American Lion

by Jon Meacham

  26 “No, Emily,” Mrs. Jackson replied EDT, I, 157.

  27 “Well, for Mr. Jackson’s sake” Parton, Life, III, 153.

  28 Rachel was put to bed Ibid., 154.

  29 Jackson rushed to his wife Ibid., 155.

  30 sent for doctors James, TLOAJ, 478.

  31 “P.S. Whilst writing” Papers, VI, 546.

  32 “Do not, My beloved Husband” Papers, II, 361.

  33 his candle burning low Ibid., 354.

  34 “My heart is with you” Ibid., 487. The letter is dated December 14, 1813.

  35 Jackson kept vigil Parton, Life, III, 156.

  36 her flesh turning cold Ibid.; James, TLOAJ, 480; Remini, Jackson, II, 151.

  37 “My mind is so disturbed” Papers, VII, 13.

  38 At one o’clock on Christmas Eve afternoon Parton, Life, III, 157. I drew on four detailed accounts of Rachel Jackson’s funeral: Wise, Seven Decades, 114–16; Parton, Life, III, 157–64; James, TLOAJ, 480–82; Remini, Jackson, II, 153–55.

  39 The weather had been wet Parton, Life, III, 163.

  40 led by Rachel’s minister Remini, Jackson, II, 153. “Every muscle of [Jackson’s] face was unmoved,” wrote Henry Wise, who was there, “steady as a rock, without a teardrop in his eye or a quaver in his voice.…” During the burial, Hannah came through the mourners and, Wise wrote, “tried to get into the grave with the coffin.… Her cries were agonizing: ‘Mistress, my best friend, my love, my life, is gone—I will go with her!’ ” Jackson waved off those who were trying to help Hannah up from the ground. “ ‘Let that faithful servant weep for her best friend and loved mistress; she has the right and cause to mourn for her loss, and her grief is sweet to me’ ” (Wise, Seven Decades, 115).

  41 the one hundred fifty paces Author observation.

  42 Devastated but determined Wise, Seven Decades, 116; Remini, Jackson, II, 154.

  43 “I am now the President elect of the United States” Wise, Seven Decades, 116. Of Rachel’s death, Leonidas Polk wrote to his mother, Sarah Polk, on January 10, 1829: “This must have been a sad shock to him, especially as he had just been so highly honored, in defiance of the abuse heaped both on himself and her. And it must also teach him the frailty of human existence, and the necessity for being at any moment ready to resign it” (Leonidas Polk to Sarah Polk, January 10, 1829, Leonidas Polk Collection, The University of the South, University Archives and Special Collections, Sewanee).

  44 to work through the president-elect’s correspondence “I receive at least one hundred letters a week,” Jackson told John Coffee during the transition, adding: “Was it not for the aid of Capt. A. J. Donelson I could not reply to half of what are necessary to be answered.” Andrew Jackson to John Coffee, December 11, 1828, Andrew Jackson Papers, Scholarly Resources Collection, Reel 12, LOC.

  45 Emily was at once selfless and sharp-tongued Both volumes of Burke’s EDT are excellent on Emily.

  46 Born on Monday, June 1, 1807 EDT, I, xi.

  47 “All Donelsons in the female line” Ibid., xv.

  48 On Sunday, January 18, 1829 Papers, VII, 3. See also EDT, I, 163.

  49 the steamboat Pennsylvania Remini, Jackson, II, 157–58. See also EDT, I, 163.

  50 “Whether I am ever to return or not” Papers, VII, 12.

  51 “The active discharge of those duties” Nashville Republican and State Gazette, December 26, 1828.

  52 bordered in black Ibid.

  53 Referring to America, Livingston told the president-elect Papers, VII, 5–6.

  54 passing through Louisville Mary Eastin to William Eastin, February 15, 1829, The Dillon and Polk Papers, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  55 “He was very much wearied” Ibid.

  56 a blur of cannons, cheers, and tending to colds EDT, I, 163–64. For details of the journey, see also Nashville Republican and State Gazette, January 20, 1829; Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (Mineola, N.Y., 2003), 83–85.

  57 “I scarcely” EDT, I, 164.

  58 “You must not make yourself” Ibid.

  59 Traveling to America from Ireland in 1765 Parton, Life, I, 46–47. For accounts of the Jackson family background, the journey to America, and the family situation awaiting them, see ibid., 36–58; James, TLOAJ, 3–6; Kendall, Life of Jackson, 9–13; Remini, Jackson, I, 2–4. I found Booraem’s Young Hickory the most detailed and measured account of Jackson’s early life.

  60 “Waxhaw” came from the name of the tribe Parton, Life, I, 48–49; Remini, Jackson, I, 3. The area was also called the Waxhaw district or Waxhaw settlement, or sometimes simply “the Waxhaws.”

  61 Parliament passed the Quartering Act See, for instance, Benson Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind: The Triumph of the American Revolution (New York, 1997), 69.

  62 the Stamp Act Ibid., 74–82.

  63 the Massachusetts legislature called for a colonial congress Richard M. Ketchum, ed., The American Heritage Book of the Revolution, 56–59.

  64 “There ought to be no more New England men” Ibid., 58.

  65 of “independent” means Booraem, Young Hickory, 2.

  66 poorer than his in-laws Ibid., 2–3; Parton, Life, I, 49. Parton wrote this of the extended Jackson circle: “The members of this circle were not all equally poor. There is reason to believe that some of them brought to America sums of money which were considerable for that day, and sufficient to enable them to buy negroes as well as lands in the southern wilderness. But all accounts concur in this: that Andrew Jackson [Sr.] was very poor, both in Ireland and in America” (47).

  67 moved his wife and two sons Ibid.; Booraem, Young Hickory, 9.

  68 His wife was pregnant Ibid., 9–10.

  69 a snowstorm James, TLOAJ, 9.

  70 pallbearers drank so much Booraeam, Young Hickory, 10.

  71 naming him Andrew after her late husband Ibid., 11.

  72 under the roof of relatives Which roof is the keystone of the great Jackson birthplace debate between North Carolina and South Carolina. See Booraem, Young Hickory, 11–12; James, TLOAJ, 791–97 (an exhaustive survey of the competing claims); Parton, Life, I, 52–57; Remini, Jackson, I, 4–5.

  73 the Crawfords were more affluent Booraem, Young Hickory, 16–17.

  74 The Jacksons needed a home Ibid., 58.

  75 “Mrs. Crawford was an invalid” Parton, Life, I, 57–58.

  76 Jackson felt a certain inferiority to and distance from others Several biographers—James and Remini among them—tend to downplay the Jacksons’ “poor relation” status (James, TLOAJ, 10; Remini, Jackson, I, 6). My contention that he did feel like a dependent, with resulting implications, is based on Parton, who spent time in the neighborhood among descendants of Jackson’s contemporaries, and, as quoted below, on Mary Donelson Wilcox’s memories of Jackson’s own remarks on the question. Perhaps the most compelling evidence on this question is the fact that Jackson never returned to Waxhaw (discussed at greater length below) and observations made in a biography Jackson approved: John Reid and John Henry Eaton’s 1817 book, The Life of Andrew Jackson (University, Ala., 1974). After the deaths of his mother and his brothers, Jackson, according to Reid and Eaton, “was thus left alone in the wide world, without a human being with whom he could claim a near relationship …” (13). Describing Jackson’s ultimate decision to move to Tennessee after reading law in North Carolina, Reid and Eaton write that Jackson, “recollecting that he stood a solitary individual in life, without relations to aid him in the onset, when innumerable difficulties arise and retard success … determined to seek a new country. But for this, he might have again returned to his native state [South Carolina]; but the death of every relation he had, had wiped away all those recollections and circumstances which warp the mind to the place of its nativity” (14–15).

  77 “His childish recollections” Heiskell, AJETH, III, 280. Mary Donelson Wilcox was born Mary Rachel but later changed her name to Mary Emily, and she published under the name of Mar
y Emily Donelson Wilcox. For the sake of clarity, in the text the child is referred to as “Mary Rachel” and the author as “Mary Donelson Wilcox.”

  78 His mother took him and his brothers Booraem, Young Hickory, 18.

  79 memorization of the Shorter Westminster Catechism Ibid., 20–21.

  80 Most stories about the young Jackson I have drawn on Booraem, Young Hickory, 17–22; Parton, Life, I, 58–69; James, TLOAJ, 17–18; Remini, Jackson, I, 6–11.

  81 Wrestling was a common pastime Parton, Life, I, 64.

  82 “I could throw him three times out of four” Ibid. Drawing on his research, Parton observes this of the young Jackson: “To younger boys, who never questioned his mastery, he was a generous protector; there was nothing he would not do to defend them. His equals and superiors found him self-willed, somewhat overbearing, easily offended, very irascible, and, upon the whole, ‘difficult to get along with.’ One of them said, many years after, in the heat of controversy, that of all the boys he had ever known, Andrew Jackson was the only bully who was not also a coward.”

  83 his friends packed extra powder Ibid.

  84 “By God, if one of you laughs” Ibid.

  85 “Mother, Andy will fight” Ibid., 75.

  86 fits of rage so paralyzing …”slobbering” Ibid., 64; Remini, Jackson, I, 10.

  87 His uncles and aunts apparently did not take a great deal of interest Or at least not enough interest to sustain Jackson’s gratitude later in life. After the Revolution, when he was at a low ebb, Jackson became more or less completely estranged from his Waxhaw connections. As Remini wrote: “His energies found release in a series of escapades that won … dismay from his relatives. Drinking, cockfighting, gambling, mischief-making, he seemed determined to go as far as possible in leading an ‘abandoned’ life. He was almost manic. His relatives took a decidedly dim view of his activities and probably thought him a ne’er-do-well headed for an early and unfortunate end. He was never particularly close to his surviving relatives, and his irresponsible behavior only alienated them further. A complete and permanent rupture eventually resulted” (Remini, Jackson, I, 27). My view is that the roots of this break probably extended back into Jackson’s much younger years, for it seems likely that any bonds formed between Jackson and his extended relations in peacetime and in childhood would have been strengthened, not severed, by the trauma of war and the loss of his mother. He simply appears not to have been a subject of much concern either before or after his mother’s death.

  88 There was some money Parton, Life, I, 61–62. “It is possible,” Parton wrote of Elizabeth Jackson, “that her condition was not one of absolute dependence. The farm of her deceased husband may have been held, though not owned by her; and either let to a tenant, or worked on shares, may have yielded her a small income.… It is possible, too, that her relations in Ireland may have contributed something to her support. General Jackson had a distinct recollection of her receiving presents of linen from the old country …” (ibid., 61).

  89 to send Jackson to schools Remini, Jackson, I, 6.

  90 “the dead languages” Reid and Eaton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 10.

  91 Edmund Burke took note Ketchum, ed., American Heritage Book of the Revolution, 9.

  92 By 1778, the South was the focus of the war George F. Scheer and Hugh F. Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats (New York, 1957), 389–507, is a good account of the war in the South and the Revolution’s closing military phase. See also John Ferling, Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence (New York, 2007), 410–520; Kendall, Life of Andrew Jackson, 13–40; Bobrick, Angel in the Whirlwind, 392–495; Booraem, Young Hickory, 45–118.

  93 Andrew’s brother Hugh Parton, Life, I, 69.

  94 “of heat and fatigue” Ibid.

  95 at the Battle of Stono Ferry, south of Charleston Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 387–88. 10 took Charleston on Friday, May 12, 1780 Booraem, Young Hickory, 48.

  96 On Monday, May 29, at about three o’clock in the afternoon Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, 402.

  97 roughly three hundred British troops Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 436.

  98 It was a vicious massacre Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, 402. See also Booraem, Young Hickory, 48–49. Ferling’s description bears noting: “Whether on horseback or on foot, the [British] attackers swung their sabers, cutting men to pieces, overwhelming their stunned adversaries. Battlefields are horrid places, but this one was especially ghastly. Here were men with severed hands and limbs, crushed skulls, and breached arteries. Some men were decapitated by slashing cavalrymen. Others were trampled by maddened horses. The bellies of many were laid open by bayonets” (Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 436).

  99 a rebel surgeon recalled Scheer and Rankin, Rebels and Redcoats, 402. The doctor’s name was Robert Brownfield, a surgeon with Colonel Abraham Buford. 11 Even after the survivors Ibid. “Only fifty-three of Buford’s men survived Tarleton’s bayonets and swords to be taken prisoner,” write Scheer and Rankin. “Tarleton’s loss was five killed, fourteen wounded” (ibid).

  100 The meetinghouse was filled with casualties Parton, Life, I, 70.

  101 “None of the men” Booraem, Young Hickory, 50.

  102 the people of Waxhaw, like people throughout the colonies, were divided Booraem, Young Hickory, 88–91; Kendall, Life of Jackson, 42–45. Ferling wrote that boys such as Jackson “had been taught by their parents how the English had plundered their homeland and its inhabitants. Most backcountry rebels were Scotch-Irish who had seen America—and then American independence—as deliverance from a Great Britain they detested. Most also were Presbyterians who had always bridled at the requirement that they pay tithes to the Church of England, the established church in South Carolina.… Young Andy Jackson joined a partisan unit after helping his mother care for the mangled survivors of a Tory massacre, and observing that many survivors had three or four, or more, wounds” (Ferling, Almost a Miracle, 452–53).

  103 As Jackson recalled it Reid and Eaton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 10.

  104 in action at Carrickfergus Parton, Life, I, 37.

  105 “Often she would spend” Reid and Eaton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 10.

  106 a biography Jackson approved Jackson took an intense interest in Reid and Eaton’s book. See, for instance, Papers, IV, 4 and 47. Reid started it but died before it was finished; Jackson drafted Eaton to take on the task. “This has engrossed much of my time and thoughts,” Jackson wrote on June 23, 1816, “and I flatter myself by the pen of Major Eaton it will be completed in a manner to meet the expectations of the publick.… Major Eaton will exert his best talents, his industry and research will give to the publick a Just narrative of facts” (Papers, IV, 47). As Frank Owsley, the editor of the edition cited here, noted: “Much of Eaton’s writing was actually done at the Hermitage. It is almost certain that Jackson read and approved every line of the manuscript, probably as it was being written. Clearly this close supervision by Jackson makes the work the nearest approach to an autobiography of the General” (Reid and Eaton, Life of Andrew Jackson, viii).

  107 Jackson saw firsthand the brutality Kendall, Life of Jackson, 43–45; Remini, Jackson, I, 19–20.

  108 “Men hunted each other like beasts of prey” Kendall, Life of Jackson, 44–45. Kendall adds: “A Whig living in or near the Waxhaws, finding one of his friends murdered and mutilated, swore that he would never spare a Tory. He thenceforward made it his business to hunt and kill; and before the close of the war, sacrificed upward of twenty victims. ‘But,’ said General Jackson, ‘he was never a happy man afterward’ ” (45).

  109 known as “Bloody Tarleton” Booraem, Young Hickory, 49.

  110 once rode so close Remini, Jackson, I, 15. Here is Jackson’s complete recollection of the moment: “The Infantry as far as Cain creek, and Tarleton, passed thro the Waxhaw settlement to the Cotauba nation passing our dwelling but we were all hid out. Tarleton passed within a hundred yards of where I and a cousin Crawford, had concealed ourselves” (P
apers, I, 5). 12 “I could have shot him” Ibid.

  111 The boy soaked up the talk of war Kendall, Life of Jackson, 45; Booraem, Young Hickory, 52–58.

  112 “Boys big enough to carry muskets” Kendall, Life of Jackson, 45.

  113 In April 1781 Booraem, Young Hickory, 96.

  114 A neighboring Tory alerted the redcoats Parton, Life, I, 88.

  115 Andrew and Robert were surrounded Ibid.

  116 The soldiers ransacked the house Ibid. Here is Parton’s full description of the scene, which included roughing up one of Jackson’s Crawford aunts and her baby: “Crockery, glass, and furniture, were dashed to pieces; beds emptied; the clothing of the family torn to rags; even the clothes of the infant that Mrs. Crawford carried in her arms were not spared.”

  117 an imperious officer ordered Jackson Ibid.

  118 “Sir,” he said Ibid., 89. For different renderings of this familiar Jacksonian tale, see also Bassett, Jackson, 10; Booraem, Young Hickory, 97–98; James, TLOAJ, 25–26; Remini, Jackson, I, 21.

  119 “The sword point reached my head” Correspondence, VI, 253.

  120 a British prison camp in Camden Booraem, Young Hickory, 98.

  121 “The prisoners were all dismounted” Correspondence, VI, 253.

  122 “No attention whatever was paid” Papers, I, 7.

  123 Robert was sick, very sick Ibid.

  124 Robert on one horse and Mrs. Jackson on another Ibid.

  125 a barefoot Andrew Ibid.

  126 the British had taken his shoes and his coat Ibid.

  127 “trudge” Ibid.

  128 the weather turned against them Ibid.

  129 “The fury” Ibid.

  130 Two days later Robert died Ibid.

  131 “During his confinement” Eaton and Reid, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 13.

  132 Elizabeth nursed Andrew Ibid.

  133 to care for two of her Crawford nephews Ibid. Jackson’s recollection is powerful in its sparseness: “As soon as my recovering health would permit, my mother hastened to Charleston to administer to the comfort of two of her nephews, Wm. and Jas Crawford then prisoners at this place. On her return She died about three miles from Charleston.”