CHAPTER VII.
ANDREW JACKSON AS A “SPORT.”
In many respects Andrew Jackson was the most interesting, picturesque and unique character America has produced. Scotch and Irish blood commingling in his veins, there was a perfect blend of the characteristics of both races, and in addition thereto he had some traits and besetments peculiarly his own. In his calm and restful moods, he was as tender and serene as a child, and easily accessible by the very humblest; but when the storm of passion swept over his soul, he was a flaming furnace of fury, almost wholly heedless of consequences, and as much to be feared and avoided as an enraged lion. In the face of perils he had the dauntlessness of John Knox, and was an exact counterpart of the great reformer when he threw down the gage of battle to the Roman hierarchy. A soldier by nature, he scoffed at the prescribed rules of military movements, and made his own tactics, surpassing even the Corsican prodigy in martial genius and originality, as the trained soldiers of Pakenham, who won the bloody field of Waterloo, testified involuntarily when they fled in defeat and dismay before his undisciplined militia from the gates of New Orleans.
The highest order of statesmanship wrought in him its perfect work. If he was not the founder, he was the preserver, of a great party. He was a sturdy patriot. Love of country was the controlling emotion of his great soul. The determination which animated him, crystallized in his stern pronouncement, “The federal union: it must be preserved!” crushed an incipient rebellion as a giant would crush a shell of glass.
His judicial administration was signalized by clear discernment, keen analysis, deep penetration, ready and correct decision, and an instinct to trail the sly and devious cunning of wrong and guilt.
Jackson lacked the refinements of fashion and the polished graces of the courtier, but his quick grasp of every situation and his instinctive sense of the proprieties bore him with composure and dignity through all the social ordeals through which he had to pass. Still, in these functions he had a will and a way of his own, and little he recked whether others were pleased or affronted.
Jackson’s figure, like the shadow of the Brocken, grows more colossal as we recede from it.
This is one side of Jackson’s life—the sober, serious side—an unblurred career of honor, usefulness and triumph, for which the truth-loving muse of history never tires of garlanding his name with the most loving eulogies. As is usually the case with mortals, there was a reverse side of Jackson’s character. Here we find a few spots on the otherwise white flower of a blameless life.
In the years before honors thrust themselves so thick and fast upon him, he was what would now be called a “sport.” The semi-civilization of the time, his rugged environment, the lack of training consequent upon the loss of his natural guardians, his absolute dependence upon himself, and his high-born spirit that could brook no control, combine to form an eloquent plea in extenuation of the few “indiscretions” that were mingled with so many commendable traits. He loved the excitement and wild abandon of the chase, and the deep-mouthed pack’s “heavy bay, resounding up the rocky way” and mountain solitudes, was sweeter music to his enraptured ear than a thunderous jumble of Dutch diapasons to a Wagnerian devotee.
Jackson was fond of adventure and games requiring daring, alertness, skill and strength, and engaged with the heartiest zeal in all the rude hilarities of pioneer life; but horse-racing was his special weakness. At the time spoken of, he knew a great deal more about the “points” of a flyer than he did about Blackstone, the science of government or the ten commandments. A fleet-footed horse was his idol, and when he saw one equal or break the record made by Maggie on the night when she outstripped the witches of Kirk Alloway with frightened Tam O’Shanter clinging to her mane, his was the ecstasy of the swain in his earliest love. On this “weak point” hangs an o’er-true tale, and the event gives a true insight into Jackson’s character when he was at his worst.
It happened along in the eighties of the last century, when Jackson was a resident of Washington county and boarded with Christopher Taylor (familiarly known as “Kit Taylor,” and grandfather of Skelton Taylor of Chattanooga), who lived, as stated in an earlier chapter, about one mile below Jonesboro, on the road to the Brown settlement. At this time, Jackson’s “weakness” was at its weakest, and horse-racing was his most delightful occupation. He had a racer upon which he lavished his time and his affections, and which he imagined was the fastest in all the country; and he was eager to “back his judgment” with all the means at his command. Col. Love, who lived in Greasy Cove, then a part of Washington county and now of Unicoi, owned the champion flyer of the new country, having even defeated the fastest horses over in Virginia, about Wolf Hills, where Abingdon now stands. Jackson envied Love, and was determined to rob him of his laurels and becloud the reputation of his horse. He sent a challenge, which was promptly accepted.
The race was widely and graphically advertised. In all the contests of equine speed, it would have no prototype in the past and no rival in the future. All upper East Tennessee was stirred into a ferment of excitement, which grew more intense every day, from the time of the announcement until the event took place. The coming horse-race became the absorbing, exclusive topic of conversation at the log-rollings, house-raisings, quiltings, distilleries, stores, school-houses, firesides, inns and before and after “meetin’.” Children caught the infection from the adults, and the dogs, if they have the intelligence with which they are credited, doubtless cast knowing winks at each other when their respective owners discussed the universal theme and speculated upon the outcome of the to-be-incomparable event.
The place selected for the race was in Greasy Cove, on the farm now owned by the Loves. Tall mountains looked down on lower heights, and these in turn on the spot to be made historic—a poem of nature, a dream of beauty in a setting of scenic grandeur, embroidered with the silver fretwork of the Nolichucky’s restless billows.
The track was a half-circle, half a mile long.
The advertised day, in the summer or early fall of 1788, came at last, and with it the popular excitement pitched to the highest tension. And such a heterogeneous mass as swarmed into that sequestered valley—the old, the young, farmers, workers in wood and iron, lawyers, doctors, saints, sinners, and even preachers; on foot and horseback, singly, in groups and in vast cavalcades, from Washington, Greene, Hawkins, Sullivan, and from the Wolf Hills of Virginia. Civilization had not yet reached a sufficient development to produce a “moonshiner,” but “the rosy” flowed as copiously as if some magician had changed the neighboring streamlets into the crystal elixir, and the number of fisticuffs was in proportion to its consumption. As was the custom of the day, the fellows “spilin’ for a fight” stripped to the waist line and fought in a ring, and when one cried, “Take him off!” the mill ended, the bitten, gouged and bleeding combatants “made up,” washed, dressed, and sealed the pact of peace with a drink of whiskey from the same gourd. The men who met at Sycamore shoals, followed “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon” across the Alleghanies under Sevier and Shelby, drove the Hessian hordes from King’s Mountain and closed the final chapter of the Revolution with one of its grandest triumphs, were there. The pioneer who built his fort-cabin in the wilderness and shot the prowling savage through a chink in the wall, was there, with his faithful spouse and the rest of the family. The lovesick swain in his flax linen, with his bonnie lass in a gown of snowy cotton, who caused the mountain roses to pale with envy as she glided like a sylph among them, was there also. But the horse-race overshadowed everything else in interest and importance.
Jackson had been training his horse for months in advance in “Kit” Taylor’s neighborhood, and the racer knew his master’s imperious will perfectly. He “smelt the battle afar off,” and perhaps at the same time “danger in the tainted air”; but when the test came, the determination to be first under the string thrilled every fiber and sinew in his lithe and wiry body.
The betting was fast and furious, and the reckless readiness of the gamblers, following the example of the contestants, to risk all on their favorite steed, would have taken away the breath of even the “plunger” of today. Guns, furs, iron, clothing, cattle, horses, negroes, crops, lands and all the money procurable were staked on the result. No “boom” period in that section saw so much property change hands in so short a time.
A week or ten days before the race, Jackson was overtaken by a serious disappointment. His jockey, a negro boy belonging to Taylor, was taken down with a violent fever. Jackson announced his determination to ride the race himself, and Love readily agreed to the proposition. When this arrangement became known, the throng became delirious with enthusiasm and delight. The judges, who had been selected after a good deal of finesse and some wrangling, were stationed half and half at each end of the semicircular track. Jackson appeared on his restless and impatient flyer, with a haughty air of confidence and self-possession, the rival steed prancing at his side, under the control of a born jockey, who well knew the responsibility resting upon him and how to act his part on the momentous occasion. They were started with a shout that shook the azure vault above and reverberated in answering echoes from the surrounding mountains. The horses were marvels of symmetry and beauty, and in fine condition for speed and endurance. At the word “Go!” they shot out on the smooth track as if they had been hurled from two monster mortars. On they sped, neck and neck. The jockey was the hazy outline of a boy printed on the air: Jackson rode as if he were part of his spectral horse. The yells of the onlookers packed around the crescent course would have drowned the blending screams of a hundred steam-whistles. All at once, the Love horse spurted ahead. The partisans of Jackson got their breath in gasps. The victor whizzed under the string like an arrow, leaving Old Hickory to make the goal at his leisure. If Jackson’s horse was a wind-splitter that left a blue line behind him, Love’s was the same as a belated streak of lightning chasing a hurricane that had outrun it. Just for a moment there was the deep, ominous hush that precedes the crash of the tempest; then a pandemonium of noise and tumult that might have been heard in the two neighboring states broke loose. It awoke the black bear from his siesta, and the frightened red deer “sprang from his heathery couch in haste” and sought the distant heights. The loud, long and deep profanity would have discounted the “army in Flanders.” Jackson was the star actor in this riot of passion and frenzy. His brow was corrugated with wrath. His tall, sinewy form shook like an aspen leaf. His face was the livid color of the storm-cloud when it is hurling its bolts of thunder. His Irish blood was up to the boiling-point, and his eyes flashed with the fire of war. He was an overflowing Vesuvius of rage, pouring the hot lava of denunciation on the Love family in general and his victorious rival in particular. Col. Love stood before this storm unblanched and unappalled—for he too had plenty of “sand,” and as lightly esteemed the value of life—and answered burning invective with invective hissing with the same degree of heat and exasperation. Jackson denounced the Loves as a “band of land pirates,” because they held the ownership of nearly all the choice lands in that section. Love retorted by calling Jackson “a damned long, gangling, sorrel-topped soap-stick.” The exasperating offensiveness of this retort may be better understood when it is explained that in those days women “conjured” their soap by stirring it with a long sassafras stick.
The dangerous character of both men was well known, and it was ended by the interference of mutual friends, who led the enraged rivals from the grounds in different directions.
It is probable that this crushing defeat, with its intense mortification and odious memories, gave Jackson a profound distaste for the turf and other time-wasting sports of pioneer life. At all events, he turned his attention to the sober and “weightier matters” of life, and eagerly embraced the “tide in the affairs of men” which led to fame and fortune, and enabled him, on the field of battle, in the forum of law, in the council hall and at the head of a great nation, to make for himself
“One of the few, the immortal names
That were not born to die.”
The incidents and results of this celebrated horse-race did not in the least discredit Jackson in the estimation of the people where it occurred, as was shown long afterward. While it was difficult to exaggerate the great victory gained over the British at New Orleans by Gen. Jackson, still it was somewhat exaggerated by the time the news of it reached Jonesboro. Some few days after the first account of the battle had reached the town—in a letter from a Knoxville gentleman to a friend in Jonesboro—some court day or other public occasion had caused quite a crowd to collect in town, and the gentleman who had received the letter was requested to make a public announcement of its contents to the anxious and excited populace. This he did in front of the court-house. The excitement was at blood heat, but perfect silence and order prevailed while the gentleman was making his speech—for such it was, as he did not actually read the letter. The substance of the speech was that Gen. Jackson had killed the whole of the British army on the battle-field, except a few who were driven into the Mississippi river and drowned; that he had captured all of their arms and ships, and had taken his own army on board the vessels, and was then on the high seas on his way to take possession of England. At this point, which was the conclusion of the speech, an old man of sixty, standing near the speaker, threw his hat into the air, and jumping excitedly up and down, shouted: “Whoop-pee! hurrah for Andy Jackson, hell and thunder! I knowed, the day I seed him ride that hoss-race in Greasy Cove, that he could whup anybody!” The scene that followed was without a precedent in the history of the town, not even the return of Sevier with his conquering heroes from King’s Mountain having caused more rejoicing and celebrating. From and after that time, the exclamation of Gen. Jackson’s enthusiastic admirer became a saying in the country round about; and when news of an earthquake, the burning of a town or city, the sinking of a ship at sea with all on board, would be told to some not over-reverent citizen, he would exclaim, “Andy Jackson, hell and thunder!” as the only words adequate to express his feelings on the reception of news of such a catastrophe.
The deep-rooted, heartfelt, undying hatred of the British which these people nursed, kept alive and handed down, may be illustrated by the recital of a few facts which came within my own knowledge and observation. During the recent war between the states, there was much said and written, at one period, about England recognizing the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and entering into diplomatic or friendly relations with the Confederate government. While this subject was under discussion, I heard old men, who were intense in their loyalty to the Southern cause, and who had sent their sons all into the Confederate army, declare openly and vehemently that, if the Southern Confederacy “made friends with the British,” they would renounce their allegiance to it and bring their boys home; that they had rather be subjugated by the Yankees than to conquer with the aid of “the British”!
So late as 1882-3, Sir Thomas Watson, an Englishman, spent several months in Jonesboro, examining and negotiating for a valuable piece of iron property in Washington county. He would come to my office occasionally, and would sit and talk with me. On one of these occasions, an old friend of mine, some seventy years of age, came in, and I introduced him to Sir Thomas, telling him that the latter was from England. My old friend sat down, but did not address a word to the gentleman to whom I had introduced him during the half or three-quarters of an hour which ensued; but I noticed him more than once looking at the Englishman very much as if he was “drawing a bead” on him along the barrel of a rifle. When Watson left the office, the old gentleman’s eyes followed him. As the door closed after him, my old friend drew a breath of relief, and asked, “What’s he doing here?” When I told him, he appeared incredulous. “I don’t believe he’s after any good,” he said; “better have nothing to do with a Britisher. This one may be a spy. If Andy Jackson was alive, and was to hear of that man being here, I’ll bet he would drive him out of this country!”
The race-horse in Greasy Cove, in the shadow of the mountain over which Jackson had crossed a few months before, and in the midst of the early settlements of Tennessee, was not the last time he appeared on horseback in the presence of his admiring and applauding countrymen. In 1833 President Andrew Jackson rode on horseback along Broadway in the city of New York, in a “roaring wave” of shouts that came from a “sea of upturned faces” which lined the whole way of his triumphal ride through the great thoroughfare of the great city, where men, women and children had gathered to get even a passing glimpse of the hero of the hour. He was then sixty-six years old, but his horsemanship, acquired in part at the celebrated race in Greasy Cove, prevented on this occasion a serious accident to the President of the United States. It was said by those who witnessed the manner in which he sat upon and controlled the spirited and frightened charger which he rode, that the horse would have dashed any other man headlong from the saddle; but Jackson was as cool and calm as he was skillful, and soon brought the animal under perfect control—as he soon afterwards did Nicholas Biddle and the United States Bank.