing entirely. I am therefore compelled to be explicit ; you must meet me between this and four o'clock, this after- noon, either in the neighborhood of Knoxville or on the nearest point of the Indian Boundry line, or I will publish you as a coward and poltroon. I shall expect an answer in the space of one hour, or I shall expect as you are so fear- ful of the consequences of a breach of the law that you may think it advisable to shield your body from paying the debts of honour under the law, as you have heretofore your property. I pledged my honor on yesterday, my friend did the same, that no advantage of the law shall or will be taken by me or my friends, let the consequences be as they may. " I am, sir, &c., &c., ANDREW JACKSON. " GOY. JOHN SEVIER."

IV. "3d OCT. 1803.

" SIR : Your letter of this day is before me and I am happy to find you so accommodating. My friend will agree upon the time and place of rendezvous.

" Yours, &c., &c., JOHN SEVIER.

" Hon. A. JACKSON."

" KNOXVILLE, Octr. 9th, 1803.

" SIR: After this note, I will bid you adieu, it being the last you will receive from me on the point of honor, the subject of my note to you dated the second inst. From the tenor of yours of the third inst. in answer to my note of the morning of the same day, I did believe, that all that re- mained to be done, was for our friends to immediately pro- ceed, and the satisfaction required in my note of the second inst. was immediately to be given-as I had expressly named in my note of the third, that unless you did meet me between then & four o'clock of the evening of the same day, or set out immediately to the Indian boundry line a place I had named, to remove your squemish fears, that I would advertise you as a coward and poltroon, but judge my astonishment, when it was stated to me by my friend (after application to Capt. Sparks, your friend, to fix the time, and to proceed to a place to be named, agreeable to your note) that in express contradiction thereto-he stated that you had instructed him not to name a day sooner than the 8th inst. I directed my friend to state to him expressly, if he did not, agreeable to your note, imme- diately proceed to name a time and place that after 4 o'clock I would advertise you as a coward and poltroon, and that censure might attach to him, as he was by your note authorized to act. He replyed, he hoped I would not ad-

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History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 35

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford) Publication date: 1880 Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1013

Author: Clayton, W. W. (W. Woodford)
Publication date: 1880
Publisher: Philadelphia, J.W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1013