History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 39

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

USA > Tennessee > Davidson County > History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 39

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Gen. Jackson was, beyond all question, the most self- reliant chief magistrate this nation ever had. He marked out his own policy, and often acted contrary to the advice of his nearest friends and that of his Cabinet, in the face of the most formidable difficulties. " I take the responsi- bility," was his short method of settling such differences. And usually his own judgment proved the better guide than that of his advisers.

Attempts have been made to belittle the education of Gen. Jackson, and some have gone so far as to pronounce him "ignorant and unlettered." The imputation is absurd and entirely unfounded. Learned he was not, in the sense of being erudite, but his mind was a fountain of fresh, orig- inal ideas and thoughts, which found clear, forcible, and vigorous expression in language fitting and appropriate to his subjects. He could not only write well and fluently, but rapidly. Few men have had command of a vocabulary more pungent and forcible, and few have possessed in a higher degree the faculty of making themselves clearly understood.

As an example of forcible and pungent rejoinder, we give a brief extract from Jackson's reply to an address of John Quincy Adams, delivered to the youth of Boston on the 7th of October, 1844 :

" Who but a traitor to his country can appeal as Mr. Adams does to the youth of Boston in the close of his ad- dress ? 'Your trial is approaching. The spirit of freedom and the spirit of slavery are drawing together for the deadly conflict of arms. The annexation of Texas to this Union is the blast of the trumpet for a foreign, civil, ser- vile, and Indian war, of which the government of the United States, fallen into faithless hands, has already twice given the signal,-first, by a shameless treaty rejected by a virtuous Senate; and, again, by the glove of defiance hurled by the apostle of nullification at the avowed policy of the British empire peacefully to promote the extinction of slavery throughout the world. Young men of Boston, burnish your armor, prepare for the conflict; and I say to you, in the language of Galgacus to the ancient Britons, think of your forefathers, think of your posterity.'

" What is this but delusion, or, what is worse, a direct appeal to arms to oppose the decision of the American people should it be favorable to the annexation of Texas to the United States ?

"I may be blamed for spelling Mr. Erving's name wrong, but I trust I shall never deserve the shame of mistaking the path of duty where my country's rights are involved. I believed, from the disclosures made to me of the transactions of .1819, that Mr. Adams surrendered the interests of the United States when he took the Sabine River as the boundary between us and Spain, when he might have gone to the Colorado, if not to the Rio del Norte. Such was the natural inference from the facts stated by Mr. Erving ; and there is nothing in the account now given of the negotiation to alter this impression. The address, on the contrary, does not at all relieve Mr. Adams. It proves that he was then, as now, an alien to the true interests of his country ; but he had not then, as now, the pretext of co-operation with Great Britain in her peaceful endeavors to extinguish slavery throughout the world.

" Is there an American patriot that can read the above extract, and other similar ones that may be taken from the address of this monarchist in disguise, without a feeling of horror ? Grant that the thousands who think with me that the addition of Texas to our Union would be a na- tional benefit are in error. Are we to be deterred from the expression of our opinions by threats of armed opposition ? And is it in this manner that the peaceful policy of Great Britain is to be carried into execution, should the Ameri- can people decide that we are in error ? Or does Mr. Adams mean to insinuate that the will of Great Britain should be the law for American statesmen, and will be enforced at the point of the bayonet by those who descend from the patriots of our Revolution ?

" Instead of going to British history for sentiments worthy of the republican youth of our country on an occasion so vitally affecting our national safety and honor, I would recommend those in Gen. Washington's Farewell Address, and particularly his warning to us to avoid entang-

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HISTORY OF DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.

ling alliances with foreign nations and whatever is calculated to create sectional or geographical parties at home."

Gen. Jackson had his full share of commendable virtues and as many faults as other people. He was ardently ad- mired by his friends and grossly abused and misrepresented by his enemies. One of his most characteristic letters ex- tant is a long and confidential communication to his friend, J. George Harris, which has never been published. It is written in a free, off-hand style, without an alteration, omis- sion, or erasure from beginning to end, remarkable for its general accuracy of diction and punctuation. It is of one hundred lines, closely written on three pages of a large sheet of old-fashioned letter-paper, the fourth page left blank for the address and seal, as it was before the days of envelopes and mucilage. It is dated at the Hermitage, Dec. 14, 1842, when he was seventy-five years of age, in the zenith of his political influence, and when his opinions upon all public questions were by all parties, and especially by his friends, sought with avidity.

Mr. Harris was then, and had been for three or four years, the editor of the Nashville Union, which was re- garded throughout the country as correctly representing the opinions and principles of Gen. Jackson, which were often misrepresented by the opposition press. Through an almost daily correspondence with Mr. Harris these misrep- resentations were corrected in the Union.

In this case, soon after Vice-President Tyler succeeded to the Presidency, on the death of Gen. Harrison, and

when Mr. Calhoun had been appointed Secretary of State, the rumor prevailed in all the administration papers that Gen. Jackson was not only in accord with Mr. Calhoun on the annexation of Texas, but that a final reconciliation of all their old disagreements had taken place, so that the former would no longer antagonize the aspirations of the latter for the next Democratic nomination for the Presi- dency. In the letter referred to, now before us, the old chief rises in his stirrups and says, " What ! I make con- cessions to Mr. Calhoun ? I never did, and I assure you I never will. There is not one word of truth in the state- ment. I have not seen him since I left the executive chair."

And then he proceeds to show that this attempt to draw him out and commit him in favor of Mr. Calhoun before the people is precisely the same as that made eight years before to place him before the country as in favor of Judge White for the Presidency, before the Democratic National Convention had made its nomination. In both cases he acted according to his fixed determination not to interfere, either directly or indirectly, with the conventions, but to abide by their decisions and cordially support their nominees. And he instructs his friend, Mr. Harris, to ex- plain his position in the columns of the Union. The last half-page of the letter, personal and not private in its char- acter, is given below, as showing the accuracy of his style and orthography, which has sometimes been so shamefully misrepresented :

make the contradicts 0

such way as you may

best from my outhen

we have been for so

when The plussome of feel

you, your body a mother of

scatos Len salutations- aware of the Colours with wheat,

your part May havespoken

1. Geo: Harris - Andrew

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PUBLIC LIFE AND CHARACTER OF JACKSON.

In his letter to Hon. Aaron V. Brown, dated at the Hermitage, Feb. 12, 1843, Gen. Jackson laid the founda- tion of the great issue upon which Mr. Polk was elected to the Presidency in 1844,-the annexation of Texas. We regard this letter as an example of comprehensive and statesmanlike reasoning not unworthy of his great com- peers, Webster and Clay. It is too long to be quoted en- tire, but we give the following paragraphs :

" If, in a military point of view alone, the question be examined, it will be found to be most important to the United States to be in possession of that Territory.

"Great Britain has already made treaties with Texas, and we know that far-sceing nation never omits a circum- stance in her extensive intercourse with the world which can be turned to account in increasing her military resources. May she not enter into an alliance with Texas ? and reserv- ing, as she doubtless will, the North western boundary ques- tion as the cause of war with us whenever she chooses to declare it, let us suppose that, as an ally with Texas, we are to fight - her. Preparatory to such a movement, she sends her twenty thousand or thirty thousand men to Texas, organizes them on the Sabine, where her supplies and arms can be concentrated before we have even notice of her intentions, makes a lodgment on the Mississippi, excites the negroes to insurrection, the lower country falls, and with it New Orleans, and a servile war rages throughout the whole South and West. In the meanwhile, she is also moving an army along the Western frontier from Canada, which, in co-operation with the army from Texas, spreads ruin and havoc from the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

" Who can estimate the national loss we may sustain before such a movement could be repelled with such forces as we could organize on short notice ?

" Remember that Texas borders upon us, on our west, to 42° of north latitude, and is our southern boundary to the Pacific. Remember, also, that if annexed to the United States our western boundary would be the Rio Grande, which is of itself a fortification, on account of its exten- sive, barren, and uninhabitable plains. With such a bar- rier on our west we are invincible. The whole European world could not in combination against us make an im- pression on our Union. Our population on the Pacific would rapidly increase, and soon be strong enough for the protection of our Western whalers, and, in the worst event, could always be sustained by timely aids from the interme- diate country."

In an oration delivered recently at the Nashville Centen- nial, Mr. Albert T. McNeal, of Bolivar, Tenn., brought out some excellent points respecting the character and personal qualities of Gen. Jackson. He said, " No groeser slander could be perpetrated of him than the assertion of some of his biographers that he was ignorant and illiterate, for he was always learned enough to control those around him, whether it were the dozens of a neigh- borhood or the millions of a nation, and his educational facilities and learning were always equal to the occasion, whether he was merely pleading the cause of a client in an obscure court-house or presenting the case of the American people in a message from the Presidential chair. . . .

" When the war of 1812 came on with England and with

the Indian tribes of the South and Southwest, and a leader was wanted, Andrew Jackson was the man among the men of that section deemed equal to the occasion, and a glorious history tells us how fully he fulfilled its demands and an- swered the purposes of his appointment as general of the army, first against the Indians and later against the British in the campaign of 1814-15, at New Orleans.

" The history of Andrew Jackson contains no failures. He never failed. He always did what he was expected to do, and more. He never feared to undertake, and what he undertook he accomplished.

" After his crowning triumph at New Orleans, which has made the 8th of January a day never to be forgotten by the American people, he next appears in the public ser- vice in the war against the Seminoles, and afterwards as Governor of the Territory of Florida, where, as was usual and peculiar in his whole career, he accomplished all that he was sent to do, doing nothing by halves; and wherever subjecting himself to criticism, the basis of complaint was never his hesitation to meet any emergency, or failure to accomplish his work, but rather that he was too willing to assume responsibility and accomplish work his superiors hesitated to formally assign him.

" In 1823 the Legislature of Tennessee presented his name as a candidate for the Presidency, and elected him again to the United States Senate.

" Receiving, in the election of 1824, more of the elec- toral vote and more of the popular vote than any other candidate, and clearly the choice of the people, he was defeated by the politicians. His active political life really began after this defeat in the House of Representatives, and he never allowed the politicians to defeat him again.

" Overwhelmingly elected President in 1828, and again in 1832, his career in civil life, in the highest position, accords perfectly with his career as a soldier, exhibiting greatness in all its roundness and power. Human great- ness certainly it was, but greatness nevertheless, and, judged by all human standards, of the first and rarest order, readily known and recognized from its very scarcity. Many men are called great; few are really so in the sense that Andrew Jackson was. . . American history can point out no man with more of the elements and evidences of greatness than he.

" As a boy, resolute, brave, and self-reliant; as a young lawyer, seeking his fortune on the Western border, deter- mined, energetic, and aggressive. (Whether studious or not is not material now, when we find he did his duty and kept always in the front.)

" As a soldier, always victorious, with a completeness un- paralleled, at least on this continent. As a business man, thoroughly successful. As a statesman and politician, equally so, whether acting with or against the tide of popu- lar opinion. As a man and citizen, among those who knew him most intimately, as much their acknowledged leader as of the populace who looked on him as a hero from afar.

" He knew himself and his own capabilities, and knew thoroughly well the men with whom he had to deal, and understood perfectly the genius and character of the Ameri- can people. And they understood him and knew him for their leader and representative.

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HISTORY OF DAVIDSON COUNTY, TENNESSEE.

" He controlled himself when he wished to do so, what- ever has been said to the contrary, for no man could have such enduring and permanent control over others who was not able to control himself. A man who knows himself and others can always control himself and others, and thus his knowledge becomes power. He possessed that rare and heroic courage, conjoined with strong and determined will, which is rarely to be met with and hard to define, and, when joined with that knowledge which is power, makes any man great.

" It was such a courage as never shrank from danger, but rather went to meet it; never feared responsibility, but invited and assumed it; never sought to share the burden of it with others, but was ever ready and willing to bear it alone, as a leader should,-wearing no mask, but facing con- sequences with steady nerve and unquailing eye, frankly and boldly in the broad light of day.

" No man had bitterer enemies than he, but his worst enemy never accused him of dishonesty or insincerity. Always sincere and honest himself, and intensely loyal to his friends, hypocrisy or disloyalty to friendship was to him an unpardonable sin.

" While always tender and true (even to the verge of sentiment for a man intensely practical as he was) to those who loved him, he yet was the sternest knight to a mortal foe that ever laid lance in rest.

. " The faults were due much to his time and surround- ings ; his virtues cannot be too highly estimated now, for, such as they were, they are now the greatest need of Amer- ican public men,-individual energy, inflexible decision, straightforward sincerity, unflinching courage, stainless truth.

" Uniting steadiness of purpose and firmness of nerve with a personal and moral courage almost unparalleled in the pages of history, he always dared do that he thought was right to do. There were no cowardly hesitations to annoy him, and no fear of consequences appalled him. While a man of the people, understanding them, and under- stood by them, yet he never feared to face the people, or to oppose public sentiment when he believed it wrong.

" Whether we look on him as the young prisoner of thir- teen years who would receive a sabre cut before he would black the boots of an enemy ; or in early manhood on the Tennessee border, amid the dangers and difficulties of our early history ; or as a military chieftain, in a day without railroad or telegraph, when responsible position required firm, decided, and independent action ; or as President, in his war with the United States Bank or his veto of the Maysville bill,-we find the same traits of character, ever fixed and prominent as the nature of the man ; the heart ever daring, the will never bending, and the iron hand and nerve that never faltered. Possessing remarkable knowledge of men and the clearest insight into all phases of human character, he knew on what friends he could rely, and at- tached them to him with hooks of steel, returning their attachment with an unwavering loyalty and strength."

Gen. Jackson was not unmindful of the religious duties which he owed to his Creator. From his childhood he had revered Christianity, and often dwelt with grateful emotions on the tender and prayerful solicitude of his pious mother,

during his boyhood, for his spiritual welfare. These feel- ings ripened later in life into a positive religious interest, which manifested itself in reverence for the Sabbath and regular attendance upon church services. He had caused a little chapel to be erected near the Hermitage, which was his favorite resort on Sunday as long as his health would permit. Here he was often seen,-not in pride and pomp, like titled dignitaries of the Old World, but as a plain unas- suming citizen, bowing with his neighborhood circle in deep humility before the little altar which he had reared, and sincerely partaking of the sacred emblems of faith. He fostered that little church with a father's care and protec- tion, and one of his last wishes was that it might ever be sustained as a place of worship.

In his last will and testament he said, " I bequeath iny body to the dust whence it came, and my soul to God who gave it, hoping for a happy immortality through the aton- ing merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. My desire is that my body be buried by the side of my dear departed wife, in the garden of the Hermitage, in the vault there prepared."

His tomb at the Hermitage bears the simple inscription :

"GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON, Born March 15, 1767, Died June 8, 1845."

The remains of Mrs. Jackson lie in the corner of the Hermitage garden, next those of her husband, in a tomb prepared by him. It resembles in appearance an open sum- mer-house,-a small white dome supported by pillars of white marble. The tablet that covers the remains of Mrs. Jackson bears the following inscription :

"Here lies the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22d of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; sbe 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 pity 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 slan- der 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."

The other monuments in the latter cluster of graves are inscribed as follows :

" ANDREW JACKSON, Adopted son of Gen. Andrew Jackson. Died at the Hermitage, April 17, 1865, in the 57th year of his age."

"SAMUEL JACKSON, Son of Andrew and Sarah Jackson.

Born at the Hermitage June 7, 1837. Died September 29, 1863, of wounds received at the battle of Chickamauga."

" THOMAS, Infant son of Andrew and Sarah Jackson."

"ROBERT ARMSTRONG JACKSON, Who died Nov. 11, 1843, aged 4 months, 23 days.

"R. E. W. EARL,

" Artist, Friend and Companion of Gen. Andrew Jackson, who died at the Hermitage, 16th of Sept., 1837."

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ENTRANCE

"HERMITAGE " PROTONEN DY MP WHINRIAY

TOMB OF JACKSON AT HERMITAGE

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159

JAMES K. POLK.

" MRS. MARIA ADAMS, Born in Philadelphia July 23, 1805. Died June 28, 1877."

The last mentioned was a sister of Mrs. Andrew Jackson, widow of the adopted son of Gen. Jackson, who is still living at an advanced age at the Hermitage.

CHAPTER XXVII.

JAMES K. POLK.

His Ancestors-Early Life-Marriage-Politics-Entrance into Pub- lic Life-Review of His Career as Member of Congress-Speaker of the House-Governor of Tennessee-President of the United States-" Polk Place" in Nashville-Reminiscences of Mrs. Polk.

JAMES KNOX POLK, eleventh President of the United States, was of Scotch-Irish ancestry. His progenitors, Col. Thomas and Ezekiel Polk, the latter of whom was his grandfather, were among the early settlers of Mecklen- burg Co., N. C., in 1735, and took a prominent part in the " Mecklenburg Declaration" of May 20, 1775. Ezekiel Polk's son, Samuel, who married Jane Knox, and was a farmer of Mecklenburg County, was the father of the sub- ject of this memoir. The latter was the eldest son of a family of six sons and four daughters, and was born in Mecklenburg Co., N. C., on the 2d of November, 1795.

In 1806, Samuel Polk, with his wife and children, and soon after followed by most of the members of the Polk family, emigrated to the wilderness of Tennessee, and set- tied in what is now Maury County. Here in the hard toil of a new farm James K. Polk spent the early years of his childhood and his youth. His father, adding the pursuit of a surveyor to that of a farmer, gradually increased in wealth until he became one of the leading men of that por- tion of Middle Tennessee. His mother was a superior woman of strong practical sense and earnest piety. She brought up her children to habits of method, punctuality, and industry, and inspired them with lofty principles of morality. The foundation of Mr. Polk's education was laid at home and in the common schools, where he was a dili- gent student, evincing great desire and aptitude for learn- ing. Entering the Murfreesboro' Academy in 1813, he pursued his preparatory studies with an ardor rarely sur- passed, and in less than two and a half years, in the au- tumn of 1815, entered the sophomore class in the Univer- sity of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill. The traditions of his college days represent him as one of the most punctual and exemplary of scholars, never allowing himself to be ab- sent from a recitation or a religious service. He graduated in 1818 with the highest honors, being deemed the best scholar of his class, both in mathematics and the classics. He was then twenty-three years of age, with greatly im- paired health, from the assiduity of his mental application. After a suitable season of rest and recuperation, he entered the office of Hon. Felix Grundy, at Nashville, as a student- at-law. Here the intimate acquaintance grew up between him and Gen. Jackson which ripened into the life-long friendship known to have existed between these two truly

great men. The politics in which he had been educated, his father being an earnest Jeffersonian, had prepared him to sympathize heartily with the views and principles of which Gen. Jackson became the great leading exponent ; and to these he adhered steadily through life.

As soon as he had finished his legal studies and been admitted to the bar, he returned to Columbia, the shire- town of Maury County, and opened an office. His success was rapid. Very seldom has any young man commenced the practice of the law more thoroughly prepared to meet all its responsibilities. With rich stores of information, all his faculties well disciplined, system and order well devel- oped, and with habits of close and accurate reasoning, he rapidly gained business and won fame. His skill as a speaker was such that, after he entered politics, he was called the Napoleon of the stump. Ile was a man of un- blemished morals, genial and courteous in his bearing, of dignified and genteel deportment, and with that sympathy of nature in the joys and griefs of others which gave him hosts of substantial and abiding friends.

In 1823, Mr. Polk was elected to the Legislature of Tennessee, and gave his voice strongly in that body for the election of Gen. Jackson to the Presidency of the United States. In his measures of policy he was a "strict constructionist," advocating the rights of the States against all the centralizing tendencies of the general government.

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History of Davidson County, Tennessee, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers, Part 39

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