Life Of Andrew Jackson
James Parton
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PREFACE,
PREFACE,
To this hour, the fame of General Jackson is a capital item in the capital stock of a political party. Itis one of our standing jokes, founded on fact, that in some of the remote rural districts, the ancient inhabitants still go to the polls under the impression that they are voting for old General Jackson. How many of the last eight Presidents would ever have taken up their residence in the White House, if they had not been helped towards it through him? Not one! Of this man, who made such a st
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS
The Life of Andrew Jackson, Major General in the service of the United States: comprising a history of the War in the South, from the commencement of the Creek Campaign to the termination of hostilities before New Orleans. By John Henry Eaton, Senator of the United Btates. Philadolphis, 1824, 8vo, 468 pp. . . fPublished originally about 1818. The basis of all tha popular lives of Jackson; valuable for its full details of the Creek War. Not designedly false, but necessarily so, because written on
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
The History and Antiquities of the County of the Town of Carrickfergus, from the earlie est records to the present time; also a Siatistical Survey of sald Cownty, By Samuel M'Skimin. Belfast, 1820. 8vo. 405 pp. The history of a county in which the ancestors of General Jackson lived for many generations.) New and Popular listory of Ireland, from the beginning of the Christian Era to the press ent time. London, 1851, 8 vols. in 1. 12mo. Notices of Carrickfergus and its early sieges.) ‘The Irish Sk
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
Reply to the Criticism on Inshiquin's Let. ters contained in the Quarterly Lieview for January, 1614. New York, 1813. &vo, 115 PD. Shows the bitterness of feeling between the two countries during the war of 1812.) Mr. Ingersoll's Speech on the Loan Billa, Tuesday, February 15th, 1514. 8vo. 23 pp. C. J. Ingersoll. Finances of War of 1812.) Address to the People of the United States. By Touchstone. 1812. (Anti war. Ant Madison. Pro De Witt Clinton. An Address of Members of the ITouse of Re
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.
Message from the President of the United States, transmitting a Report of the Sceretary 1 of State, with the Documents relating to a Misunderstanding between Andrew Jackson, while acting as Governor of the Floridas, and Elijius Frometin, Judge of a Court therein; also the Correspondence between the Secretary of State and tbe Minister of Spain on certain Proceedings in that Territory, ete, ete. Washington, 1822, 8vo. 818 pp. (Sufiiciently described in the title page Correspondence between General
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LIST OF PUBLICATIONS,
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS,
A formidable mass of letters and gossip. The volume presents a revolting view of interior polities.) The Voice of the People and the Facts in Relation to the ejection of Martin Van Bu en by the United States Senate. Albany, 1832. "8vo. 40 pp. Contains the speeches of Messrs. Webster, Forsyth, Marcy and others in the Senate on the President's nomination of Mr. Van Buren to the London mission. Also the proceedings of a meeting at Albany to denounce the cons duct of theSenate in rejecting the Romin
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OF PUBLICATIONS,
OF PUBLICATIONS,
States, from 1630 to 1857. By members of the New York Press. New York, 1857. 12mo, 89 pp. (Contains a sketoh of General Jackson's currency measures, with the opinions of leads ing wen as to their agency in producing the revulsion of 1857.) Napoleonic Ideas. By the Prince Napoleon Louis -Bovaparte, Illustrated by James A. Dorr, New York, 1850. 12mo. 154 pp. (The author was In the United States dure ing General Jackson's war with the United States Bank, and briefly indicates his impressions of the
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1. NORTH OF IRELANDERS.
1. NORTH OF IRELANDERS.
Tue traveler in Ireland, we are told, on approaching its northern province from the south, observes an agreeable change coming over the aspect of the country. The hovels of the peasantry and the cabin-suburbs of the towns gradually improve. Clean and comfortable inns tale the place of the slatternly taverns of middle and southern Ireland, in which nothing is what it professes to be, and nothing does what it was intended to do. Wéll-cultivated farms, with substantial farm-houses in good repair, w
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II. CARRICKFERGUS.
II. CARRICKFERGUS.
CARRICKFERGUS is an old, old town on the northern coast of Ireland, nine miles from Belfast ; which latter was an unknown hamlet when Carrickfergus was one of the antiquities of Europe. The namie means Crag of Fergus. A rocky promontory extends into the bay there, upon which, sometime between the Flood and Anno Domini, ene king Fergus was cast away and drowned. His body was tossed upon the Crag by the waves, and the place has ever since borne his name. In the course of ages, a castle was built u
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III. THE EMIGRANTS,
III. THE EMIGRANTS,
Ix 1765, Andrew Jackson the elder, with his wife and two sons, emigrated to America. He was accompanied by three of his neighbors, James, Robert, and Joseph Crawford, the first-named of whom was his brother-in-law. The peace between France and England, signed two years before, which ended the “old French war”—the war in which Braddock was defeated and Canada won—had restored to mankind their highway, the ocean, and given an impulse to emigration from the old world to the new. From the north of I
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IV. MISCHIEVOUS ANDY.
IV. MISCHIEVOUS ANDY.
To the old people in the Carolinas who are descended from the sisters of Mrs. Jackson, Andrew Jackson is not so much the famous President and the victorious General, as he is little Andy, the mischief-loving son of good aunt Betty. Andy did this ; and Andy went there ; when Andy was at New Orleans, and when Andy was President—they say in familiar talk about him by the huge fire-places of their old farm-houses. He is well remembered in that part of the country, as there are twenty people living t
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V,. THE WAR IN THE CAROLINAS.
V,. THE WAR IN THE CAROLINAS.
TaE yeoman’s service which Andrew Jackson's small exploits in the revolutionary war were made to perform in three presidential campaigns, have rendered them more familiar than credible to the people of the United States. For the same reason, there is a certain unbelief in the New Orleans campaign, the finest defense of native land recorded in recent history. I will confess that it was to me a surprise to discover that the stories of Jacksons revolutionary adventures, when simply told, are both p
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VI. THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY,
VI. THE FORTUNES OF THE FAMILY,
Or the adventures of our young trooper there is but one to record which was not calamitous. It was a trifling affair; but the story illustrates the time and the boy. In that fierce, Scotch-Indian warfare, the absence of a father from home was often a better protection to his family than his presence, because his presence invited attack. The main object of both parties was to kill the fighting men, and to avenge the slaying of partisans. The house of the quiet hero Hicks, for example, was safe, u
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VII. CHOICE OF A PROFESSION,
VII. CHOICE OF A PROFESSION,
Corxwaruis surrendered at Yorktown on the 19th of October, 1781. Savannah remained in the enemy’s hands nine months, and Charleston fourteen months, after that event ; but the war in effect terminated then, North and South. The Waxhaw people who survived returned to their homes, and resumed the avocations which the war had interrupted. The first event of any importance in young Jacksons life, after peace was restored to his neighborhood, was a quarrel. He was living then at the house of Major Th
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VIII. THE LAW STUDENT.
VIII. THE LAW STUDENT.
SALISBURY, the capital of Rowan county, is a pleasant old town in the midst of that undulating, red-clayed region of North Carolina, the products of which are wheat, cotton, turpentine and gold, as well as the worst roads and the most obliging people in the world. It was an old town, for America, when the Revolution began. Secluded from the commercial world, dependent for its increase and wealth upon the adjacent country, it has only grown to be a place of eight hundred inhabitants in a hundred
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IX. JACKSON AT TWENTY.
IX. JACKSON AT TWENTY.
Our young friend was twenty years of age when he completed the preliminary part of his education at Salisbury. Before sending him forth to try conclusions with the world, we will take the liberty of detaining him a moment here on the threshold while we survey his person and equipment. It is, indeed, necessary to state briefly what kind of young man young Jackson was, in order to render credible much that is soon to be related, as well as to correct the impressions which the wild ways of his yout
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X. TO TENNESSEE,
X. TO TENNESSEE,
THE settlement of a new region, in the old, heroic times, was a progressive affair. At first the wilderness, unbroken and unknown, excited only the curiosity of the advanced settlers, Some wandering Indian, in answer to their eager questions, would draw upon the earth a rude map of the land desired, and give, in Indian grunts and gestures, some hints of its great features, its mountains, rivers, lakes and hunting grounds. Oné daring hunter, of the Boone or Leatherstocking stamp, at last, would v
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XI. THE SOLICITOR FINDS LODGINGS.
XI. THE SOLICITOR FINDS LODGINGS.
THERE must have been good stuff in Frenchmen once, The best proof of manhood which that race has given, since it banished its élite, the Huguenots, was its assisting to explore and colonize our western wilderness. The modern Frenchman looks on the map of Europe for his country’s glory. More glorious to Frenchmen is the map of North America, which French valor and endurance, a hundred and fifty years ago, scattered all over with French names. New Orleans, Canada, the French trappers and voyageurs
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XII. THE FRONTIER LAWYER.
XII. THE FRONTIER LAWYER.
THE young solicitor, immediately upon his arrival in the western settlements, was astonished to find a world of law business awaiting him. One would have supposed that a community situated as this was, struggling to maintain its foothold in a remote wilderness swarming with hostile savages, conld have dispensed, for a while, with the costly lusury of law ; 4. e., lawyer's law. But no. One of the first things done in all the western settlements was the building of a court house and jail ; and law
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XIII. MARRIAGE OF THE SOLICITOR.
XIII. MARRIAGE OF THE SOLICITOR.
IN Virginia, in the olden time, if a man, convinced of his wife's infidelity, desired to be divorced from her, he was obliged to procure an act of the legislature authorizing an investigation of the charge before a jury, and pronouncing the marriage bond dissolved, provided that jury found her guilty. In the winter of 1790-1, Lewis Robards, of Kentucky (originally part of Virginia), the husband of the beautiful and vivacious Rachel Donelson, appeared before the Legislature of Virginia with a dec
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XIV. A FIGHTING DISTRICT ATTORNEY,
XIV. A FIGHTING DISTRICT ATTORNEY,
TRE prosperity of Western Tennessee dates from September, 1794, when General Robertson, provoked beyond endur ance by the frequency and audacity of the Indian outrages, sent an expedition into the Cherokee country, and dealt such a blowat the tribe as induced it to leave the Cumberland settlements In peace ever after. This was the Nickajack expedition—justly famous in the annals of Tennessec—a gallant and romantic affair. The Indians would have been pursued into their own country long before but
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COAPTER XV, CONSTITUTION MAKING.
COAPTER XV, CONSTITUTION MAKING.
Tax rush of population into the Territory was such that, mm July, 1795, the Territorial Legislature ordered a census to be taken for the purpose of ascertaining whether there was not the requisite number of inhabitants Tor the admission of the Territory into the Union as a sovereign State. The Legis lature further enacted that “if it should appear that there are sixty thousand inhabitants, counting the whole of the free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding
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XVI.
XVI.
A LONDONER IN THE TENNESSEE WILDERNESS. To understand a man, it is necessary to know a good deal of the country which he represented. Before exhibiting Andrew Jackson on the public stage, I desire to afford the reader a near view of Tennessee, ag he might himself have seen it had he traversed its entire length, at the time when Nashville was only a cluster of log-houses, and the country generally “a howling wilderness.” * In 1796 and 1797, an adventurous young Englishman named Francis Baily, aft
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XVII. FILTHY DEMOCRATS.
XVII. FILTHY DEMOCRATS.
Jackson reached Philadelphia about the first of December—The Honorable Andrew Jackson of Tennessee. Albert Gallatin, a leading member of Congress at that time, remembered him, in after years, as “a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and w queue down his back tied in an eel skin ; his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman ;”% a description which no fiend of Jackson's later years will admit to be correct. Neverth
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XVIII. IN THE HOUSE,
XVIII. IN THE HOUSE,
Aone the fifty-six members of the House of Representatives who were present on the first day of the session, December 5th, 1796, was Andrew Jackson, the sole representative of a State that has since sent twelve members to that House. The arrivals of the next few days increased the number of members present to eighty-nine. Few of their names have escaped oblivion, These only are remembered by any considerable number of the present generation : Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts ; Chauncey Goodrich, of
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“ADDRESS TO THE PRESIDENT.”
“ADDRESS TO THE PRESIDENT.”
The friends of the administration endeavored to have this address read and acted upon immediately ; but the opposition, after o debate in which all the party passions of the day were enlisted, succeeded in postponing its consideration until the day following. It was then read, paragraph by paragraph, and dcbated for two days; the opposition striving to reduce its glowing panegyric, and damn the administration with faint praise. Every prominent debater spoke ; both days of the debate were field d
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XIX. IN THEE SENATE.
XIX. IN THEE SENATE.
JacesoN’s conduct in the House of Representatives was keenly approved by Tennesseeans. Senator Cocke wrote home during the session: “Your representative, Mr. Jackson, has distinguished himself by the spirited manner in which he opposed the report (of the Secretary of War, upon the petition of Hugh IL. White). Notwithstanding the misrepresentations of the Secretary, I hope the claim will be allowed ; if it is, a principle will be established for the payment of all services done by the militia of
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XX. JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT.
XX. JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT.
Bur it seems he could not yet be spared from public life Soon after his return to Tennessee, he was elected by the Legislature to a seat on the bench of the Supreme Court of the State ; a post which he said he accepted in obedience to his favorite maxim, that the citizen of a free commonwealth should never seek and never decline public duty. The office assigned him was next in consideration, as to'emolument, fo that of governor ; the governors salary being seven hundred and fifty dollars a year,
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XXI. MAN OF BUSINESS.
XXI. MAN OF BUSINESS.
Tae aristocracy of a country are they who wield its resources. In the United States, therefore, the business man 18 lord. A ‘Was it for this reason that democratic gentlemen, who have written of General Jackson, have so sedulously slurred over the fact that, during several years in the prime of his life, he kept a store ? The silence on this subject of all those who could have told us something about it from personal knowledge, has made it a task of extreme difficulty to obtain the desired infor
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XXII FIGHTING ANECDOTES.
XXII FIGHTING ANECDOTES.
Tae wilderness does not fall before the backwoodsman’s brawny arm, and become a pleasant habitable land, without leaving behind in the heart of its subduer something of its own wildness, Nor can the civilized man contend with the savage in deadly warfare for life and home, without exchanging qualities, usages, and arts with the foe. The westcrn man of the olden time had much of the Indian in him. He caught the Indian’s stealthy footstep ; imbibed something of his passion for revenge ; abandoned
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XXIII. GENERAL JACKSON ‘“CANES’” MR. THOMAS SWANN.
XXIII. GENERAL JACKSON ‘“CANES’” MR. THOMAS SWANN.
Ax industrious citizen of Tennessee, during a certain presidential campaign, made a collection of General Jackson’s fights and quarrels, devoting himself to the work with the zeal which belongs to a collector, and never giving up the search till his cabinet contained, to use his own language, “nearly one hundred fights, or violent and abusive quarrels.” Then, resting from his labors, he published, after the manner of collectors, a descriptive catalogue of the most remarkable of his treasures, nu
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XXIV. GENERAL JACKSON REPLIES TO MR. SWANN.
XXIV. GENERAL JACKSON REPLIES TO MR. SWANN.
Urox reading Mr. Swann’s communication in the Impartial Review and Cumberland Repository, General Jackson set about preparing a reply that should overwhelm and crush his youthful antagonist. He seems to have bestirred himself mightily. Unable to complete his reply in one week, he inserted a note in Mr. Eastin’s newspaper to inform an expectant public that in the next issue of the paper he would bestow proper attention upon a late communication signed Thomas Swann. This reply of Jackson's is surc
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XXV. DUEL BETWEEN COFFEE AND MONAIRY.
XXV. DUEL BETWEEN COFFEE AND MONAIRY.
Dicrrvsox being still absent from Tennessee, the insulting language applied to him by General Jackson passed, for the time, without notice. But young McNairy, the “squire of high renown,” was prompt to respond to that part of Jackson's communication which related to him. The Impartial Review, of the next week, contained the following sarcastic epistle from that young gentleman :— “Mr Basen :—I would presume, from a view of the famous Generals answer to Mr. Swann’s publication in your last number
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XXVI. DICKINSON RETURNS.
XXVI. DICKINSON RETURNS.
To General Jackson's communication Mr. Swann published a reply of prodigious length, the main object of which was to prove, by certificates and affidavits, that Thomas Swann was 9 gentleman, and General Jackson a coward Among the eminent Virginians who certified to Mr. Swann’s gentlemanliness were Edmund Randolph and Edward Carrington. Mr. Randolph said: “I commit to paper with great pleasure what I know and what 1 believe with respect to Thomas Swann, Esq. He studied the law under my advice ; a
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XXVIIL THE DUEL.
XXVIIL THE DUEL.
Tae place appointed for the meeting was a long day’s ride from Nashville. Thursday morning, before the dawn of day, Dickinson stole from the side of his young and beautiful wife, and began silently to prepare for the journey. She awoke, and asked him why he was up so early. He replied, that he had business in Kentucky across the Red river, but it would not detain him long. Before leaving the room, he went up to his wife, kissed her with peculiar tenderness, and said : «Good bye, darling ; I shal
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XXIX. EXPLOSION OF BURR’S PROJECT.
XXIX. EXPLOSION OF BURR’S PROJECT.
Ir was not until the 10th of November, a week after the receipt of Burr's orders and money, that General Jackson, according to his own account, began to think there might be some fruth in the reports which attributed to Burr unlawful designs ; reports which he had previously regarded only as "von. 1.—21 new evidences of the malice of Burr's political enemies and his own. ‘ To Jackson, as to all others in Nashville, Burr had represented that his first object was the settlement of a great tract of
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XXX. GENERAL JACKSON IS SUSPECTED,
XXX. GENERAL JACKSON IS SUSPECTED,
Tuese public writings of the General during the Bur panic are somewhat different in tone from his private letters sf the same period. He was in a fog. He knew not what to make of this unexpected explosion, for which no cause could be discovered. Moreover, the letter of the Secretary of War, General Henry Dearborn, to himself, was couched in language at once “dubious” and offensive. A note which Jackson wrote, the day after the receipt of the Secretary’s order, to his friend Major Patten Anderson
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XXXI. ADOPTION OF A SON AND HEIR.
XXXI. ADOPTION OF A SON AND HEIR.
Tue Hermitage was more a hermitage than ever after these events. The enemies of the Hermit had gained-a certain triumph over him. I observe in the list of those who assisted in the burning of Burr's effigy at Nashville, the name of Thomas Swann ; which favors the conjecture that the zeal against Bur was, in some degree, a manifestation of enmity to the man who had been so conspicuously his friend. Iiaffected toward his former political associates, an object of distrust or aversion, or both, to t
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XXXII. GENERAL JACKSON'S WAR WITH SILAS DINSMORE.
XXXII. GENERAL JACKSON'S WAR WITH SILAS DINSMORE.
Siras Dixsyore was agent to the Choctaw Indians. The Indian Agents were persons of importance in the early day. Appointed by the general government, they represented in the Indian country the power and authority of the United States. They paid over to the chiefs the annuity of the tribe, and held them to the performance of the duties of which that annuity was the recompense. If was the agent who strove to protect tlie Indians from the encroachments of the settlers, and the settlers from the thie
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CHARTER XXXIII. JACESON AND THE VOLUNTEERS,
CHARTER XXXIII. JACESON AND THE VOLUNTEERS,
AT the beginning of the war of 1812, there was not a militia general in the western country less likely to receive a commission from the general government than Andrew Jackson. There were unpleasant traditions and recollections connected with his name in Mr. Madison’s cabinet, as we know. He had shown himself to be a man whose nature it was to style a “venerable” Secretary of War and revolutionary patriot, who showed less energy than he thought the occasion required, “an old granny ;” a trait of
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XXXIV. THE GENERAL WINS HIS NICKNAME,
XXXIV. THE GENERAL WINS HIS NICKNAME,
Down the Cumberland to the Ohio; down the Ohio to the Mississippi ; down the Mississippi toward New Orleans ; stopping here and there for supplies ; delayed for days at a time by the ice in the swift Ohio ; grounding a boat now and then ; losing one altogether ;—the fleet pursued its course, craunching through the floating masses, but making fair progress, for the space of thirty-nine days. The weather was often very cold and tempestuous, and the frail boats afforded only an imperfect shelter. B
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XXXV. FEUD AND AFFREAY WITH THE BENTONXNS,
XXXV. FEUD AND AFFREAY WITH THE BENTONXNS,
It was through an act of good nature that General Jackson was drawn into this disgraceful business. William Carroll (afterwards General Carroll), who went down the river with the expedition, in the capacity of brigade inspector, had but recently come to Nashville from Pittsburg, where he had been a clerk or partner in a hardware store. He was a tall, well-formed man, much given to military affairs, and thus attracted the notice of General Jackson ; who advanced him so rapidly and paid him such m
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XXXVI. TECUMSEH.
XXXVI. TECUMSEH.
TaE Indian is a creature who does not improve upon acquaintance. Living near a tribe dispels so much of the romance which novelists and poets have thrown around the dusky race, as to induce considerable incredulity with regard to the tales they have told of Indian valor and generosity. As he now appears upon our western border, the Indian is a filthy, idle, cruel, lying coward, wholly a cumberer of the ground, incapable of any of the white man’s virtues, while exaggerating all his vices; respect
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XXXVII. _ THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS.
XXXVII. _ THE MASSACRE AT FORT MIMS.
AvcusT 30th, 1813, was the date of this most woeful and most terrible event. The place was a fort, or stockade-ofrefuge, on the shores of Lake Tensaw, in the southern part of what is now the State of Alabama. One Samuel Mims, an old and wealthy inhabitant of the Indian country, had enclosed with upright logs an acre of land, in the middle of which stood his house, a spaciousonestory building, with sheds adjoining. The enclosure, pierced with five hundred port-holes, three and a half feet from th
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XXXVIII TENNESSEE IN THE FIELD.
XXXVIII TENNESSEE IN THE FIELD.
AraBama was then part of Mississippi Territory. Terris fied and helpless, Mississippi could look for succor only to the States upon her borders—Louisiana, Georgia and Tennessee. Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana, in his capacity of general of militia, was near the scene of the massacre; but, with a force divided among the posts in lower Alabama, he was incapable of making a single effective movement. To New Orleans, two hundred miles distant; ‘to the capital of Georgia, three hundred miles distan
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XXXIX, GENERAL COFFEE’S BATTLE.
XXXIX, GENERAL COFFEE’S BATTLE.
Jorn CorFEE, as one of his friends observed to me, was a great soldier without knowingit. So the world never knew. it. He was a giant in stature and nobly proportioned ; in demeanor taciturn and totally void of pretense: a man to do his duty, and let any one else have the glory of it who wanted that airy commodity. The first in the field, he had. been now a month in the saddle, leading his horsemen up and down the country, doing what he could to keep the foe from the frontier, and the Wolf from
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XL. BATTLE OF TALLADEGA.
XL. BATTLE OF TALLADEGA.
Ir was General Jackson’s turn next. Thirty miles from his encampment on the Coosa stood a small fort, into which, as before intimated, a party of a hundred and * fifty-four friendly Creeks had fled for safety. The site of this fort is now covered by part of the town of Talla- dega, the capital of Talladega county, Alabama, a thriving place of two thousand inhabitants, situated on a branch of the Coosa, in the midst of beautiful mountain scenery. This region was, at the time of which we are now w
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.XLIL HUNGER AND MUTINY.
.XLIL HUNGER AND MUTINY.
We left General Jackson at Fort Strother, giving out his last biscuit to his hungry troops, and appeasing his own appetite with unseasoned tripe. Then followed ten long weeks of agonizing perplexity, during which, though the enemy was unmolested by the Tennessee troops, their General appeared in a light more truly heroic than at any other part of his military life. His fortitude, his will, alone saved the campaign. His burning letters kept the cause alive in the State ; his example, resolution,
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XLIII. MUTINY IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY.
XLIII. MUTINY IN THE MIDST OF PLENTY.
Bur the General was reckoning without his army. The volunteers, penetrated with the spirit of discontent, soon provided themselves with a new argument for abandoning the gervice. The first days of December were now passing. It was on the 10th of December, 1812, that these volunteers had entered into service ; engaging, as they said, to serve one year. They, accordingly, made no secret of their intention to leave the camp on the 10th of December, 1818. But they were now reckoning without their Ge
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XLIV. THE NEW ARMY.
XLIV. THE NEW ARMY.
How anxiously, in such circumstances, General Jackson looked for news from Tennessee may be imagined. Help from that quarter alone could save him; and that help he bad implored from Governor Blount, who alone could grant it. The expected dispatch from Nashville reached Fort Strother at length, and proved to be a most disheartening response to Jackson's entreaties. The Governor feared to transcend his authority. Having called out all the troops authorized by Congress and the Legislature, what cou
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XLV.
XLV.
THE RAID AND ITS RESULTS. Or this twelve days’ “excursion,” as the General mildly termed it, into the Indian country, I possess several published and one unpublished narrative ; but none so complete and vivid as that contained in Jackson's own dispatch to General Pinckney, written upon the return of the little wild army to Fort Strother. Of course, the best face was put upon the affair that truth and charity would permit, and so it ought to have been. Jackson was at the head of men unused to war
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XLVI.
XLVI.
THE excursion over, and the new levies from Tennessee approaching, Jackson dismissed his victorious troops, whose term of service was about to expire. He bade them farewell in an address abounding in kind and flattering expressions ; and they left him feeling all that soldiers usually feel toward the general who has led them to victory. The return of these troops, animated by such sentiments, gave a new impetus to the cause in Tennessee, and fired the troops who were on their way to the seat of
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XLVII. EXECUTION OF JOHN WOODS.
XLVII. EXECUTION OF JOHN WOODS.
Ain the corpse-strewn battle fields of a war like this, in which fell not far from five thousand men, the sanctity of human life is attested by the profound and lasting emotion. caused by the deliberate putting to death of a single individual. Gone from memory for ever are the names of most of the legitimate victims of the Creek war, those who sunk under the tomahawk of the savage, or fell in battle before the rifle of the pioneer ; but the name of John Woods, an obscure, unlettered youth of eig
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XLVIII. THE FINISHING BLOW.
XLVIII. THE FINISHING BLOW.
Tae attention of the reader is now to be directed to a ‘remarkable “BEND” of the river Tallapoosa, about fifty-five miles from Fort Strother, the scene, for so many weeks, of General Jackson's strenuous endeavors. The word RIVER, it may be premised, calls up in the mind of an inhabitant of the Atlantic States different ideas and pictures from those which it suggests to one who knows only the rivers of the West. The great eastern rivers show their kinship to the ocean by a certain living freshnes
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XLIX. TOE SURRENDER OF WEATHERSFORD,
XLIX. TOE SURRENDER OF WEATHERSFORD,
WEATHERSFORD spared his brother chiefs the hazard of attempting his capture. His well-known surrender was the most striking incident of the war of 1812. Indeed, I know not where, in ancient legend or modern history, in epic poem or tragic drama, to find a scene more worthy to be called subTime than that which now occurred between this great chief and the conqueror of his tribe. And, though it reads more like a scene in one of our Indian plays than the record of a fact, it has the advantage of be
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L. HONORS TO THE VICTOR.
L. HONORS TO THE VICTOR.
Wirk the establishment of Fort Jackson in the Holy Ground, at the confluence of the two rivers, General Jackson's task was nearly done. For a few days he was busy enough in receiving deputations of repentant and crest-fallen chiefs, and in sending out strong detachments of troops to scour the country in search of hostile parties, if any such still kept tho field. No hostile parties were found. The friendly Creeks, however, gave some trouble by their excess of zeal, Attributing the calamities bro
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L1. TREATY OF FORT JACKSON.
L1. TREATY OF FORT JACKSON.
GENERAL JACKSON rested from his labors three weeks. As soon as his acceptance of the Major Generalship reached ‘Washington he was ordered to take command of the southern division of the army, if division it could be called, which consisted of three half-filled regiments. He was ordered to halt, on his way to the southern coast, long enough to form a definitive treaty with the Creeks, or rather to announce to them the terms upon which the United States would consent to a permanent peace. Colonel
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LII. THE DARK DAYS OF THE WAR.
LII. THE DARK DAYS OF THE WAR.
TrE Allies in Paris! Napoleon fallen! The images of the idol smashed by the populace of the French towns! The Bourbons to be restored! Peace in Europe! What news, even to the news-hardened people of 18141! A thoughtful and humane citizen of the United States, upon reading this thrilling intelligence in the New York papers of the 6th of June, must have been agitated by contending emotions. As a friend of humanity, he could not have been insensible to what Sydney Smith, in the exultation of the mo
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LIII. THE ENGLISH AT PENSACOLA,
LIII. THE ENGLISH AT PENSACOLA,
Ar the end of a narrow, beautiful bay that penetrates the coast of Florida ten miles ; on a low, sandy plain half a mile wide, open in front to the breezes of the bay, and bounded behind by a peat swamp ; its harbor, deep enough for the largest frigates, sheltered from the storms of the Gulf by an island that narrows the entrance to three quarters of a mile ; stands the ancient town of Pensacola. Renowned, in the palmy days of Spanish rule, for its gardens and grandees, for its fine public edifi
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LIV. THE DEEP GAME OF JEAN LAFITTE.
LIV. THE DEEP GAME OF JEAN LAFITTE.
A FAIR breeze wafted the Sophia so swiftly across the Gulf that, on the morning of the 8d of September, she was firing signal guns off Barataria, a little bay formed by the island of Grand Terre, forty miles directly south of New Orleans, with which it has communication by water. Barrataria was the far-famed “ Pirates’ Home,” the residence of that renowned individual who is known to the lovers of romance as “Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf,” Jean Lafitte, it will distress the ingenuous youth of
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EARLY LAW PRACTICE IN TENNESSEE.
EARLY LAW PRACTICE IN TENNESSEE.
The following extraordinary advertisement is copied from a Tennesses paper, and ts respectfully dedicated to young practitioners at the Bar : FIAT JUSTITIA, Having adopted the above motto as early as I had the honor of admission to the bar, I have covenanted with myself that I will never knowingly depart from it, and oun this foundation I have built a few maxims which afford my reflections an unspeakable satisfaction : 1. I will practice law because it offers to me opportunities of being a more
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III. THE CREEE WAR.
III. THE CREEE WAR.
Statement of certain Tennessee Volunteers who Served under General Jackson in the Creek War. Ox the tenth of December, eighteen hundred and twelve, the Volunteers, in pursuance of orders from General Jackson, rendezvoused at Nashville, and were mustered into the service of the United States, by Robert Hays, muster master or inspector of the division, under whose direction and inspection, muster rolls were made out, designating the date of enrollment or enlistment, tenth of December, eighteen hun
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I. NEW ORLEANS,
I. NEW ORLEANS,
OrE would have thought to find the entrance to the great Valley of the Mississippi far more imposing than any of our continent’s Atlantic portals, such as New York harbor, Delaware bay, the Chesapeaks, the St. Lawrence. It might, at least, have been expected that such a river as the Mississippi would have poured itself into the sea with a certain grandeur and decision. Once it may have done so. Forty thousand years ago, as Sir Charles Lyell computes, when whales sported where now the alligators
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II. ARRIVAL OF GENERAL JACKSON.
II. ARRIVAL OF GENERAL JACKSON.
Or the mode of General Jackson's entrance into New OrJeans we have a pleasant and picturesque account from the pen of Mr. Alexander Walker, a resident of the Crescent city, and author of the little work, entitled, Jackson and New Orleans ;” one of the best-executed and most entertaining pieces of American history in existence. What Mr. Walker has told so interestingly and well need not be told again in any words but his :— “The Bayou St. John empties into Lake Pontchartrain at a distance of seve
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III. RENDEZVOUS OF THE BRITISH FLEET.
III. RENDEZVOUS OF THE BRITISH FLEET.
Ar the western extremity of the island of Jamaica there are two headlands, eight miles apart, which inclose Negril Bay, and render it a safe and convenient anchorage. If the good Creoles of New Orleans could have surveyed, from the summit of one of those headlands, the scene which Negril Bay presented on the twenty-fourth of November, 1814, it is questionable if General Jackson could have given them the slightest confidence in his ability to defend their native city. The spectacle would have giv
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IV. THEE AMERICAN TROOPS.
IV. THEE AMERICAN TROOPS.
Wane Lieutenant Jones and Captain Lockyer were battling so flercely for the mastery of Lake Borgne at midday, on the fourteenth of December, General Jackson was return ing to New Orleans from his tour of inspection, not ill-content with what he had seen. Bad news traveled fast that day. Before he reached the city he had heard that the gunboats were lost ; that the enemy were masters of the lake; that a fleet such as the Gulf of Mexico had never borne before covered the deep waters nearest New Or
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V. JACKSON GOES TO MEET THE ENEMY,
V. JACKSON GOES TO MEET THE ENEMY,
How many a gallant life hung upon the chances of that one man’s capture! How many a wife, mother, sweetheart, over the sea, had been spared the desolation of their lives had one of the shower of bullets, amid which he fled, have stopped his flight! How differently it might have fared with New Orleans, with General Jackson, with the invading army, if the news from the Villeré plantation had been delayed but a few hours ! The individual invested with such sudden and extreme importance was young Ma
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VI. AFTERNOON IN THE BRITISH CAMP,
VI. AFTERNOON IN THE BRITISH CAMP,
Tat halt of the English troops, when a two hows’ march would have given them at least temporary possession of New Orleans, has subjected General Keane to animadversion from friend and foe. Bui. is the criticism just which condemns that unfortunate officer ? I think not. A very slight examination of the situation, as it must have appeared to him, is sufficient to show that to have acted otherwise he must have been a Napoleon or a fool. He was neither of those characters. Major-General John Keane
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VII. DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD,
VII. DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD,
Tour o'clock in the afternoon.—DMost of the American troops have reached the Rodriguez Canal ; others are coming up every moment. They are all on, or near the high road, which runs along the river's bank. The second division of the British army, consisting of the 21st, the 44th, and the 93d Highlanders, is nearing tho fisherman's village, at the mouth of the Bayou Bienvenu. The party in advance is quiescent and unsuspecting on and about the Villers plantation. General Keane and Colonel Thornton
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VIII. AFTER THE BATTLE.
VIII. AFTER THE BATTLE.
SucH were the scenes enacted on the plains of the Delta in the evening of December the 23d, 1814, for about the space of an hour and a half, Nine o’clock.—The Carolina, as we have seen, ceases her deadly fire. The second division of English troops have arrived, and mingled in the battle, more than repairing the casualties of the night in the English army. The fog, rising from the river, has spread densely over the field, first enveloping Jackson's division, which was nearest the river, then roll
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IX. DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH,
IX. DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH,
Tre Roderiguez canal was an old mill-race, partly filled up and grown over with grass. In the early days of the colony the planters built their mills on the levee, and obtained water power by cutting canals from the river to the swamp, through which poured an abundant flood during the periodical swellings of the river. The Roderiguez canal crossed the plain where the plain was narrowest ; and this circumstance it was that rendered the position chosen by General Jackson for his line of entrenchme
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X. AN EARNEST CHRISTMAS.
X. AN EARNEST CHRISTMAS.
A umERRY CHRISTMAS, I had almost written ; fo1, indeed, there was merriment in both armies on that Christmas Sunday, that doubly sacred festival of the religion of peace and good will. The American troops, at work all day upon the entrenchments, under the eye of a leader in whom they confided, and whose approving word was felt to be reward enough, were very cheerful, and not unfrequently gay and hilarious. From earliest dawn to latest dusk the work went on ; the entire available brain and muscle
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XI. THE LAST OF TEE CAROLINA,
XI. THE LAST OF TEE CAROLINA,
Ir was all over with the glorious little vessel. At dawn of day, on the 27th, the American troops were startled by the report of a larger piece of ordnance than they had yet heard from the enemy’s camp. The second shot from the great guns placed by the British on the levee during the night, white hot, struck the Carolina, pierced her side, and lodged in the main hold under a mass of cables, where it could neither be reached nor quenched. And this was but the prelude to a furious cannonade, which
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XII. GENERAL PAKENHAM MAKES A GRAND RECONNOISSANCE.
XII. GENERAL PAKENHAM MAKES A GRAND RECONNOISSANCE.
Tre morning of the 28th of December was one of those perfect mornings of the southern winter, to enjoy which it is almost worth while to live twenty. degrees too near the tropic of Cancer. Balmy, yet bracing ; brilliant, but soft; inviting to action, though rendering mere existence bliss. The golden mist that heralded the sun soon wreathed itself away and vanished into space, except that part of it which hung in glittering diamonds upan the herbage and the evergreens that encircled the stubbled-
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XIII. WHAT NEXT?
XIII. WHAT NEXT?
AYE, what next? General Pakenham had seen the American lines. The inference he drew from the sight was one of the strangest. One would have supposed that, with the first light of the next morning, he would have drawn away all his troops from the river, and, keeping near the swamp, have attacked the lines where General Gibbs had discovered them to be weakest. That General Jackson would have done so was shown by what he did do ; for he, too, had discovered the nearly fatal weakness of his left, an
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XIV. NEW YEAR'S DAY.
XIV. NEW YEAR'S DAY.
THE second Sunday of this strange mutual siege had come round. The light of another New Year's day had dawned upon the world ! The English soldiers had not worked so silently during the night upon their new batteries but that an occasional sound of hammering, dulled by distance, had been heard in the American lines. The outposts, too, had sent in news of the advance of British troops, who were busy at something, though the outposts could not say what. The veterans of the American army, that is,
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XV. FINAL PREPARATIONS.
XV. FINAL PREPARATIONS.
THE cotton error was quickly repaired. Every bale of that delusive material was removed from the works, and its vlace supplied with the black and spongy soil of the Delta, which the Sunday cannonade had shown to be a perfect defense ; the balls sinking into it out of sight without shaking the embankment, The lines were strengthened in every part, and new cannon mounted upon them, Work was continued upon the second line, a mile and half in the rear. Even a third line of defense was marked out and
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XVI. THEE EIGHTH OF JANUARY
XVI. THEE EIGHTH OF JANUARY
Ar one o'clock on the morning of this memorable day, on a couch in a room of the M‘Carty mansion-house, General Jackson lay asleep, in his worn uniform. Several of his aids slept upon the floor in the same apartment, all equipped for the field, except that their sword-belts were unbuckled, and their swords and pistols laid aside. A sentinel paced the adjacent passage. Sentinels moved noiselessly about the building, which loomed up large, dim and silent in the foggy night, among the darkening tre
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XVII. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER.
XVII. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER.
Yer Thornton carried the day on the western hank, Even while the men were in the act of cheering, General Jackson saw, with mortification and disgust, never forgotten by him while he drew breath, the division under General Morgan abandon their position and run in headlong flight toward the city. Clouds of smoke soon obscured the scene. But tho flashes of the musketry advanced up the river, disclosing to General Adair and his men the humiliating fact that their comrades had not rallied, but were
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XVIII. THE LADIES IN NEW ORLEANS,
XVIII. THE LADIES IN NEW ORLEANS,
Frou daylight fear blanched the cheeks of the mothers and maidens of the city, loft almost alone on the day of the great battle. When the eannonade began most of the male population who, from age, infirmity, or the scarcity of arms, were exempt from military duty, hastened toward the camp. Vou a safe distance in the rear of the lines they witnessed the flash and smoke of the combat ; the boys climbing trees to get a wider view ; men and boys all ready, if the lines were carried, to hurry back to
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XIX. THE DAY AFTER THE BATTLE.
XIX. THE DAY AFTER THE BATTLE.
THE ninth of January was the day on which General Jackson really felt himself the victor—felt that he had done what he came to New Orleans to do. The evening before a deserter brought in the news of General Pakenham’s death. In the morning, while the whole army was in the lines again ready to repel another attack, if another attack were intended, word came that the enemy had abandoned the western bank, and that General Morgan's troops were at their post once more, repairing damages and adding st
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XX. THE NEWS AT THE NORTH.
XX. THE NEWS AT THE NORTH.
As it will probably become apparent fo the reader, before he has done with this work, that the popularity of Andrew Jackson is the principal fact-in the political history of the United States during the last thirty-five years, it is imporVoL. 1L.—16 tant to show how that popularity came to be so overshadowing and irresistible ; came to be such that, to use language current in his day, it “could stand anything.” Such a defense as Jackson made of the southwest and of New Orleans would, in any coun
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XXI. FLIGHT OF THE ENGLISH.
XXI. FLIGHT OF THE ENGLISH.
How pleasant it would be to dismiss now the conqueror home to his Hermitage, to enjoy the congratulations of his neighbors and the plaudits of a nation whose pride he had so keenly gratified! But this may not be. His work was not done. The next three months of his life at New Orleans were crowded with events, many of which were delightful, many of which were painful in the extreme. The trials of the American army, so far as its patience was concerned, began, not ended, with the victory of the 8t
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XXII. EXECUTION OF SIX MILITIAMEN,
XXII. EXECUTION OF SIX MILITIAMEN,
Ox the twenty-first of February, 1815, when the northern States were in the first ecstacies of peace, the scene” just * alluded to occurred. The place was Mobile, then threatened by the British fleet, which had taken Fort Bowyer nine days before, and thus had Mobile at its mercy. The news of peace, which reached the British general by a ship direct from England, arrested his career of conquest, but was still unknown to the Americans on shore. A rumor of peace may have reached General Winchester,
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XXIII. THE ARRESTS AT NEW ORLEANS.
XXIII. THE ARRESTS AT NEW ORLEANS.
Harmless words, one would think. A wisc resolution, every one will admit. Yet it was the carrying out of this resolution that plunged General Jackson into the “sea of troubles,” to which allusion has before been made, Tor the first three weeks, however, after the triumphal return of the army to New Orleans, little occurred to disturb the publie harmony. Martial law was rigorously maintained, and all the troops were kept in service. The duty at the lines and below the lines was hard and disagreea
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XXIV. HOME IN TRIUMPH.
XXIV. HOME IN TRIUMPH.
TrE General's troubles were at an end. He remained at New Orleans twenty-four days after the arrival of the treaty. of peace, settling the accounts of contractors and merchants, and enjoying the festivities set on foot by the grateful citizens. Signor Nolte tells us that he found the General a hard man to deal with, “My claim,” says Nolte, ‘was a double one, first, for seven hundred and fifty woolen coverings, taken out of my warerooms ; second, for two hundred and fifty bales of cotton, taken f
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XXV. THE GENERAL RETAINS HIS COMMISSION.
XXV. THE GENERAL RETAINS HIS COMMISSION.
GENERAL JACKSON spent the summer months at the Hermitage, nursing his shattered constitution. Now that he was at home, he seemed to suffer more from his disease than he had during the fatigues and excitement of the late campaign, He had always been an impetuous eater, fond of a liberal table, and accustomed to partake freely and largely of whatever good things were before him. He was one of those long, thin men, who ply a vigorous knife and fork all their days and never grow fat. He was liable t
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XXVI. PRESIDENT MAKING IN 1816.
XXVI. PRESIDENT MAKING IN 1816.
A PRESIDENT was to be chosen to succeed Mr, Madison, whose second term would expire on the 4th of March, 1817. "The federal party, as a president-clecting power, was no more ; but, dying, had bequeathed its policy to the republicans, who had the weakness to accept the legacy, (For proof of which the reader need look no further than the messages of Messrs. Madison, Monroe, and John Quincy Adams, and compare them with the writings of Alesander Hamilton.) The republican party having gained an absol
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XXVIII. CORRESPONDENCE WITH JAMES MONROE.
XXVIII. CORRESPONDENCE WITH JAMES MONROE.
Tae good feeling existing between General Jackson and Mr, Monroe ripened into a warm and intimate friendship during the General's visit to Washington, in the fall of the year 1815. Mr. Monroe's subsequent election to the presidency was an event gratifying to General Jackson for all reasons. One reason was that he hated Crawford. Indeed the word hated is mild to express the boiling fury of the General's wrath against the huge Georgian. The origin of the fend, as related to me by one who was cogni
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XXVIII. HOSTILE CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT.
XXVIII. HOSTILE CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT.
GENERAL JACKSON had scarcely dispatched the last of his lofty, dispassionate epistles to Mr. Monroe, before he was involved'in a correspondence that was neither lofty nor dispassionate. Itwas as though he had said to himself: “These fine letters that I have been writing may lead those Washington gentlemen into the opinion that I am a mild philosopher in epaulets. I must now do something to correct that absurd impression.” Or it was as though, looking into the future, he had been seized with sudd
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XXIX, HOSTILE CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL ADAIR,
XXIX, HOSTILE CORRESPONDENCE WITH GENERAL ADAIR,
Bur when that swift, intuitive glance was not correct, no man could correct it. The affair with General Scott was a case in point, The feud with General John Adair of Kentucky was another. In both General Jackson was partly in the right and partly in the wrong, In the battle of the Sth of January, 1815, it will be remembered, General Adair commanded the Kentucky troops in the absence of General Thomas, who was sick. Solicitous for the honor of his adopted State and of the troops he had commanded
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XXX. THE FURTHER EXPLOITS OF COLONEL NICHOLS.
XXX. THE FURTHER EXPLOITS OF COLONEL NICHOLS.
There was trouble again among the Indians—the Indians of Florida, the allies of Great Britain during the war of 1812, commonly known by the name of Seminoles. Composed in part of fugitive Creeks, who scouted the treaty of Fort J. ackson, they had indulged the expectation that, on the conclusion of peace, they would be restored by their powerful ally to the lands wrested from the Creeks by Jackson's conquering arm in 1814. This claim of theirs to the lost territory of the Creeks, though groundles
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XXXI. A RED-HOT SHOT AT THE NEGRO FORT
XXXI. A RED-HOT SHOT AT THE NEGRO FORT
To South Carolina and Georgia, the Spanish province of Florida was the Dismal Swamp of the early day ; that is, a safe and tempting refuge for runaway slaves. Those States were the last to give up the African slave trade. As late as the year 1808, cargoes of African savages were landed at the Georgian ports and distributed among the Georgian planters. Even the docile African is not reduced to submission in a day, or a year, or a generation, It is said to require three generations to produce a ge
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XXXII. THE SEMINOLES FIND NEW FRIENDS,
XXXII. THE SEMINOLES FIND NEW FRIENDS,
Taz blowing up of the Negro Fort, besides quieting the frontiers for a few months, demonstrated to all parties concerned that the Spanish government in Florida was not a reality but a burlesque. The explosion gave an impetus to the negotiations for the purchase of the province by the United States. Before a year had elapsed, such hopeful progress had been made in the negotiation that American speculators, who had access to official information, began to buy land in the vicinity of Pemsacola, Amo
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XXXIII. FILLIBUSTERS IN FLORIDA,
XXXIII. FILLIBUSTERS IN FLORIDA,
Ox the Atlantic coast of Florida there is an island fifteen miles long and four wide, called Amelia Island ; which now forms part of the county of Nassau, and shows to the Cali-fornia steamers a revolving light one hundred feet above the sea, visible at a distance of sixteen miles. There is a town upon this island, Fernandina by name, a flourishing place in the old embargo and privateering times, with occasionally three hundred square-rigged vessels in its harbor ; but now much fallen to decay.
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XXXIV. ATTACK UPON FOWLTOWN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
XXXIV. ATTACK UPON FOWLTOWN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
Novemeer. Alarm pervades the frontiers of Georgia, The Seminoles are sullen and savage. During the autumn there have been outrages and murders. White men have killed and plundered Indians ; Indians have killed and plundered white men. United States troops again occupy Fort Scott and the other posts near the junction of the Chattahoochie and Flint. A body of Georgia militia are in the field, called ont to assist in expelling the fillibusters from Amelia, Boat loads of provisions and munitions are
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‘CHAPTER XXXV. ‘““PROMPTITUDE.”
‘CHAPTER XXXV. ‘““PROMPTITUDE.”
LATE in the evening of January 11th the express bearing the orders of Mr. Calhoun to General Jackson, after a ride of fifteen days, reached the Hermitage. Before he slept ‘that night the General had concluded upon his plan of operations. His plan was that of a man untrammeled by red tape and unacquainted with the art of ‘ How not to do it.” There are now in the field, Mr. Calhoun said, eight hundred regular troops and a thousand Georgia militia. If you think these forces insufficient, call on “
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XXXVI. EXECUTION OF ARBUTHNOT AND AMBRISTER,
XXXVI. EXECUTION OF ARBUTHNOT AND AMBRISTER,
General JAacksoN, in the conduct of this campaign, had exercised imperial functions. He had raised troops by a method unknown to the laws. He had invaded the dominions of a king who was at peace with the United States. He had seized a fortress of that province, expelled its garrison, and garrisoned it with his own troops. He had assumed the dread prerogative of dooming men to death without trial. All this may have been right. But if he had been Andrew I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the Unite
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XXXVIII. GEN. JACKSON'S SECOND VISIT TO PENSACOLA,
XXXVIII. GEN. JACKSON'S SECOND VISIT TO PENSACOLA,
The effect of this brief epistle upon the mind and movements of General Jackson, as explained by himself fo the Secretary of War, was the contrary of what the Governor of Pensacola anticipated. “This was so open an indication,” wrote the General in reference to the protest, “of an hostile feeling on his part, after having been early and well advised of the object of my operations, that I hesitated no longer on the measures to be adopted. I marched for and entered Pensacola, with only the show of
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XXXIX. THE ADMINISTRATION PERPLEXED,
XXXIX. THE ADMINISTRATION PERPLEXED,
THE proceedings of General Jackson had indeed placed the government in a “delicate situation.” The wounded pride of Spain was to be healed, if possible. Ominous questions from the British ministry had to be answered in some way. In a few months Congress would be making awkward inquiries and asking for documents—Congress, whose foremost man was a certain Henry Clay, not very friendly to the administration of Mr. Monroe, for reasons public and personal * Niles' Weekly Register, vol. xiv., p. 399 T
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XLI. A CHAPTER OF GLORY,
XLI. A CHAPTER OF GLORY,
GexEraL Jacksox left Washington on the 11th of Feb. ruary for a visit to Philadelphia and New York. New York he had never seen. Twenty-three years had elapsed since his first visit to Philadelphia, when no one remarked him except to stare at his eelskin queue, his coarse raiment and his western style. His arrival at Baltimore, on his way to the north, was unexpected, and the weather was inclement during his stay. He was, therefore, merely visited by the magnates of the city, who obtained from hi
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XLII. GENERAL JACKSON MEETS SILAS DINSMORE.
XLII. GENERAL JACKSON MEETS SILAS DINSMORE.
Ix the autumn of this year we find General Jackson again among the southern Indians, negotiating another of the long series of treaties by which the red man ceded to the stronger race his ancient heritage. The only incident of this journey that need detain us from more Important events is a scene that occurred on the treaty ground between General Jackson and his old enemy, Silas Dinsmore. An eye-witness of the scene (Colonel B. L. C. Wailes) has kindly written it out from the tablets of an excel
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XLIII. GENERAL JACKSON TAKES LEAVE OF THE ARMY,
XLIII. GENERAL JACKSON TAKES LEAVE OF THE ARMY,
Froripa is still the subject of our story. The people of the United States, when they read the announcement that Mr. Adams and the Spanish minister had signed the treaty of cession on the 22d of February, 1819, indulged the belief that they had at once acquired and done with Florida. They were destined to disappointment. If the readers of these pages have cherished a similar expectation, they also will discover that Florida is a subject not so easily disposed of. The eclat which accrued to the a
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XLIV. TIE GOVERNOR TAKES POSSESSION,
XLIV. TIE GOVERNOR TAKES POSSESSION,
GENERAL JACKSON left home on the 18th of April, accompanied by Mrs, Jackson and “the two Andrews,” as the General was wont to style his adopted son, and his nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson. Of the passage down the river to New Orleans, and the honors paid the General at that city, Mrs. Jackson shall speak to us. The reader will be glad of the opportunity to become more intimately acquainted with the lady whom General Jackson correctly styled “the stay and solace of his life.” The letters written
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XLV. THE GOVERNOR IS DISAPPOINTED,
XLV. THE GOVERNOR IS DISAPPOINTED,
GENERAL JACKSON'S powers, as Governor of Florida, were extraordinary, but strictly limited. “Know ye,” ran his commission, “ that, reposing special trust and confidence in the integrity, patriotism, and abilities of Major-General Andrew Jackson, I do appoint him to exercise all the powers and authorities heretofore exercised by the governor and captaingeneral and intendant of Cuba, and by the governors of East and West Florida ; provided, however, that the said Andrew Jackson, or any person acti
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XLVII. THE NEW HERMITAGE AND ITS INMATES,
XLVII. THE NEW HERMITAGE AND ITS INMATES,
HoME again,on the 3d of November. The administration still sustained him—though Mr. Adams said afterwards to a friend, who repeated the remark to me, that he dreaded the arrival of a mail from Florida, not knowing what General Jackson might do next; and knowing well that whatever he might do the Secretary of State was the individual who would have to explain it away to the Spanish goyernment. “Since my arrival at home,” wrote General Jackson to Judge Brackenridge in November, “I have received a
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XLVIII. SIX RICHMONDS IN THE FIELD.
XLVIII. SIX RICHMONDS IN THE FIELD.
Nixe times the country had survived a presidential election. Five Presidents had been chosen—Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe. Yet there had been but one evenly balanced, well-contested presidential campaign—that which ended in placing Thomas Jefferson at the head of affairs in 1801; an event so profoundly satisfactory fo the people that it was followed by a comparative political calm of more than twenty years’ duration. During all that long period Jefferson and his Virginian pupils
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APPENDIX. THE CESS10N OF FLORIDA,
APPENDIX. THE CESS10N OF FLORIDA,
Tre following important letter from General Jackson to Major Eaton, (received too late for insertion in the proper place), shows that the admins istration in 1819 had serious thoughts of seizing Florida, and that General Jackson was disposed to annex Texas also. The unexplained delay of Spain to ratify the treaty of cession, signed at Washington, February 22, 1819, was the cause of these hostile feelings, See Chapter XLIIL GENERAL JACKSON TO SENATOR EATON. “Herwtrage, December 25th, 1819, “Dear
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I. GENERAL JACKSON NOMINATED.
I. GENERAL JACKSON NOMINATED.
WIRE-PULLER is an opprobrious name, the popular theory being that o President of the United States is the choice of the people, expressed spontaneously. But a little reflection will lead any intelligent person to the conclusion that the popular choice can not often be spontaneous. In order that the people may be enabled to give effective expression to their desires, it is necessary that, from the mass of those who aspire to serve them, the two men should be selected who, more than any others, re
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II. KING CAUCUS DETHRONED,.
II. KING CAUCUS DETHRONED,.
A rerBisLE affliction fell upon Mr. Crawford. In August, 1823, when he was fifty-one years of age, he was stricken with paralysis, which left him helpless, specchless, nearly blind, and scarcely conscious. He rallied a little in the course of the month, but he lay during the rest of the canvass a wreck of the once stalwart and vigorous Crawford, slowly, very slowly regaining his faculties. By the aid of a mechanical contrivance, he was just able to affix his signature to public documents, and th
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III. GENERAL JACKSON IN THE SENATE.
III. GENERAL JACKSON IN THE SENATE.
December 5th, 1823, is the date of this entry in the journal of the Senate. Twenty-six years had passed away since last Andrew Jackson had pressed the senatorial morocco ; during which period the number of senators had increased from thirty-two to forty-eight. And again, as we look down the list of names, we are astonished to observe how few of them are known to the present generation. Rufus King, Martin Van Buren, Nathaniel Macon, John Branch, Robert Y. Hayne, Richard M. Johnson, John M, Eaton,
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IV. SENATOR JACKSON BURIES THE TOMAHAWK
IV. SENATOR JACKSON BURIES THE TOMAHAWK
GENERAL JACKSON was in excellent spirits and high good humor during the whole of this contest. His friends assured him that his success was certain, and they believed it was so. He could see for himself that no name had such power with the masses of the people as his. He lived in a cloud of incense. In the course of the winter he was reconciled to several gentlemen whom he had been long wont to reckon in the catalogue of his foes. General Winfield Scott was in Washington at the beginning of the
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V. THE RESULT OF THE CAMPAIGN,
V. THE RESULT OF THE CAMPAIGN,
THE result of the strife, which was known before the end of the year, it is necessary for us to understand precisely. Else we shall not be able to judge correctly the subsequent events. John C. Calhoun was elected Vice-President by a great majority. He received 182 electoral votes out of 261. All New England voted for him except Connectient and one electoral district of New Hampshire. Connecticut gave her eight (vice-presidential) votes for Andrew Jackson ; Now Hampshire, one vote; Maryland, one
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VI. HENRY CLAY ELECTS A PRESIDENT.
VI. HENRY CLAY ELECTS A PRESIDENT.
TrE people having failed to elect a President, it devolved apon the House of Representatives, voting by States, each State having one vote, to elect one from the three candidates who had received the highest number of electoral votes. A majority of States being necessary to an election, some one candidate had to secure the vote of thirteen States. The great question was to be decided on the 9th of February, 1825. Henry Clay, though excluded from the coming competition by the smallness of his ele
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VII. JACKSON'S PRIVATE OPINION OF THESE TRANSACTIONS
VII. JACKSON'S PRIVATE OPINION OF THESE TRANSACTIONS
Running for the presidency is not unlike the pursuit of a coy, bewitching damsel, whom one has long been accustomed to see at a distance, and to admire without a thought of possessing her. But the swain gets more intimately acquainted with her at Jength. She smiles upon him when he approaches. She seems not to disdain, nor to dislike the association of his name with hers, nor to prefer the society of other men to his. He has been wont to think of himself as an awkward, ungainly fellow, fit to “c
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VIII. PRESIDENT ADAMS REVIVES AN OLD CONTROVERSY.
VIII. PRESIDENT ADAMS REVIVES AN OLD CONTROVERSY.
Sixes Jefferson’s day, there have been in the world two. parties of political theorists. One of these, for lack of a better name, we may take the” liberty of styling the Paternal-Government party, because they think that the relation between government and people should be similar to that which exists between parent and children. Government, they say, should do as much for the people as it can, leaving the people free to attend to their private business. Government should undertake great nationa
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IX. GENERAL JACKSON RENOMINATED,
IX. GENERAL JACKSON RENOMINATED,
AccorpING to the time-honored usages of the Republican party, the presidency was disposed of for twenty-four years, Mr. Adams expected to hold his place for eight years. Mr. Clay expected to succeed him, as previous Secretaries of Stato had succeeded their chiefs. Mr. Clay would, of course, serve eight years, and appoint a Secretary of State to be his suecessor in 1841. And, doubtless, there were worthy young gentlemen, not a few, who had an eye fixed hopefully upon the year 1849. ’ But the deth
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X. TUE BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION CRY.
X. TUE BARGAIN AND CORRUPTION CRY.
Too much, by a hundred thousand pages, having been already written upon this sorry business, I have been sorely tempted to pass it over without mention. The disgraceful story must be told, however. It belongs to our subject. It can not be suffered to’ pass into that oblivion which has ruthlessly swallowed so much that was better worth preservation. Give us a good cry to go down to the country with,” say the London clubs to a shaky ministry anticipating a dissolution of Parliament. The Jackson pa
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XI. MARTIN VAN BUREN.
XI. MARTIN VAN BUREN.
Yes, Martin Van Buren, late the opponent of Jackson, the ally of Crawford. Not De Witt Clinton, who had been for many years General Jacksons friend and eulogist, and who, it was supposed, cherished an expectation of succeeding him in the presidency. Mr. Van Buren must do the work, or it will not be done. Mr. Clinton was no politician. Mr. Van Buren was the politician of the State. But how are we to know any thing about aman who was supposed to excel all men in concealing his motives and his move
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XII. THE CAMPAXGN OF 1828.
XII. THE CAMPAXGN OF 1828.
TrE friends of the administration were not alarmed. Mr. Clay himself was not. Mr. Adams, if less confident than hig sanguine Secretary of State, expected a vetlection. Mr. Webster, then on the most cordial terms with Henry Clay, and a pillar of the administration, felt sure of success as late as the spring of 1827. Mr. Webster, like most of the educated inhabitants of Boston, knew nothing of the people of the United States, and was generally wrong in his political prophecies. To his friend, Jere
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XIII. RESULT OF THE ELECTION.
XIII. RESULT OF THE ELECTION.
THE number of electoral votes in 1828 was two hundred and sixty-one. One hundred and thirty-one was a majority. General Jackson received one hundred and seventy-eight ; Mr. Adams, eighty-three. With the exception of one electoral district in Maine, Messrs. Adams and Rush received the entire vote of New England ; New Hampshire itself, despite the exertions of Isaac Hill, voting for them. Of the thirty-six electoral votes cast by the State of New York, Adams and Rush obtained sixteen ; Jackson and
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XIV. DEATH AT THE HERMITAGE.
XIV. DEATH AT THE HERMITAGE.
For four or five years the health of Mrs. Jackson had Deen precarious. She had complained, occasionally, of an uneasy feeling about the region of the heart ; and, during the late excitements, she had been subject to sharper pains and palpitation. The aspersions upon her character had wounded deeply her feelings and her pride. She was frequently found in tears. Long esteemed as the kindest and most motherly of women, she had of late years been revered by a circle of religious ladies as their chie
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XV. INAUGURATION,
XV. INAUGURATION,
THERE was no time for mowning. Haggard with grief and watching, *“ twenty years older in a night,” as one of his friends remarked, the President-elect was compelled to enter without delay upon the labor of preparing for his journey to ‘Washington. His inaugural address, the joint production of himself, Major Lewis, and Henry Lee, was written at the house of Major Lewis, near Nashville. But one slight alteration was made in this document after the General reached the seat of government. General J
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XVI. THE CABINET AND THE KITCHEN CABINET.
XVI. THE CABINET AND THE KITCHEN CABINET.
It is not so well known to the public, as it is to society ir Washington, that there is an Imaginary difference of rank between the members of the cabinet. The Secretary of State, every one knows, is at the head of the cabinet, and sits at the President's right hand in cabinet councils, and takes precedence of every one except the President and the Vice-President. Next to him is the Secretary of the Treasury, who also has more valuable offices in his gift than any other cabinet minister ; the en
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XVII. MRS, EATON,
XVII. MRS, EATON,
Wirnian O’NEarn kept at Washington for many years a. large old-fashioned tavern, where members of Congress, in considerable numbers, boarded during the sessions of the national legislature. William O’Neal had a daughter, sprightly and beautiful, who aided him and his wife in entertaining his boarders. If is not good for a girl to grow up in a large tavern. Peg O'Neal as she was called, was so lively in her deportment, so free in her conversation, that, had she been born twenty yehrs later, she w
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NARRATIVE BY GENERAL JACKSON.
NARRATIVE BY GENERAL JACKSON.
To which I replied, I regretted that either ke or Dr. Ely had not come directly to me with the Zale, before Dr. Ely left Washington. If they had done so, I told him, I could easily have shown them the falsehood of some of the charges contained in Dr. Ely's letter to me, and would bave pointed out to them some of the unhappy consequences tbat must now inevitably take place. I told him that I never had heard of this fale, circulated as coming from a dead doctor, before I read it in Dr. Ely's lette
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XVIII. TERROR AMONG THE OFFICE-HOLDERS,
XVIII. TERROR AMONG THE OFFICE-HOLDERS,
CoxsrrrurioNn makers do all they can to support the weakness of human virtue when subjected to the temptations of power and place. But virtue can not be dispensed with in this world. No system of “checks and balances” can be made so perfect but that much must be left, after all, to the honor of governing persons. Among the powers entrusted to the honor of presidents of the United States was the dread power of removing from office, without trial or notice, the civil employés of the government. In
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XX. FIRST BLOW AT THE BANK.
XX. FIRST BLOW AT THE BANK.
THE people of the United States came naturally enough by their old distrust of paper-money and banks. As early as 1690, we read in the old News-Letters, it required, in the village of New York, two paper dollars to buy one silver one. The colonists had been disastrously fighting the French in Canada, and paying expenses in paper. In 1745, the great and famous expedition against Louisburgh, in Cape Breton, was paid for partly in the same unsubstantial coin, which had so depreciated in 1748 that t
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XXI. CONGRESS MEETS.
XXI. CONGRESS MEETS.
GENERAL JaCKsoN prepared his Messages very much as the editor of a metropolitan journal gets up” his thundering leaders ; only not quite so expeditiously. He used to begin to think about his Message three or four months before the meeting of Congress. Whenever he had “ an idea,” he would malke a brief memorandum of it -on any stray piece of paper that presented itself, and put it into his capacious white hat for safe keeping. By the time it became necessary to put the document into shape, he wou
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XXIV. AN UNHARMONIOUS CABINET.
XXIV. AN UNHARMONIOUS CABINET.
Courp the Cabinet be other than an unharmonious one ? It was divided into two parties upon the all-absorbing question of Mrs. Eaton's character. For Mrs, Eaton were Mr Van Buren, Major Baton, Mr. Barry, and the President. Against Mrs. Eaton were Mr, Ingham, Mr. Branch, Mr, Berrien, and the Vice-President. The situation of poor Eaton was most embarrassing and painful ; for the opposition to his wife being feminine, it could neither be resisted nor avenged. He was the most miserable of men, and th
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XXV. THE PRESIDENT BREAKS WITH THE VICE-PRESIDENT,
XXV. THE PRESIDENT BREAKS WITH THE VICE-PRESIDENT,
ScarcELY had the Cabinet been pacificated, when the suppressed feud between General Jackson and Mr. Calhoun was changed, so far as the President was concerned, into avowed and irreconcilable hostility. Mr. Van Buren has long rested under the imputation of having precipitated this quarrel for purposes of his own. The reader, however, is aware that General Jackson’s antipathy to Mr. Calhoun was strong as early as December, 1829, and that Mr. Van Buren had no need, for purposes of his own, to infla
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XXVI. THE ‘GLOBE’ ESTABLISHED.
XXVI. THE ‘GLOBE’ ESTABLISHED.
Tre feud between the President and the Vice-President, which was not known to the public for nearly a year after their correspondence closed, began to produce serious effects almost immediately. Among those who most lamented the estrangement, and had most reason to lament it,was General Dufl Green, editor of the United States Telegraph, and printer to Congress. ‘ We endeavored,” he said afterward, in his paper, “ to postpone the crisis by direct appeals to the President and to Mr. Calhoun. We re
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XXVIII. ) CONGRESS IN SESSION.
XXVIII. ) CONGRESS IN SESSION.
Tre administration of General Jackson, however distracted by internal broils, whatever motives of a partisan or personal character influenced it, always came before the public with an imposing air of calm dignity and single-eyed patriotism. No one could ever suppose, from its public papers, that, from the beginning to the end of its existence, it scarcely knew a month of internal peace and real codperative harmony. Congress met again on the 6th of December, and on the day following Major Donelso
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XXVIII. DISSOLUTION OF THE CABINET.
XXVIII. DISSOLUTION OF THE CABINET.
Towarb the close of this brief and uneventful session of Congress, Mr. Calhoun published his “ Book,” as it was sneeringly called at the time ; a pamphlet of fifty pages octavo, containing his late correspondence with the President, and a mass of letters, statements, and certificates illustrative thereof. In a prefatory address to the people of the United States, Mr. Calhoun explained his reasons for making a publication so unusual and unexpected. ‘ Previous to my arrival at Washington” (in Dece
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XXIX,. THE BANK-VETO SESSION.
XXIX,. THE BANK-VETO SESSION.
Turs was the great session of Jackson's administration, The session of Congress preceding a presidential campaign is always exciting, and generally important ; but none since the earliest years of the republic has been so exciting or so important as this. Illustrious names, great debates, extraordinary incidents, momentous measures, combine to render it memorable. Strengthened by Mr. Clay’s retmrn to the Senate, and supposed to be strengthened by Mr. Calhoun’s defection, magnificently endowed wi
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GHAPTER XXX, THE BANK VETO.
GHAPTER XXX, THE BANK VETO.
THERE was division in the Bank councils. A large number of the Bank’s wisest friends desired, above all things, to keep the question of re-chartering out of the coming presidential campaign. Others said: “It is now or never with us. We have a majority in both Houses in favor of re-chartering. Let us seize the opportunity while we have it, for it may never return.” “No,” said the opposite party, “the President will most assuredly veto the bill ; and we can not carry it over the veto, Then, if the
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XXXII. RE-ELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON,
XXXII. RE-ELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON,
A STRANGE, sad, exciting, eventful summer was that of 1832. It opened gayly enough. The country had never been under such headway before. In looking over the newspapers for May of that year, the eye is arrested by the incident of * Washington Irving's triumphal return home after an absence from his native land of seventeen years. He had gone away an unknown youth, or little known beyond his own circle, and came back a renowned author who had won as much: honor for his country as for himself. The
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XXXII. NULLIFICATION AS AN IDEA,
XXXII. NULLIFICATION AS AN IDEA,
The interpretation put upon the Resolutions of 98 by the Nullifiers of 1832 was this: Any single State may nullify any act of Congress which it deems unconstitutional. Mr. Calhoun contended that such nullification was not an act tending to dissolve the Union, but, on the contrary, to strengthen it. Every thing else conld go on as before. The nullifying State merely refused obedience to one objectionable act, and would wait patiently for Congress to repeal it. The extreme nullifiers, the men of t
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XXXITI. NULLIFICATION AS AN EVENT,
XXXITI. NULLIFICATION AS AN EVENT,
CavLmoux began it. Calhoun continued it. Calhoun stopped it. So much is known. But the means arc not accessible, and are not likely to be, of forming a certain judgment respecting the character of this celebrated person. We can not positively determine whether he was a selfish, or merely a mistaken man ; or, in other words, whether it was the love of the presidency, or of justice and South Carolina, that impelled him. The old Jackson men of the inner set still speak of Mr. Calhoun in terms which
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XXXIV. NULLIFICATION EXPLODES AND TRIUMPHS,
XXXIV. NULLIFICATION EXPLODES AND TRIUMPHS,
CoxcrEss met on the third of December. Mr. Calhoun had not reached Washington, and his intention to resign the vice-presidency was not known there. Judge White, of Tennessee, was elected president of the Senate, pro tem., and the President of the United States was then notified that Congress was ready to receive the annual message. The message of 1832 reveals few traces of the loud and threatening contentions amid which it was produced. It is an unusually quiet and business-like document. The ra
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XXXV. THE SUMMER TRAVELS OF THE PRESIDENT.
XXXV. THE SUMMER TRAVELS OF THE PRESIDENT.
GENERAL JACKSON passed his sixty-sixth birth-day in the spring of 1833. He stood then at the highest point of his career. Opposition was, for the moment, almost silenced ; and the whole country, except South Carolina, looked up to him as to a savior. He had but to go quietly on during the remaining years of his term, making no new issues, provoking no new controversies, to leave the chair of state more universally esteemed than he was when he assumed it. Going quietly on, however, was not his fo
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XXXVI. WAR UPON THE BANK RENEWED.
XXXVI. WAR UPON THE BANK RENEWED.
Tr is the nature of every thing that has life to try to prolong its life. So the Bank of the United States could not make up its mind to die on the 4th of Murch, 1836. By the aid of the press, and, possibly, by other means less legitimate, it still hoped to obtain a re-charter from Congress by a majority that would render the veto of the President power Tess. - I say, possibly, by means less legitimate. The charge was made, and there was probably truth in the charge ; but how much truth, it is i
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XXXVII. MR. DUANE’S NARRATIVE,
XXXVII. MR. DUANE’S NARRATIVE,
It is not true, as has been a hundred times asserted, that Mr. Duane was appointed Secretary of the Treasury for the purpose of removing the deposits. The post was offered him in December, 1832, when the President had not yet conceived the idea of removing them by an act of executive authority. Mr. Duane owed his appointment to the respect and affection which General Jackson entertained for his father and for himself. There was no intrigue or mystery about it. In 1838 Mr. Duane wrote, and printe
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XXXVIIIL THE BANK CURTAILS.
XXXVIIIL THE BANK CURTAILS.
Pucrists begin a fight for the championship by shaking hands ; but there comes a moment, in the course of the contest, when the man who is going to lose the battle loses his temper. The bank, so courteous and dignified in 1829, lost its temper for a moment, when the “ Paper read to the Cabinet on the Eighteenth of September”—a paper replete with accusations against its honor—announced to all the world the removal of the government deposits. The Report published by the directors, in reply to the
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XXXIX. THE PANIC SESSION OF CONGRESS.
XXXIX. THE PANIC SESSION OF CONGRESS.
Tug twenty-third Congress, from the extraordinary number of its members who have filled important stations, has been styled the Star Congress. In the Senate were Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Benton, Wright, Frelinghuysen, Southard, Clayton, Rives, Tyler, Mangum, Preston, Forsyth, Grundy, White, and Poindexter—a galaxy of stars. In the House were Franklin Pierce, Choate, John Quincy Adams, John Davis, Cambreleng, Fillmore, Horace Binney, Stephenson, Henry A. Wise, McDuffie, Richard 31. Johnson, John B
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XL. THE FRENCH IMBROGLIO.
XL. THE FRENCH IMBROGLIO.
Tre particular complaisance of General Jackson’s administration toward Great Britain has already excited our surprise. Still less could it have been foreseen, that the only country with which it was to be dangerously embroiled was the old ally of the democratic party, the favorite land of Jefferson and Jeffersonians—France. In May, 1806, the British government issued an Order in vor. 1—36 Council, which declared the northern coast of Europe, from Denmark to the Bay of Biscay, all of which was th
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XLI. OTHER EVENTS OF 1835 AND 1836.
XLI. OTHER EVENTS OF 1835 AND 1836.
Tak eighth of January, 1835, was the day which General Jackson esteemed the most glorious of his presidency It was the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, which has now been for forty-five years celebrated in the United States as a party festival. In 1835, the occasion was seized by the democratic leaders to celebrate also the payment of the last instalment of the national debt. The President had looked forward to the extinguishment of that debt as he would have done to the deliverance of
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XLII. WHITE HOUSE ANECDOTES,
XLII. WHITE HOUSE ANECDOTES,
Ir belongs to our task to show how General Jackson, when President of the United States, appeared to those who conversed and associated with him. The material here is superabundant and interesting, but somewhat unmanageable. He lived always in a crowd. The city of Washington, we may premise, was the unforeseen result of an after-dinner conversation between Hamilton, Jefferson, and two or three “Potomac members” of Congress. Hamilton, finding himself in a minority upon one of his fiscal measures,
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XLIII. CLOSE OF THE ADMINISTRATION,
XLIII. CLOSE OF THE ADMINISTRATION,
Mr. Vax Bure had been elected to succeed General Jackson. The administration commanded a majority in both Houses. Mr. Polk, a strenuous and unscrupulous partisan, was speaker of the House of Representatives. The impending session of Congress was the “short” session. The opposition was disheartened, and the President's popularity was undiminished. In these circumstances it would have been reasonable to expect that the last few months of General Jackson’s tenure of power would exhibit a lull in th
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XLIV,. IN RETIREMENT,
XLIV,. IN RETIREMENT,
By easy stages, stopping often and long to rest, the exPresident traveled homeward. He visited Chief Justice Taney at his seat in Maryland. At Cincinnati he remained for two weeks, the guest of General Robert Lytle, a democratic member of Congress. He is said to have conversed on his journey home, with extraordinary freedom upon political subjects and persons. It appears to rest upon good testimony that, during his stay at Cincinnati, he expressed regret at having become estranged, from Henry Cl
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XLV. GENERAL JACESON JOINS THE CHURCH.
XLV. GENERAL JACESON JOINS THE CHURCH.
THE north-of-Irelanders are a religious people. From his mother, from the traditions of his father and his race, from the example of his circle of relatives in the Carolinas, from his early attendance at the old log church in the Waxhaws, General Jackson had derived a regard for religion and its observances, which, in the wildest period of his life, was never wholly forgotten by him. To clergymen he always paid particular respect, and among them he found some of his warmest friends. Without ever
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GENERAL JACKSON'S WILL.
GENERAL JACKSON'S WILL.
Heranrrage, June Tth, 1843, Ix aE Name or Gop, Amex:—J, Andrew Jackson, Sr, being of sound mind, memory, and understanding, and impresse 1 with the great uncertainty of life and tne certainty of death, and being desirous to dispoga of my temporal affairs so that after my death no contention may arise rel ative to the same; and whereas, since executing my will of the 30th of September, 1833, my estate has become greatly involved by my liabilities for the debts of my well-beloved aud adopted son,
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XLVI. GENERAL JACKSON ANNEXES TEXAS.
XLVI. GENERAL JACKSON ANNEXES TEXAS.
For forty years or more General Jackson had cherished the desire to push the Spaniards further back from the western boundary of the United States. In Col. Burr's fillibustering scheme of 1806, so far as it related to the conquest of Texas, he had heartily sympathised. Yet he assented to the Spanish treaty of 1819, which gave us Florida, and gave up Texas. We have shown that he did so in a previous volume.# To the opinions expressed in 1820 he adhered, so far as is known, until he came to the pr
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XLVII. THE CLOSING SCENES.
XLVII. THE CLOSING SCENES.
A tougHER piece of slender manhood than Andrew Jackson never lived. Inheriting a constitution that was never robust, he had been for thirty-one years a diseased man, He went into the Creek war in 1813, wounded and weak from the loss of blood, to encounter hardships and privations that were borne with difficulty by strong men in perfect health. He came home in 1815, with his digestive powers impaired beyond remedy. Thenceforth, he was an invalid—often prostrated, always liable to be so after the
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XLVIII. POSTHUMOUS,
XLVIII. POSTHUMOUS,
WaEex the news of the death of General Jackson reached Washington, the President of the United States ordered the departments to be closed for one day, and Mr. Bancroft, the Secretary of the Navy and Acting Secretary of War, directed public honors to be paid to the memory of the ex-President, at all the military and naval stations. In every large town in the country there were public ceremonies in honor of the deceased, consisting usually of an oration and a procession, In the city of New York t
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1 ND
1 ND
EX A, Vol. IL, 79. in dnel with Jackson, 162, Vol, II, Descends the Mississippi to N. O., 36; commands Kentucky troops, 150; in spects the lines in company with Jackson, ; 172 : makes an important suggestion, 1163 ! stations reserve on Jan. Sth, 183; eommended by Jackson on Jan. Sth, 20351 advises Jackson not to attack, 2555 allu-; sion to, 241; commended by Jackson, 276; thanked by legislature of La., 306; to Anderson upon Jackeon's running for the presidency in 1810, 550 5 correspondence with
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ARNSTEONG,
ARNSTEONG,
ARMSTRONG, Gen, AVERY, Isaac T. AVERY, Waightstill. AXLEY, Rev. Mr. Racor, Hon, Charles, 703 Dale, 462; Jackson and Dr, Physic, 439; Jackson and Dr, Van Delt, 490 5 Jackson on his way to Rip Raps, 403: Jackson and the N. Y. deputations, 543, 551 ; Jackson and the threatened impeachment, 554; ancedotes of White House life, 601 to 616 Jackson Joining the church, 045 to 643 Jackson nominated a ruling cider, $433 Jackson and bis new will, 64), Vol. 1, APrALACHICOLA, the. Fob I Arms landed near, 591.
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INUVDEX.
INUVDEX.
Vol. IIL At Boston dinner, 442; in Con gress, 537. CrOWEDILL, William. Vol. ITI. Hig testimony in bargain affair, 1 CruprRLAYD VALLEY. Vol L 125, 131 ; Indians of, 131, Cummings, James, Vol I. Exculpateg Gee. Coeke, 458. CurETON, Jeremiah. Vol. M'Komie farm, 56. CueroN, Thomas, VoL I Ils testimony respecting Jackson's birthplace, 55. Cuneron, Thomas J. Vol. L His testimoay respecting Jackson's birthplace, 56. Cvsig, Mr. Vol. IIL Presents Washington 8 telescope ta Jackson, 37, Cvstis, Nelly. Vol.
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