by H. W. Brands
The judgeship was Jackson’s for life, if he wanted it. His commission said he held the post “during good behavior,” which meant he could be removed only by impeachment. But though he valued the respect that came with the position, in other ways the job was less than ideal. He had underestimated the cost of the travel the job required. “I am in possession of a very independent office,” he wrote a friend, “but I sink money—the salary is too low. . . . The judiciary scarcely bears my expence.” And though he himself was no Blackstone, his partners on the court were even shorter on legal training. “I cannot expect much beneficial aid from the talents of Judge [David] Campbell, although an agreeable companion.” A seat was coming open. Jackson hoped it would be filled by someone who knew the law. “Should one be appointed whose legal abilities were not superior to ours, the responsibility on me would be too great.”
The saving grace of the judgeship was that it didn’t monopolize his time. He continued to pursue his speculative and mercantile ventures, albeit with partners who conducted most of the day-to-day operations. Even so, he regularly considered retiring from the bench. But as often as he did, his friends and supporters urged him to think again, declaring that he was more qualified than anyone else available. James Robertson recounted traveling about Tennessee and hearing the people express their “general wish and opinion” that Jackson remain on the court. Robertson added, “It is likewise the hearty wish of your friend and humble servant”—Robertson himself. Almost the entire Tennessee house of representatives and several state senators sent Jackson a statement registering their “peculiar concern” at rumors that Jackson might step down. “Talents like yours were given for public good,” the petitioners asserted. “We hope at this momentous crisis, when party is raging in a most extraordinary manner”—actually, party was raging in a rather ordinary manner—“you will not retire from the service of your country and leave them to struggle with the loss.”
Jackson acceded to the popular will. “Retirement to private life has been, for some time, to me a very desirable event,” he explained in a public response to the appeal from the legislators. “But you have said my further services as a judge would be useful. When my services are thus called for, they belong to my country, and your voice is obeyed.”
He did add a condition: “if health will permit me.” This wasn’t a rhetorical flourish. Though generally hale so far in his life, Jackson encountered the same afflictions nearly everyone else did in that medical stone age. The causes of infectious disease still stumped the experts; smallpox, typhoid fever, cholera, and yellow fever ravaged the populated districts of the United States with disheartening frequency. A yellow fever epidemic decimated Philadelphia in 1793 and another did nearly as much damage in 1797. Disease disrupted traffic on the Mississippi almost every summer, as crews heard of people dying in New Orleans and refused to drop down the river to that infamous zone of infection.
The lesser density of population on the frontier attenuated some of the epidemics, but the frontier posed its own set of challenges to personal health. Long journeys on horseback overworked the spine; Jackson periodically complained of what he identified as rheumatism. In the winter of 1798 he slipped on an icy road and wrenched his knee, which “confined me for some days.” Once a stable caught fire at Jonesboro, causing Jackson to leap out of bed to help save the horses. “During this distressing scene I was a great deal exposed, having nothing on but my shirt,” he told Rachel. “I have caught a very bad cold which has settled on my lungs, occasioned a bad cough and pain in my breast.” The worrisome thing about colds in those days was that no one knew if they were simply colds or the harbingers of something more serious. Pneumonia threatened travelers especially, who could be caught far from shelter by snow or, what was worse, soaking and chilling rain. Tuberculosis—“consumption”—carried away men and women otherwise in their prime and could be transmitted easily in the close quarters of carriages and roadside inns.
Life expectancies in Jackson’s day were much lower than they would be two centuries later. To a considerable degree this reflected higher infant and childhood mortality: the first five years were the most lethal. Anyone tough enough to survive that stretch had a fair expectation of reasonable tenure on earth. But accidents did happen, and epidemics did occur. And even healthy people were infested by parasites of one sort or another. Malaria was endemic in much of the United States. In America the malaria parasite didn’t often kill, but the “ague and fever,” as the disease was called, was as unremarkable as the common cold. Intestinal parasites came and went. Lice and bedbugs were the travelers’ bane, causing the fastidious to carry their own bedding and use it, even when they paid for a bed at an inn. The sexually adventurous risked venereal disease. If the disease was treated, with mercury typically, the cure might be as dangerous as the disease. If untreated, certain forms—syphilis, notoriously—could seem to subside only to return with harrowing symptoms later.
Given that his father and mother had died relatively young, and his brothers even younger, Andrew Jackson at thirty-five had reason to watch his health. His wrenched knee in fact got better, though it tended to stiffen in cold weather, and the cough he incurred rescuing the horses eventually subsided. But good health was a gift, not a guarantee.
Though Jackson agreed to remain a judge, the troubles that made him want to quit persisted. The travel kept him away from Rachel, and the expense caused them both to wonder how long their finances could bear the drain. Jackson’s philosophy of serving the will of the people would become his guiding star, but for now it threatened to bankrupt him. On his rides around the circuit he pondered how to escape his predicament.
He discovered an exit in early 1802, when the command of the Tennessee militia came open. To one like Jackson, valuing respect above all, the position was the true prize of Tennessee politics. No one, not even the governor, was held in higher esteem than the major general of the militia. The pay was higher than that of a judge, a welcome point but not crucial, as, by Jackson’s reading of the Tennessee constitution, he could keep his judgeship even while serving as militia commander. A judge couldn’t become governor or a member of the state legislature without violating the separation of powers, but the militia was different. Or so Jackson, who had helped write the state constitution, contended. And no one effectively contradicted him.
Which was not to say no one challenged him. John Sevier did, albeit at the polls rather than in court. Sevier completed three consecutive terms as Tennessee governor in 1801 and was constitutionally required to sit out a term before running again. When Major General George Conway died and an election to succeed him was slated for February 1802, Sevier sought to parlay his reputation as an Indian fighter into gainful employment at the head of the Tennessee militia.
The simultaneous decisions of the two men to seek the militia command shattered the truce that had existed between them. In the election the field officers of each of the militia districts caucused and cast their ballots. Jackson won the votes of the officers from the Cumberland and vicinity. Sevier carried his home districts in the eastern part of the state. The result was a tie. Sevier then proposed a second ballot. Jackson refused, asserting that nothing in the constitution or any statute authorized such a revote. Instead the decision must go to the governor.
As it happened, Jackson and the new governor, Archibald Roane, had been friends since they received their licenses to practice law in Washington County, North Carolina, on the same day. Roane repaid the friendship by casting the tiebreaking vote for Jackson, who on April 1, 1802, became major general of the Tennessee militia.
In many regards, the command of the militia was the best office Jackson ever held. The people of Tennessee addressed him as general and considered him the first warrior of the state. He held the post—like his judgeship—during “good behavior,” which meant that he was answerable only to his conscience and the requirements of Tennessee defense. In theory he reported to the governor, but in practice he often dea
lt directly with the War Department in Washington.
Not surprisingly, what to Jackson were the advantages of the office were to Sevier cause for bitterness at having lost it so narrowly. By battlefield experience Sevier should have won the election easily. He had beaten the British at King’s Mountain and the Indians in dozens of engagements before and since. What had Jackson done besides being captured after a skirmish and wounded resisting a shoe shine?
Sevier’s annoyance at Jackson only increased when Sevier launched a campaign to reclaim the governor’s house and Jackson, predictably, endorsed Roane. Sevier attacked Roane’s integrity, causing Jackson to rally to his friend’s defense with a counterattack in which he revived the charges of fraud against Sevier in the land deals of the previous decade. “To do this is not my wish,” Jackson disclaimed, unconvincingly, in a letter to the Tennessee Gazette. “My only object is to exonerate Mr. Roane from the imputations maliciously circulated against him, and to prevent a character, charged with crimes of a deep dye from ascending to the executive chair, an event which would wound the character of the state and reflect disgrace upon every good citizen in it.” Jackson asserted that Sevier had conspired in the destruction of the original records of land ownership and the replacement of the bona fide entries with forged claims. He alleged further that Sevier had resorted to bribery to keep the replacement quiet. Jackson reproduced letters and affidavits supporting his allegations, including a suspicious offer by Sevier of three parcels of land to a North Carolina official in exchange for altering records.
The voters of Tennessee took a more tolerant view of fraud than Jackson did, and they retired Roane in favor of Sevier. This merely moved the Jackson-Sevier feud to another level, pitting the chief executive of Tennessee against the state’s highest military officer, who was also a justice of the state’s superior court. Jackson’s court work regularly carried him to Knoxville, then the state capital, where Sevier resided. Knoxville being a small town, the antagonists could hardly avoid each other. One day they met outside the courthouse and exchanged words. Their voices rose as their emotions engaged, and onlookers gathered around. After heated words, Sevier apparently challenged Jackson to draw arms. But since Jackson carried only a cane, against Sevier’s sword, he declined. The hot language continued. Evidently Sevier alluded to Jackson’s lack of military experience before becoming major general, for Jackson defended his services to the state and the nation.
“Services?” Sevier riposted. “I know of no great service you rendered the country, except taking a trip to Natchez with another man’s wife.”
Silence enveloped the courthouse square. Everyone realized that Sevier had crossed a fateful line. The clouded origins of Jackson’s marriage to Rachel were no secret, but respect for her if not for him kept the common knowledge quiet. Now that Sevier had broken that quiet, another quiet—perhaps deadly—took its place. All strained to hear Jackson’s response.
“Great God!” he said. “Do you mention her sacred name?”
Jackson would have had it out with Sevier at once had he been better armed. Even so, collateral shooting did erupt briefly. “One man was grazed by a bullet,” eyewitness Isaac Avery said. “Many were scared, but luckily no one was hurt.” Avery added, “Jackson’s exclamation, ‘Great God!’ became a by-word among the young men at Knoxville.”
By the next day Jackson’s passion had subsided sufficiently that he was able to write Sevier a letter. But even after twenty-four hours his pen still scorched the page.
The ungentlemanly expressions and gasconading conduct of yours relative to me on yesterday was in true character of yourself, and unmasks you to the world, and plainly shows that they were the ebullitions of a base mind goaded with stubborn proofs of fraud and flowing from a source devoid of every refined sentiment or delicate sensation. . . . The voice of the people has made you a governor. This alone makes you worthy of my notice or the notice of any gentleman. To the office I bear respect. . . . As such I only deign to notice you, and call upon you for that satisfaction and explanation that your ungentlemanly conduct and expressions require. For this purpose I request an interview [“interview” being the term for a duel]. . . . My friend who will hand you this will point out the time and place when and where I shall expect to see you with your friend and no other person. My friend and myself will be armed with pistols. You cannot mistake me or my meaning.
Sevier didn’t want to duel Jackson. He considered the younger man an upstart against whom he had no need to defend his reputation. Besides, he was governor of Tennessee, and Tennessee law as of the previous year forbade dueling. Yet he didn’t feel he could ignore the challenge. Even a hero of the Indian wars had to answer such a direct affront. So he fired back a note that matched Jackson’s insult for insult—in places, word for word: “Your ungentlemanly and gasconading conduct of yesterday, and indeed at all other times heretofore, have 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’s. To the office I have respect.” Sevier went on to say, in a nod to the law, “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 all within our vicinity.” He closed by quoting Jackson: “You cannot mistake me and my meaning.”
Jackson wouldn’t accept Sevier’s condition. “This, sir, I view as a mere subterfuge,” he replied. “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 town of Knoxville did you challenge me to draw, when you were armed with a cutlass and I with a cane. And now, sir, in the town of Knoxville you shall atone for it or I will publish you as a coward and a poltroon.” Sevier’s offer to fight in a neighboring state, Jackson insisted, was “a proposition made by you to evade the thing entirely.” Jackson nonetheless made a counterproposal: “If it will obviate your squeamish fears, I will set out immediately to the nearest part of the Indian boundary line.” On Indian soil they could legally settle their differences. “I shall expect an answer in the space of one hour.”
“I am happy to find you so accommodating,” Sevier responded. “My friend will agree upon the time and place of rendezvous.” But Sevier was still in no hurry to fight Jackson. He instructed his friend to tell Jackson that their meeting could take place no sooner than five days hence. Jackson would have to wait.
Jackson was outraged. He published his threatened condemnation of the governor. “To all who shall see these presents greeting—Know ye that I, Andrew Jackson, do pronounce, publish, and declare to the world that his Excellency John Sevier, Esqr., Governor, Captain General and commander in chief of the land and naval forces of the State of Tennessee, is a base coward and poltroon. He will basely insult, but has not the courage to repair the wound.”
Sevier had to answer. “I am again perplexed with your scurrilous and poltroon language,” he wrote. “I have constantly informed you that I would cheerfully wait on you in any other quarter”—than Tennessee—“and that you had nothing to do but name the place and you should be accommodated. I am now constrained to tell you that your conduct, during the whole of your pretended bravery, shows you to be a pitiful poltroon and coward.” Yet Jackson might still retrieve his reputation. “If you wish the interview, accept the proposal I have made you, and let us prepare for the campaign.”
They agreed to meet at Southwest Point, Virginia, a day’s ride from Knoxville. Jackson went ahead, with Sevier to follow. But the business of government—and his continuing reluctance to be tested by this young hothead—held Sevier in Knoxville forty-eight hours. Jackson waited, and waited, and finally decided that Sevier really was the coward and poltroon he had been stating him to be.
He started to return to Knoxville, riding in company with Thomas Vandyke, a surgeon’s assistant with the U.S. Army at Fort Southwest Point. Not far from Kin
gston, Tennessee, they saw Sevier and his son James approaching. Jackson dismounted, drew pistols, and walked toward Sevier, who also dismounted and readied his guns. Jackson called Sevier an assortment of names and demanded that the two settle their dispute on the spot. “Sevier replied that he would not fire, and that he did not wish to be assassinated,” Vandyke recounted shortly afterward. Vandyke assured Sevier that this was no assassination. “I then requested that the gentlemen should both deliver me their pistols, and meet in a proper manner on the field of honor. General Jackson agreed to the proposition. General Sevier positively refused.” After more swearing between the two, Vandyke urged them to holster their pistols and remount their horses. They did so, with ill grace. “Scurrility ensued. General Jackson observed that there had been too much low abuse made use of, and that he would correct him. General Jackson then drew his sword cane and pistol, and rode up to General Sevier. General Sevier drew his sword, dismounted, and let his horse loose. General Jackson pursued him around us, as we”—Vandyke and two other riders who happened along—“sat upon our horses, several times. Young Mr. Sevier drew his pistol on General Jackson, on which I immediately drew mine and observed that I should protect Mr. Jackson.” A second eyewitness told this part of the story slightly differently. “Judge Jackson swore that he would cane him . . . and as Jackson advanced toward him, the Governor drew his sword, which frightened his horse and he ran away with the Governor’s pistols. . . . Judge Jackson immediately drew his pistol and advanced again, on which the Governor went behind a tree and damned Jackson. Did he want to fire on a naked man? On which the Governor’s son drew his pistol and advanced toward his father. . . . Doctor Vandyke immediately drew his pistol and advanced toward the Governor’s son.”
