Old times in Tennessee, with historical, personal, and political scraps and sketches, Part 21

Author: Guild, Jo. C. (Josephus Conn), 1802-1883
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Nashville, Tavel, Eastman & Howell
Number of Pages: 1012


USA > Tennessee > Old times in Tennessee, with historical, personal, and political scraps and sketches > Part 21


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).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45


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other landmarks described to him by Col. Avery, young Jackson reached Jonesboro and located there as a lawyer. He had come by the advice of his friend to grow up with this new western country, and he set about the work before him with a determina- tion to succeed.


At a court in Jonesboro a short time after his arrival, at which the Attorney General was present, it so happened that Col. Avery and Jackson were opposing counsel in the same case. The young lawyer had spoken on behalf of his client in a style somewhat sophomoric, when the venerable Attorney General replied in a spirit of pleasantry and ridicule, at which the youth was so much incensed that he tore a fly-leaf from his law-book upon which he wrote a challenge, inviting the old gentleman to mortal combat upon the spot. Although Col. Avery was born in Connecticut, and was a lineal descendant of the Puritans, those were times upon the frontier when challenges could not be declined with impunity. Calling Gen. Adair to his side, Col. Avery directed him to at once make the necessary arrangements for the fight with pistols in an old field back of the court-house, as soon as the case then pending should go to the jury. Just before sunset the parties met on the appointed ground, the distance was meas- ured and other preliminaries made that are usual on such occa- sions. The parties took their positions and the word was given, when young Jackson fired, his ball just grazing the ear of Col. Avery. The old gentleman then raised his pistol over his head and fired into the air, after which he approached his young an- tagonist, and in a pleasant, smiling manner, commended his bravery, and gave him a lecture on the etiquette of the bar which he never forgot, telling him how unfortunate it was to have a too hasty temper, how many unpleasant difficulties it might lead him into, and how essential it was to his success as a lawyer that he should never take personal exception to the method and manner of opposing counsel in court, and assured him of his personal respect and kind wishes. Gen. Jackson cordially accepted the extended hand of friendship from Col. Avery, and it was agreed by both parties that nothing should be said about what had taken place there. While Gen. Jackson was President of the United States, a Northern kinsman of Col. Avery heard him say that he entertained more profound reverence for the memory of Waight-


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still Avery than for that of any man he had ever known. Is it not fairly supposable that the example of Col. Avery in the affair at Jonesboro exerted a controlling influence, years afterwards, in forming the heart's resolve which Gen. Jackson assured Gen. Harding he had made before going upon the field with Dickinson?


The challenge which Gen. Jackson sent to Col. Avery, written upon a blank leaf of his law-book, is in the possession of the latter's grand daughter in North Carolina. Many of Col. Avery's descendants reside in East Tennessee. Most of his grandsons fell in our civil war as officers in the Confederate army. Mrs. Key, the accomplished wife of the Postmaster General, who was a Miss Lenoir, is one of his granddaughters.


DISSOLUTION OF JACKSON'S CABINET-THE EATON SCANDAL.


Gen. Jackson's first Cabinet consisted of Martin Van Buren, of New York, Secretary of State ; Samuel D. Ingram, of Pennsyl- vania, Secretary of the Treasury ; John H. Eaton, of Tennessee, Secretary of War; John Branch, of North Carolina, Secretary of the Navy; William T. Barry, of Kentucky, Post-Master Gen- eral; and John MacPherson Berrien, of Georgia, Attorney Gen- eral. Maj. Eaton was what we call in Tennessee a second-rate lawyer; a polite, courteous gentleman, a good artist, but had nothing of the great man about him. He had acquired some lo- cal political reputation, and was a United States Senator from Tennessee at the time of his appointment to a position in Gen. Jackson's Cabinet. Gen. Jackson was his friend, and was blind to his faults, if he had any. He never gave up or abandoned a friend, and but seldom forgave an enemy, and he showed this trait in a marked degree in the case of Maj. Eaton. Gen. Jack- son had determined to make Eaton Secretary of War, and he did so in opposition to the advice and urgent protests of some of his best friends, who anticipated want of harmony in the Cabinet growing out of a delicate question as to the character of Maj. Eaton's wife. When Maj. Eaton came to Washington as a Sen- ator of the United States in 1818, he took board at a large old- fashioned tavern kept by Wm. O'Neal, where members of Con- gress in considerable numbers boarded, and he continued to re- side there every winter for ten years. Here he became ac- quainted with the daughter of Mr. O'Neal, who subsequently


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married a Mr. Timberlake, a wealthy purser in the Navy. Some years after this marriage, Mr. Timberlake died of asthma at Port Mahon, in the Mediterranean. Mrs. Timberlake was a gay, sprightly, talented woman; highly accomplished and fascinating, and was what may be called rather " fast." She so bore herself as to become a target for prudish gossips. At first there were sly in- sinuations in bated breath that she wa's " no better than she ought to be;" and of course the envious took up these hints and insin- uations and made the most of them. Maj. Eaton, who had be- come a widower, was much impressed by her charms and impos- ing address, her brilliant wit and dashing manner, and finally wooed and won her, and they were married in January, 1829, a few weeks before Gen. Jackson arrived in Washington to enter upon the duties of the presidency. Mrs. Eaton was tabooed and "society " cut her on all occasions. The ton neither visited her nor returned her calls, and this extended to the wives of certain members of the new Cabinet, who would not recognize her in any way. The very condition of affairs that was apprehended by those who opposed the appointment of Maj. Eaton had actually occurred. The Cabinet was divided upon this delicate question. The President and Van Buren and Barry espoused the cause of Mrs. Eaton, while Ingham, Branch, and Berrien, led by Vice President Calhoun, were arrayed against her. Gen. Jackson firmly believed that a conspiracy existed, headed by Mr. Calhoun, to ruin the character of Mrs. Eaton. He had thoroughly inves- tigated all the charges against her, and he declared that he be- lieved and had a right to believe that she was "a much injured woman, and more virtuous than some of her enemies." He took up the cudgels in her defense with an earnestness and a will that showed he believed what he declared her to be, a virtuous woman. The situation of Maj. Eaton was embarrassing and most painful. This unhappy state of affairs continued for a period extending over two years. Month after month had passed without ex- changing a word with those members of the Cabinet whose wives refused to recognize his, except on official business. This feud was aggravated and fanned into a white heat by the discovery by Gen. Jackson that Mr. Calhoun, while Secretary of War under President Monroe, was hostile to him, and had voted in a Cabinet council in favor of his arrest and trial for the invasion of Florida


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and the capture of the Spanish Governor of that territory, and the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, during his Indian campaign in 1818. Gen. Jackson had previously understood that it was Mr. Crawford who had urged his arrest and trial in a council of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet. But now he had learned be- yond all question that it was Mr. Calhoun. This led to an angry correspondence between him and Mr. Calhoun, which was after- wards published by the latter in a pamphlet, with a preface jus- tifying his course. This aroused all the fires in the breast of Old Hickory. From that date they became implacably hostile toward each other, and went down to their graves without becoming re- conciled. The members of the Cabinet whose wives had treated Mrs. Eaton with so much and marked disrespect, were the friends and political allies of Mr. Calhoun, and the President was thor- oughly aroused by the publication of Mr. Calhoun and the atti- tude which had been assumed toward Mrs. Eaton, and he raged like a lion. In the language of Mrs. Eaton, Gen. Jackson " had felt the poison of the slander in his own home," hence his deter- mination to follow to the end the evil traducers of Mrs. Eaton's good repute. Col. Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, was com- missioned to wait upon the refractory Secretaries and urge them to induce their wives to return the calls of Mrs. Eaton and invite her to their parties. They replied that in all matters of official business, they felt themselves bound to maintain an open, frank, harmonious intercourse with the gentlemen with whom they were associated. As to the family of Maj. Eaton, they would not say anything to aggravate the difficulties under which he labored, and would observe a silence in regard to the reports about his wife ; that the society of Washington was liberally organized ; that there was but one circle into which every person of respectable charac- ter, disposed to be social, was readily admitted ; that they had no right to exert official power to regulate social intercourse; that Mrs. Eaton was not received by Washington society, and it did not become them to force her upon it, and the President had no right to force them or society to receive her; that they left it to their own families to regulate their social intercourse, without interference from any quarter. Affairs remained in this condition for a considerable time. The time-honored Cabinet councils were seldom held, and at length were entirely discontinued. Touch-


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ing this Eaton muddle, it would perhaps have been better had Gen. Jackson and the Cabinet officers observed the advice given by the old " 'oman," Mrs. Lubins, to Paul Clifford upon his going forth into the world. "See here, my son," she said, " be careful to have nothing to do with quarrels about 'omen. For men to take up sticks to quarrel about 'omen, they do not know the things they quarrels about."


The clouds now thickened around the head of the old chief. The alleged machinations of the nullifiers ; the course of the Bank of the United States; the powerful opposition of the three great men of the period, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun; the Cabinet combination against poor Eaton-all announced the coming storm. The old game cock met it with an undaunted courage and states- manship that have not been surpassed in the history of our coun- try. The Cabinet was dissolved and a new one appointed ; the moneyed power, represented by the Bank of the United States, with its great monopolies, was crushed under the iron heel of Jackson ; the Sub-Treasury was established and the Government became the keeper of its own money ; nullification was put down and the Union preserved ; the public debt was paid off; and great and glorious have been the results of his administration.


The Washington Post gives some reminiscences of "the woman who broke up Jackson's Cabinet," which I append to this sketch, as follows :


" I wish to see Mrs. Secretary Eaton," said the Post interviewer, standing at the opened street door of a wide, old-fashioned Penn- sylvania avenue residence near the Capitol.


" Dunno sich a lady," said the colored girl.


"She must live here-Mrs. Secretary John H. Eaton," per- sisted the Post.


" Deed, sir, no sich pusson in his house," repeated the colored maid.


" Mrs. Eaton certainly lives here; this is the place and the house. Please call the landlady."


"Oh, Mrs. Eaton. Yes, sir ; she lives here ; walk in, sir.".


Up a dark pair of stairs and down a long hall, jostling against a number of boarders on their way to the dining-hall, (for this is a crowded Washington boarding-house), we pass along to the door of a small room and are ushered in.


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Mrs. Easton rises with the grace of a thoroughbred lady, and bows with old time courtesy, as we announce our name. The meeting has been arranged by a lady friend, and the reception is cordial, but not effusive. Mrs. Eaton does not "interview." During the last dozen years reporters in search of attractive metal have repeatedly, under ingenious devices, gained access to her, only to find her as dumb as an offended oracle.


Mr. Parton, when he was writing the life of Andrew Jackson, attempted to gain access to her for this purpose, but he failed to do so. The result was a most unveracious account of the Eaton war, which subverted a Cabinet and agitated Washington society to its foundation forty or fifty years ago. This is truly Mrs. Gen. John H. Eaton, or " Lady Eaton," as she was called in the days when Jackson's handsome compeers and his elegant Secretary of War walked the stately measures of the " minuet " with her, and Sir Charles Vaughan and other aristocratic diplomats were proud to ride by her side, as with her erect and supple form and glow- ing beauty she sat her spirited horse with the ease of a Penthe- silea, galloping over the roads about the Capital, much less smooth than now.


This lady who sits so erect, so firm in form, who moves around the little room with so much vigor and grace, who converses with so much animation and ready command of language, was born when George III. was on his throne, when Bonaparte was a Con- sul and fighting at Acre, and Mrs. President Adams had not transferred the Republican Court assemblies from Philadelphia to the new White House. Although eighty years old, she bears notable stamps of the great beauty which once gave her so much power, and its embers yet asserts itself so vividly as to invest her presence everywhere with uncommon interest. Her form, of medium height, straight and delicate, and of perfect proportions, has never bent to time nor sickness, nor curved itself to the weight of misfortunes. She has been a rare example of that Irish beauty, which, marked by good blood, so suggest both the Greek and the Spaniard, and yet, at times, presents a combination which trans- cends both. The hair, once so rich in its fine abandance and waves of darkest shade, is now almost white, but yet abundant and soft in the curls clu-tering about her broad, full, expressive forehead; her dark violet eyes shine with the wit and spirit which


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still characterize her conversation ; and the perfect nose of almost Grecian proportions, and finely curved mouth, with the firm, round chin, complete a profile of faultless outline.


" Peggy O'Neal " was the name Parton assigned her, as having been hers in her yonth, and he calls her the " daughter of an Irish boarding-house keeper." Were some other Parton, a hundred years hence, to relate the story of the present Parton's marital union with his stepdaughter with imitative profligacy, in disregard of truth, not even Baron Munchausen could be compared with him in wild imagination.


Mrs. Eaton's name was Margaret O'Neal, not Peggy, and her father was American born, though, as his name implies, of Irish descent. He was a famous builder in his days, and his wife was the daughter of Gov. Howell, of New Jersey. They were pro- prietors of the chief public house of Washington, and its hospi- talities were sought by such men as Jackson, Eaton, Calhoun, Berrien, Van Buren, Livingston, and Cass, for many years. To a reference ou the part of the Post to Mrs. Eaton's long acquaint- ance with the history of Washington, she replied : " Ah, yes, my dear sir; my father brought my mother here when there were but two brick houses in this city. They made a tedious journey from Trenton, N. J., where my father was born. Father then owned much property here, and he built several fine houses and improved the streets. Ah, my father was a good man and a gen- tleman, greatly beloved by the distinguished men who so long had their homes with him."


The property to which Mrs. Eaton alluded is that long desig- nated as the " Seven Buildings," houses yet numbered among the best of that section, between Twentieth and Twenty-first streets, upon I street. They were and are large, commodious, and well- finished houses.


So beautiful and happy was Mrs. Eaton's youth that there were plenty of eligible suitors to struggle for her hand. John B. Tim- berlake, a young gentleman of fine appearance and excellent fortune, a purser in the navy, became her husband.


"I was but sixteen years old," she said, "when my first son was born, and not much over fifteen when I was married to Pur- ser Timberlake. My father gave me a grand wedding. My wedding dress was of white satin with an overdress of rich Brus-


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sels lace -- seamless, and made to order and measure. I lived with my parents a long time, indeed, I was not much separated from them when in this country. I had two daughters who lived, Virginia and Margaret. Virginia married in Paris when we were abroad, after my second marriage, Mons. Sampayo, formerly an attache of the French Legation in Washington. She still lives in Paris, a widow, her daugter being married to a distinguished French gentleman. Margaret married John Randolph, of the Roanoke family, and grandson of the well-known Dr. Brocken- brough, of Richmond, Va. Her early death has ever been a source of poignant grief to me. I adopted her four children as my own, and two of these now living are my support and solace." " Your first marriage was happy, was it not, Mrs. Eaton ?"


" A perfectly harmonious union, I assure you ; I had all that heart could wish. Purser Timberlake had an income of $20,000 a year, and in his early death his last thoughts were mine. He died at Port Mahon, in 1828, of acute asthma, which gave him great sufferings. He addressed to me, just before his death, a long letter commencing with his favorite name for me, 'Bonnie Maggie Lander.' He died with our miniature pressed to his breast, and bequeathed to his friend Gen. Eaton his watch and ring. He lies buried beneath the fine monument which his brother officers erected to his memory."


"Then Mr. Timberlake and Gen. Eaton were friends, were they not ?"


" Warm friends. The General brought me the intelligence of his death."


" How long after the death of Purser Timberlake did you be- come the wife of Gen. Eaton ?"'


" About eighteen months. The General was a noble man and the kindest of husbands, and a father to my children. The morn- ing after our marriage he sent to my room an immense basket filled with magnificent dishes of various kinds-of solid gold and silver. Ah, I was fortunate. I had all that heart could wish. We lived in the large house on the corner, which I built after I was Widow Timberlake."


" Were President Jackson and Gen. Eaton old friends at the time of the election of the former to the Presidency ?"


" We were all old friends. While Jackson was Senator he was


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one of my father's boarders, and he and his wife were close friends of mother and my own."


" Was Mrs. Jackson a woman of deficient qualifications for a wife of the President ?"


" Indeed she was a lady, an elegant and agreeable lady, and Gen. Jackson loved her as he did his life. It was the knowledge of the close and warm friendship existing mutually among us, which, after the appointment of Gen. Eaton to the Cabinet as Secretary of War, began to militate against our peace on account of Gen. Eaton's well-known and firm opposition to Calhoun's ' nullification ' theories. Mr. Calhoun knew that Gen. Eaton had great influence with Jackson, and that that action would be ex- erted to oppose his plans and political schemes; therefore he became, as was proven afterwards, with his adherents in the Cabinet, the unscrupulous foe of Gen. Eaton and myself, and there is no room for doubt that his political intrigue was the cause of one of the most cruel and unfounded cases of slander and perse- cution on record."


To see Mrs. Eaton's eyes dart unfaded fires, and hear her strong speech in describing her course of tracing out and defying these slanders and their originators, with her vivacious narration of details, was to be convinced of the entire truth of her statement. Time and justice have long since exonerated her and brought retribution to her enemies. Jackson was, in the depth of his stern soul, her friend, and he accepted the resignation of his Cab- inet with one of his memorable speeches.


" The President," Mrs. Eaton said, " had felt the poison of the slander in his own home, and believed his wife's life shortened by its effects ; hence his determination to follow to the end the evil traducers of my good repute."


"And after the resignation of the Cabinet, you went to Spain with Gen. Eaton ?"


"Oh, you must remember that the General was appointed, first, Governor of Florida, and we lived two pleasant years in Pensa- cola before his appointment to Spain. In 1836, Gen. Eaton was made Minister Plenipotentiary to Madrid, and with our daugh- ters we sailed for Spain from New York."


Mrs. Eaton's narrative of her life in Spain of five years, during the regency of Queen Christina and while the young inheriting


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Queen Isabella, since so famous, was a young girl in her teens, was extremely interesting, but need not be transcribed.


" When did Jackson die ?" asked the interviewer.


" Within three years after our return to Washington. We were with him to close his eyes at the Hermitage as I had been with Mrs. Jackson."


An omnium gatherum is Mrs. Eaton's mind of reminiscences and pictures, and like a scroll her memory contains layer upon layer, line upon line, stratum upon stratum of rich and varied views of a long and changeful life, whose conflicts have been met with undaunted courage. Extremes of human fate meet in her life with all the burden of their "mysterious use ;" but all the philosophy of the Christian, joined to a spirit naire, bright, easy and free, have sustained her. Great honors and great wealth have been hers, with all the possessions the one brings and all the privileges the other confers, and the reverses which have shadowed her later fortunes have been the pure results of a gen- erous heart's unlimited confidence in the unworthy, the crafty, and the unscrupulous.


GEN. JACKSON AND MR. CLAY.


There was no disturbance of the friendly personal relations between these great men until in the presidential election by the House of Representatives in 1824. Mr. Clay cast the vote of Kentucky against Gen. Jackson, and by that act elected Mr. Adams. As President Adams immediately thereafter appointed Mr. Clay Secretary of State, it was alleged by some of Gen. Jack- son's friends that there was "bribery, intrigue and corruption " in the transaction. Whether Gen. Jackson did or did not believe it, he evidently soon learned to share the animosity of his friends against Mr. Clay, and ever afterwards they became prominent rivals for the Presidency.


At the great Nashville barbecue in 1840, Mr. Clay took occa- sion to denounce Mr. Van Buren's administration with much bitterness, for keeping in public office those who were notorious defaulters to the Government, adding that Mr. Van Buren was perhaps not so much to blame after all, for he was doing as he had promised, and following in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor. For, he alleged, it was a well-known fact that Gen.


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Jackson, when President, appointed Mr. Livingston the Secre- tary of State, when he knew at the time that the appointee was a defaulter as mayor of the City of New York. The speech was reported in the next day's Banner, when Gen. Jackson addressed a letter to Col. Harris, the editor of the Union, which was pub- lished, showing that before Mr. Livingston was nominated, he had made good the discrepancy in his account with the city, which had been occasioned by the use of funds for the relief of the sick when yellow fever prevailed, that had been appropriated by the city for other purposes, and showing that his use of the money in that emergency, subsequently approved by the city, was rather creditable than otherwise to Mr. Livingston. And to cap the climax, the old chief quoted from the Executive Journal of the Senate showing that Mr. Clay himself was one of the first Senators on the list that voted for Mr. Livingston's confirmation as Secretary of State !


Gen. Jackson-then more than three score years and ten-was exceedingly indignant that Mr. Clay should have come, as it were, to the very gate of the Hermitage, to make this assault upon him, and closed his letter to Col. Harris with a crack of the whip, saying that Mr. Clay had lived a long and distinguished life to a very poor purpose if at this late day he could find no better em- ployment than that of prowling over the country, slandering the living and the dead.


In the rejoinder of Mr. Clay, which appeared in the Banner next day, he treated the matter as a misunderstanding, and, ap- parently, more in sorrow than in anger. He made the best jus- tification that could be made under all the circumstances, which appeared to be satisfactory to his friends.




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