Historic Shrines of America Part 37

The second effort at farming was more successful. This was begun in 1804, when he bought a tract of some twenty-eight thousand acres, six thousand acres of which he retained permanently as the Hermitage plantation. From the beginning he showed that he had a genius for farming. Crops were large, and his wealth grew rapidly, until he became the wealthiest man in all that country. After a few years he became famous as a breeder of race horses. He owned a track of his own not far from the mansion.

For fifteen years Mr. and Mrs. Jackson lived in a log cabin. But they maintained a large establishment. They had their slaves, and they drove in a carriage drawn by four horses. And they entertained royally. Jackson's biographer, James Parton, tells of a Nashville lady who said that she had often been at the Hermitage "when there were in each of the four available rooms not a guest merely, but a family, while the young men and solitary travellers who chanced to drop in disposed themselves on the piazza, or any other shelter about the house."

The log house was still the plantation-house when General Jackson's neighbors gathered to welcome him home as the victor of New Orleans.

In the response he gave to their greeting he made a prophecy:

"Years will continue to develop our inherent qualities, until, from being the youngest and the weakest, we shall become the most powerful nation in the universe."

General Jackson was popular with all in the neighborhood of the plantation. To his slaves he was a hero. To his wife he was devoted.

Parton says that he always treated her as if she was his pride and glory. And words can faintly describe her devotion to him. She also was popular among the servants; her treatment of them was courteous in the extreme. A visitor to the Hermitage told of being present at the hour of evening devotions. Just before these began the wife of the overseer came into the room. Mrs. Jackson rose and made room for her on the sofa. One of the guests expressed her surprise to a lady sitting next her. "That is the way here," the lady whispered, "and if she had not done it, the General would."

Peter Cartwright, the famous pioneer preacher, told in his Autobiography an incident that revealed the General's nature.

Cartwright was preaching, when the pastor of a church, who was with him in the pulpit, leaned forward and whispered, "General Jackson has just come in." The outspoken preacher replied, so that every one could hear: "What is that if General Jackson has come in? In the eyes of G.o.d he is no bigger than any other man!" After the service Jackson told Mr. Cartwright of his hearty approval of the sentiment.

That there might be more room for entertaining pa.s.sing strangers like Mr. Cartwright, as well as hosts of friends, Jackson began to build The Hermitage in 1819, of brick made on the plantation. When this house was burned in 1836, a new house was built on the old foundation, and with the same general plan. The building has the rather unusual length of 104 feet. Six pillars support the roof in front and in rear.

Between the building of the first house and its successor came most of Jackson's political career. During this period also was the visit of General Lafayette. On this occasion the Frenchman, recognizing the pair of pistols which he had given to Was.h.i.+ngton in 1778, said that he had a real satisfaction in finding them in the hands of one so worthy of possessing them. "Yes, I believe myself to be worthy of them,"

Jackson began his reply, in words that seemed far less modest than the conclusion proved them; for he added: "if not for what I have done, at least for what I wished to do, for my country."

The Hermitage never seemed the same place to Jackson after the death of his wife, on December 22, 1828, only a few days after his first election to the presidency.

Two years after his final return from Was.h.i.+ngton, after attending service at the little Presbyterian church on the estate, he begged the pastor, Dr. Edgar, to return home with him. The pastor was unable to accept, but promised to be on hand early in the morning. All night the General read and prayed. Next morning, when Dr. Edgar came, he asked to be admitted to the Church.

Parton says that from this time to the end of his life "General Jackson spent most of his leisure hours in reading the Bible, Biblical commentaries, and the hymn-book, which last he always p.r.o.nounced in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way, _hime_-book. The work known as 'Scott's Bible' was his chief delight; he read it through twice before he died. Nightly he read prayers in the presence of his family and household servants."

Soon after he united with the Church, the congregation wished to choose him to the office of elder. "No," he said, "I am too young in the Church for such an office. My countrymen have given me high honors, but I should esteem the office of ruling elder in the Church of Christ a far higher honor than any I have ever received."

For six years he continued to be an unofficial member of the church.

Then, on June 8, 1845, he said to those who had gathered about his death-bed: "I am my G.o.d's. I belong to Him. I go but a short time before you, and I want to meet you all, white and black, in heaven."

Less than two months before his death, when the President and Directors of the National Inst.i.tute proposed that an imported sarcophagus in their possession be set apart for his last resting-place, he declined, because he wished to lie by the side of his wife, in the garden of The Hermitage.

Until 1888 Andrew Jackson, Jr., and after his death, his widow occupied the house, during the last thirty-two years of this period as caretakers for the State, which had bought the property for $48,000.

Since 1889 the mansion and twenty-five acres of ground have been cared for by the Ladies' Hermitage a.s.sociation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ASHLAND, LEXINGTON, KY.

_Photo by E. C. Hall_ See page 355]

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ASHLAND, LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY

THE HOME OF HENRY CLAY FOR FORTY-SIX YEARS

Henry Clay's mother, having married Captain Henry Watkins, moved from Hanover, Virginia, to Woodford County, Kentucky, in 1792. As soon as the future statesman was admitted to practice in the Virginia Court of Appeals, he decided to follow her. Accordingly, in November, 1797, he became a resident of Lexington. Three years later the _Kentucke Gazette_, the first paper published west of the mountains, told of "an eloquent oration" that was "delivered by Henry Clay, Esquire."

The year before the young lawyer received this flattering notice he married Lavinia Hart, of Lexington. Seven years were spent in rented quarters, but in 1806 he purchased an estate about a mile and a half from town.

Clay took the keenest pleasure in the estate. Once he wrote to a friend:

"I am in one respect better off than Moses. He died in sight of and without reaching the Promised Land. I occupy as good a farm as any he would have found had he reached it, and 'Ashland' has been acquired not by hereditary descent but by my own labor."

However, it was only at intervals that the proud owner was able to enjoy Ashland. After 1803 the longest period of residence was six years, and this was toward the close of his life.

The management of the property was largely in the hands of Mrs. Clay, and the prosperity of the plantation was proof of her capability. From Was.h.i.+ngton he wrote frequently of things he would like to see done. He was especially interested in blooded stock which he secured in the East and abroad. Once he wrote proudly of the fact that there were on the estate specimens of "the Maltese a.s.s, the Arabian horse, the Merino and Saxe Merino sheep, the English Hereford and Durham cattle, the goat, the mule and the hog." His race horses were famous, and he delighted to handle them himself. He also liked to feed the pigs, even when he was an old man.

There were many slaves at Ashland, and they were all attached to their master. His will provided for their emanc.i.p.ation, under wise conditions. Once, when a friend bequeathed him twenty-five slaves, he sent them to Liberia, by way of New Orleans.

Harriet Martineau, who visited Ashland in 1835, told of her pleasant impression of the place and its owner:

"I stayed some weeks in the house of a wealthy landowner in Kentucky. Our days were pa.s.sed in great luxury, and the hottest of them very idly. The house was in the midst of grounds gay with verdure and flowers, in the opening month of June, and our favorite seats were the steps of the hall, and chairs under the trees. From there we could watch the play of the children on the gra.s.s plot, and some of the drolleries of the little negroes.... There were thirty-three horses in the stables, and we roved about the neighboring country accordingly...."

As the years pa.s.sed visitors flocked to Ashland in ever-increasing numbers. Many of them were politicians, but more were plain people who were devoted to Clay and could not understand why the country refused to elect him President. In 1844, during his longest period of continuous residence at Ashland, he received word of the disappointing result of the election. After a few days, when he was walking on the turnpike near the house, he was startled by a woman who, on pa.s.sing him, burst into tears. When he asked her why she wept, she said:

"I have lost my father, my husband, and my children, and pa.s.sed through other painful trials; but all of them together have not given me so much sorrow as the late disappointment of your friends."

A story is also told of a bride and groom who visited Ashland on the day the news of defeat was received. The journey was continued down the Mississippi River. On the boat the groom was taken seriously ill.

The physician who was called to attend him was puzzled to define the ailment until the bride said that the cause was the defeat of Henry Clay. The old doctor threw his arms about the patient's neck and cried, "There is no cure for a complaint like that."

The sting of defeat was forgotten one day in 1845. Mr. Clay was in his bank in Lexington, prepared to pay a part of the indebtedness that had all but swamped him, so that he felt he might have to sacrifice Ashland. The bank told him that about $50,000 had been deposited in the bank by his friends from all parts of the country, enough to pay all his debts. He never knew the names of the generous friends who had made possible the retention of the property.

He thought he was to spend the remainder of his days at home, and that he would die there in peace. One day he said, in an address in Lexington, "I felt like an old stag which has been long coursed by the hunters and the hounds, through brakes and briars, and over distant plains, and has at last returned to his ancient lair to lay himself down and die."

Again in 1848 he tasted defeat, though on this occasion it was in the nominating convention, not in the election. In the trying days that followed he was sustained by his Christian faith. He had been baptized in the parlor at Ashland on June 22, 1847. The reality of his religious convictions was seen one day by what he said to a company of friends who had been talking in a despairing manner of the future of the country. Pointing to the Bible on the table, he said, "Gentlemen, I do not know anything but that Book which can reconcile us to such events."

In 1849 Clay was sent to the United States Senate because the legislature of Kentucky felt that he was needed to help in the solution of questions raised by the Mexican War. He spent three years in Was.h.i.+ngton, then died in the midst of his work. After a journey that showed what a place he had won in the hearts of the people, his body was taken to Lexington. The catafalque lay in state in Ashland over one night. Next day the body was buried near Lexington.

His son, James B. Clay, who purchased the estate at auction, tore down the house because of its weakened foundations, but rebuilt it of the same materials, on the old site, and on almost the identical plans.

Both outside and inside the mansion has practically the appearance of the original.

Before the Civil War Ashland was purchased by the State College, but in 1882 it became the property of Major Henry Clay McDowell, whose widow lived there for many years. She was the daughter of Henry Clay, Jr., whose death at the Battle of Buena Vista was a sore blow to one who was always a fond father.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPORTSMAN'S HALL, WHITLEY'S STATION, KY _Photo by Miss M. E. Sacre, Stanford, Ky._ See page 359]

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SPORTSMAN'S HALL, WHITLEY'S STATION, KENTUCKY

THE HOME OF THE MAN WHO KILLED TEc.u.mSEH

"Then, Billy, if I was you, I would go and see!"

Thus replied Esther Whitley of Augusta, Virginia, to her husband William Whitley, when, early in 1775, he had told her that he had a fine report of Kentucky, and that he thought they could get their living in the frontier settlements with less hard work than was required in Virginia.

Whitley took his wife at her word. Two days later, with axe and plow and gun and kettle, he was on his way over the mountains. Daniel Boone had not yet marked out the Wilderness Road that was to become the great highway of emigration from Virginia to Kentucky. At first his only companion was his brother-in-law, George Clark, but on the way seven others joined the party.

During the next six years he was one of the trusted pioneers at Boonesborough and Harrod's Fort, two stations on the Wilderness Road.