Famous American Statesmen Part 10

While these busy preparations were going on, food was brought to General Jackson, which he ate in the saddle. Christmas day came. The English Admiral Cochrane had said, "I shall eat my Christmas dinner in New Orleans." General Jackson heard of it, and remarked, "Perhaps so; but I shall have the honor of presiding at that dinner."

The Americans were ready, but the British did not make the expected attack. Every man was at his post. When an officer, the son of one of Jackson's best friends, said to him, "May I go to town to-day?" the reply was, "Of course, Captain Livingston, you _may_ go; but _ought_ you to go?" The young man blushed, bowed, and returned to duty.

Meantime, the British were not idle. They had determined to silence the guns of the American s.h.i.+ps, and, with great toil, had brought up into the swampy ground nine field-pieces, two howitzers, one mortar, a furnace for heating b.a.l.l.s, and the necessary ammunition. At dawn on the morning of December 27 the firing began. The Carolina, after a terrific bombardment, blew up. The Louisiana fought her way out into a place of safety.

The days went by slowly under the dreadful suspense. On New Year's day, General Packenham cannonaded the Americans and was driven back. On January 8, the final battle began. Early in the morning, the British moved against the Americans. Jackson walked along the lines, cheering the men, "Stand to your guns. Don't waste your ammunition. See that every shot tells. Give it to them, boys! Let us finish the business to-day."

And every shot did tell. The sharpshooters aimed at the officers, and the batteries mowed down the British regulars. Seeing them falter, Packenham rushed among the men, shouting, "For shame! recollect that you are British soldiers!" Taking off his hat, he spurred his horse to the head of the wavering column. A ball splintered his right arm. Then the Highlanders came to the support of their comrades.

"Hurrah! brave Highlanders!" he said, as a ma.s.s of grape-shot tore open his thigh and killed his horse. Another shot struck him, and he was borne under a live-oak to die. The great tree is still standing.

At nine o'clock in the morning the battle was virtually over. The English lost seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, and five hundred taken prisoners; while the Americans lost but eight killed and thirteen wounded. "The field was so thickly strewn with the dead that, from the American ditch, you could have walked a quarter of a mile to the front on the bodies of the killed and disabled.... The course of the column could be distinctly traced in the broad red line of the victims of the terrible batteries and unerring guns of the Americans. They fell in their tracks; in some places, whole platoons lay together, as if killed by the same discharge."

The news of this great victory at New Orleans astonished the North, and made Jackson the hero of his time. The whole country was proud of a man who could win such a battle, losing the lives of so few of his men.

Nearly every State pa.s.sed resolutions in his praise. The Senate and House of Representatives ordered a gold medal to be struck in his honor. Philadelphia enjoyed a general illumination; one of the transparencies representing the general on horseback in pursuit of the enemy, with the words, "This day shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but He in it shall be remembered." Henry Clay said, "Now I can go to England without mortification."

When Jackson and his army returned to New Orleans, men, women, and children came out to meet them. Young ladies strewed flowers along the way; children crowned the general with laurel, and an impressive service was held in his honor in the Cathedral. He replied, "For myself, to have been instrumental in the deliverance of such a country is the greatest blessing that Heaven could confer. That it has been effected with so little loss--that so few tears should cloud the smiles of our triumph, and not a cypress leaf be interwoven in the wreath which you present, is a source of the most exquisite enjoyment."

Mrs. Jackson and little Andrew, now seven years old, came down from the Hermitage, and his cup of joy was indeed full. To have Rachel's commendation was more than to have that of all of the world besides. The ladies of New Orleans gave to her a valuable set of topaz jewelry, and to the general a diamond pin. A month later, they were at home once more. He had shown the good judgment, the calm bravery, the comprehensive outlook, the quick decision, the tender compa.s.sion of the great soldier. Perhaps the busy public life was over--who could tell?

Four months later, General Jackson went to Was.h.i.+ngton, at the request of the Secretary of War, to arrange about the stations of the army in the South. The journey thither was one constant ovation. At a great banquet tendered him at Lynchburg, Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, then seventy-two, gave this toast: "Honor and grat.i.tude to those who have filled the measure of their country's honor." At Was.h.i.+ngton also he received distinguished attention.

In 1817, the Seminole Indians of Georgia and Alabama had become hostile.

General Jackson was the man to conquer them. He immediately marched into their country with eighteen hundred whites and fifteen hundred friendly Indians, and in five months subjugated them.

Florida was purchased in 1819, and two years later Jackson was appointed its governor, with a salary of five thousand dollars. Mrs. Jackson joined him there, but neither was happy, and he soon resigned, and returned with her to the Hermitage. He had built for her a new house, a two-story brick, surrounded by a double piazza. He was at this time frail in health, and did not expect ever to live in the home, but wished it to be made beautiful for her. He hoped now to live a quiet life, enjoying his garden and his farm; but the nation had other plans for him.

In 1823, Jackson was elected to the United States Senate, twenty-six years after his first appearance in that body. He was now prominently mentioned as a candidate for the Presidency. Strange contrast indeed to the days when, bare-footed and orphaned, he struggled for the rudiments of an education.

While he had many ardent friends, he had strong opponents. Daniel Webster said, "If General Jackson is elected, the government of our country will be overthrown; the judiciary will be destroyed;" yet he added, "His manners are more presidential than those of any of the candidates. He is grave, mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly." Jefferson said, "I feel very much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of for the place. He has had very little respect for laws or const.i.tution, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His pa.s.sions are terrible.... He has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man." But the people knew he had conquered the Indians and the British, and they believed in him.

The candidates for the Presidency in 1824 were Jackson, John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. While Jackson received the largest popular vote, the House of Representatives, balloting by States, elected John Quincy Adams. It was believed that Clay used his influence for Adams against Jackson, and this caused the election of Adams, a scholarly man, the son of John Adams, and long our representative abroad.

Four years later, in 1828, the people made their voices heard at the ballot-box, and Jackson was elected by a large majority. The contest had been exceedingly personal and annoying. The old stories about his marriage were again dragged through the press. Mrs. Jackson, a victim of heart-disease, was unduly troubled, and became broken in health. When he was elected, she said, "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad; for my own part, I never wished it."

Jackson had built for her a small brick church in the Hermitage grounds, and here, where the neighbors and servants gathered, she found her deepest happiness, and sighed for no greater sphere of usefulness. When she urged the general to join her church, he said, "My dear, if I were to do that now, it would be said, all over the country, that I had done it for the sake of political effect. My enemies would all say so. I cannot do it _now_, but I promise you that, when once more I am clear of politics, I will join the church."

The people of Nashville were of course proud that one from their city had been chosen to so high a position, and tendered him a banquet on December 23, the anniversary of the first battle at New Orleans. A few days before this, Mrs. Jackson was taken ill, but she urged her husband to make himself ready for the banquet. While he had watched by her bedside constantly, on the evening of December 22, she was so much better that he consented to lie down on a sofa in an adjoining room. He had not been there five minutes before a cry was heard from Mrs.

Jackson. He hastened to her, but she never breathed again.

He could not believe that she was dead. When they brought a table to lay her body upon it, he said tenderly, in a choking voice, "Spread four blankets upon it. If she does come to, she will lie so hard upon the table."

All night long he sat beside the form of his beloved Rachel, often feeling of her heart and pulse. In the morning he was wholly inconsolable, and, when he found that she was really dead, the body could scarcely be forced from his arms.

At the funeral, the road to the Hermitage was almost impa.s.sable. The press said of her, "Her pure and gentle heart, in which a selfish, guileful, or malicious thought, never found entrance, was the throne of benevolence.... To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to supply the indigent, to raise the humble, to notice the friendless, and to comfort the unfortunate, were her favorite occupations.... Thus she lived, and when death approached, her patience and resignation were equal to her goodness; not an impatient gesture, not a vexatious look, not a fretful accent escaped her: but her last breath was charged with an expression of tenderness for the man whom she loved more than her life, and honored next to her G.o.d." Only such a nature could have held the undivided love of an impetuous, imperious man. Jackson, like so many other unchristian men, had the wisdom to desire and to choose for himself a Christian wife.

He prepared a tomb for her like an open summer-house, and buried her under the white dome supported by marble pillars. On the tablet above her are the words, "Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson.... Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound, but could not dishonor. Even Death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her G.o.d."

Such a woman need have no fear that she will fade out of a human heart.

While Jackson lived, he wore her miniature about his neck, and every night laid it open beside her prayer-book at his bedside. Her face was the last thing upon which his eyes rested before he slept, through those eight years at the White House, and the first thing upon which his eyes opened in the morning. Possibly it is not given to all women to win and hold so complete and beautiful an affection; perchance the fault is sometimes theirs.

Andrew Jackson went to Was.h.i.+ngton, having grown "twenty years older in a night," his friends said. His nephew, Andrew Jackson Donelson, and his lovely wife accompanied him. Earl, the artist, who had painted _her_ picture ("her" always meant Rachel with General Jackson), for this reason found a home also at the White House.

The inauguration seemed to have drawn the whole country together.

Webster said, "I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons have come five hundred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger." After the ceremony, crowds completely filled the White House.

During the first year of the Presidency, the unfortunate maxim which had found favor in New York politics, "To the victors belong the spoils,"

began to be carried out in the removal, it is believed, of nearly two thousand persons from office, and subst.i.tuting those of different political opinions. The removals raised a storm of indignation from the opposite party, which did not in the least disturb General Jackson.

In his first message to Congress, after maintaining that a long tenure of office is corrupting, urging that the surplus revenue be apportioned among the several States for works of public utility, he took strong ground against rechartering the United States Bank. This caused much alarm, for the influence of the bank was very great. Its capital was thirty-five million dollars. The parent bank was at Philadelphia, with twenty-five branches in the large cities and towns. Since Alexander Hamilton's time, a government bank had been a matter of contention. When the second was started in 1816, after the war of 1812, business seemed to revive, but many persons believed, with Henry Clay, that such a bank was unconst.i.tutional, and a vast political power that might be, and was, corruptly used. Complaints were constantly heard that officials were favored.

When the bill to recharter the bank pa.s.sed Congress, Jackson promptly vetoed the bill. He said, "We can, at least, take a stand against all new grants of monopolies and exclusive privileges, against any prost.i.tution of our government to the advancement of the few at the expense of the many." A few years later he determined to put an end to the bank by removing all the surplus funds, amounting to ten millions, and placing them in certain State banks. When Mr. Duane, the Secretary of the Treasury, would not remove the deposits, General Jackson immediately removed him, putting Roger B. Taney in his place. Congress pa.s.sed a vote of censure on the President, but it was afterward expunged from the records. Speculation resulted from the distribution of the money; the panic of 1836-37 followed, which the Whigs said was caused by the destruction of the bank, and the Democrats by the bank itself.

The United States Bank was not the only disturbing question in these times. The tariff, which was advantageous to the manufacturers of the North, was considered disadvantageous to the agricultural interests of the South. Bitter feeling was engendered by the discussion, till South Carolina, under the leaders.h.i.+p of John C. Calhoun, declared that the acts of Congress on the tariff were null and void; therefore, nullification or disunion became the absorbing topic. Then came the great dispute between Robert Y. Hayne and Daniel Webster.

If the nullifiers or believers in extreme States' rights supposed Jackson to be on their side, they were quickly undeceived. When Jefferson's birthday, April 13, was observed in Was.h.i.+ngton, as it had been for twenty years, Jackson sent the following toast: "OUR FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED." He wrote to the citizens of Charleston, "Every enlightened citizen must know that a separation, could it be effected, would begin with civil discord, and end in colonial dependence on a foreign power, and obliteration from the list of nations." He said, "If this thing goes on, our country will be like a bag of meal with both ends open. Pick it up in the middle or endwise, it will run out."

Still, South Carolina was not to be deterred, with the eloquent Calhoun as her leader, and the Nullification Ordinance was pa.s.sed November 24, 1832. At once the governor was authorized to accept the service of volunteers. Medals were struck bearing the words, "John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy."

By the time South Carolina was ready to break the laws, another person was ready to enforce them. Jackson at once sent General Scott to take command at Charleston, with gun-boats close by, and sent also an earnest and eloquent protest to the seceding State. Public meetings were held in the large cities of the North. The tariff was modified at the next session of Congress, but the disunion doctrines were allowed to grow till thirty years later, when they bore the bitter fruit of civil war.

When Jackson was asked, years afterward, what he would have done with Calhoun and the nullifiers if they had continued, he replied, "Hung them as high as Haman. They should have been a terror to traitors to all time, and posterity would have p.r.o.nounced it the best act of my life."

When difficulties arose about the Cherokees of Georgia, he removed them to the Indian Territory; a harsh measure it seemed, but perhaps not harder for the tribes than to have attempted to live among hostile whites. When the French king neglected to pay the five million dollars agreed upon for injuries done to our s.h.i.+pping, Jackson recommended to make reprisals on French merchantmen, and the money was paid. The national debt was paid under Jackson, who believed rightly that this, as well as every other kind of debt, is a curse. The Eaton affair showed his loyalty to friends. John H. Eaton, Secretary of War, had married the widow of a purser in the Navy, formerly the daughter of a tavern-keeper in Was.h.i.+ngton. Her conduct had caused criticism, and the ladies of the Cabinet would not a.s.sociate with her--even though President Jackson tried every means in his power to compel it, as Eaton was his warm friend.

When the eight years of presidential life were over, Jackson sent his farewell address to the people of the country, who had idolized him, and whom he had loved, he said, "with the affection of a son," and retired to the Hermitage. The people of Nashville met him with outstretched arms and tearful faces. He was seventy years old, _their_ President, and he had come home to live and die with them.

He was now through with politics, and wanted to carry out _her_ wishes, to join the little Hermitage church. The night of decision was full of meditation and prayer. One morning in 1843, the church was crowded to see the ex-President make a public confession of the Christian religion.

He went home to read his Bible more carefully than ever--he had never read less than three chapters daily for thirty-five years, such is the influence of early education received at a mother's knee.

The following year, 1844, Commodore Elliot offered the sarcophagus which he brought from Palestine, believed to have contained the remains of the Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus, to President Jackson for his final resting-place.

A letter of cordial thanks was returned, with the words, "I cannot consent that my mortal body shall be laid in a repository prepared for an emperor or a king. My republican feelings and principles forbid it; the simplicity of our system of government forbids it.... I have prepared an humble depository for my mortal body beside that wherein lies my beloved wife, where, without any pomp or parade, I have requested, when my G.o.d calls me to sleep with my fathers, to be laid."

The May of 1845 found General Jackson feeble and emaciated, but still deeply interested in his country, writing letters to President Polk and other statesmen about Texas, hoping ever to avert war if possible. "If not," he said, "let war come. There will be patriots enough in the land to repel foreign aggression, come whence it may, and to maintain sacredly our just rights and to perpetuate our glorious const.i.tution and liberty, and to preserve our happy Union." He made his will, bequeathing all his property to his adopted son, because, said he, "If _she_ were alive, she would wish him to have it all, and to me her wish is law."

On Sunday, June 8, 1845, the family and servants gathered about the great man, who was dying at the age of seventy-eight, having fought against wounds and disease all his life. "My dear children," he said, "do not grieve for me; it is true I am going to leave you; I am well aware of my situation. I have suffered much bodily pain, but my sufferings are but as nothing compared with that which our blessed Saviour endured upon that accursed cross, that all might be saved who put their trust in him.... I hope and trust to meet you all in Heaven, both white and black--both white and black." Then he kissed each one, his eyes resting last, affectionately, upon his granddaughter Rachel, named for his wife, and closely resembling her in loveliness of character; then death came.

Two days before he died, he said, "Heaven will be no Heaven to me if I do not meet my wife there." Who can picture that meeting? He used to say, "All I have achieved--fame, power, everything--would I exchange, if she could be restored to me for a moment." How blessed must have been the restoration, not "for a moment," but for eternity!

The lawn at the Hermitage was crowded with the thousands who came to attend the funeral. From the portico, the minister spoke from the words, "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb."

All over the country, public meetings were held in honor of the ill.u.s.trious dead; the man who had said repeatedly, "I care nothing about clamors; I do precisely what I think just and right."

"He had had honors beyond anything which his own heart had ever coveted," says Prof. William G. Sumner, in his life of Jackson. "His successes had outrun his ambition. He had held more power than any other American had ever possessed. He had been idolized by the great majority of his countrymen, and had been surfeited with adulation."

Politicians sometimes sneered about his "kitchen cabinet" at Was.h.i.+ngton, the devoted friends who influenced him but did not hold official position, for, self-reliant though he was to a marvellous degree, he was neither afraid nor ashamed to be influenced by those who loved him. He was absolutely sincere and unselfish. He hated intensely, and loved intensely; with an affection as unchanging as his adamantine will.

Patriotic, determined, energetic, and heroic, he attained success where others would have failed. He ill.u.s.trated Emerson's words, "The man who stands by himself, the universe will stand by him also." Francis P.

Blair, his devoted friend, used to say, "Of all the men I have known, Andrew Jackson was the one most entirely sufficient for himself." During his presidency, the steamboat which once conveyed him and his party down the Chesapeake was unseaworthy, and one of the men exhibited much alarm.

"You are uneasy," said the general; "you never sailed with _me_ before, I see."