CHAPTER X.
ANDREW JACKSON, THE MAN.
Andrew Jackson was a more courageous man, as well as a much greater man, than many of his most ardent admirers knew of. At the time of his duel with Avery, if the version which I believe to be true is correct, he was afraid of public opinion—that is, he believed that, if he made an explanation, somebody might think that he feared Avery, and so, rather than run the risk of being suspected of cowardice, he was willing to give Avery a chance to kill him. But later in life he had outgrown this, and had no master except his convictions of duty, his own sense of right and wrong. He did not care what anybody might believe or suspect him of, so long as his course had the approval of his judgment and his conscience.
This was established beyond doubt, in the minds of a few old gentlemen (who afterward learned the actual facts), by an incident which happened in 1832—probably in the early part of October—at the public house or tavern kept by Capt. Bell at Bean’s Station, in Grainger county. President Jackson had left Washington, in the early part of August, 1832, in company with Francis P. Blair and others, to visit the Hermitage; and the incident about to be related occurred on the return trip to Washington. Before leaving the Hermitage, the itinerary or schedule of travel and stopping-places on the route had been made out. Bell’s tavern had been fixed upon as a point for dinner and rest, and Capt. Bell had been notified of the date. Bell had been a friend and admirer of Jackson for many years, and he and his wife naturally made great preparations to receive and entertain the President and his accompanying friends. Quite a number of leading citizens, acquaintances and adherents of Jackson, who had been apprised of the day he would arrive, were on hand to greet their old friend and leader, the President of the United States.
The party arrived on time, and the President’s carriage stopped in the public road in front of the tavern, which stood at some little distance back from the highway. Capt. Bell and others were at the carriage door to receive President Jackson, who got out immediately and “shook hands all round.” Bell, however, observed that Jackson, with an ominous storm-cloud gathering on his face, was looking intently toward a broad porch which extended along the front of the tavern, his eyes evidently fixed upon a gentleman who was walking back and forth on this porch, and who was evidently in turn eyeing Jackson with equal intensity. Suddenly, Jackson turned toward the conveyances which were accompanying him with friends, some of whom had already gotten out, and said, “Don’t get out—we will not take dinner here.” Then, turning to Capt. Bell, he said, “I regret that I can’t stop, rest awhile and take dinner with you. Tell Mrs. Bell that I could not stop.” The latter remark was made in an undertone to Capt. Bell, after which President Jackson got into his carriage and ordered his driver to go on, and his friends followed.
Capt. Bell’s curiosity was as great as his disappointment at the turn things had taken. He did not know what had caused it, but suspected that the presence of the gentleman walking on the porch had something, if not everything, to do with it. This gentleman had only stopped for dinner, and left immediately after it was over, without alluding to the Jackson incident. Indeed, no one then knew whether or not he knew who Jackson was; but Capt. Bell, during the hour or so that he remained, learned what afterward proved to be three important facts—the name of the gentleman, that he was from North Carolina, and that he was on his way to Kentucky. At that time, the thoroughfare from all East Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia was by way of Bean’s Station through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky.
Some months later, Capt. Bell learned that the gentleman in question was one of President Jackson’s most bitter and unrelenting enemies; that he was in fact the leader of the opposition to Jackson in North Carolina; that he had made public speeches in North Carolina and elsewhere against him, in the campaigns of 1824 and 1828, and was then (1832) most active in his opposition; and that he was at that time probably on his way to Kentucky to consult with Jackson’s opponents in that state. He, as Bell afterwards learned, had rehashed in his public speeches all the slanders which had been invented against Jackson, including no doubt the one which had cost Dickinson his life in 1806. After learning these facts, Capt. Bell said that he well knew the terrific struggle which Jackson had then and there, to control the storm rising within his breast as he saw, within a few yards of him, a hated foe who had committed a crime which, in Jackson’s judgment, ought to bar him out of heaven. But Bell’s idea was that Jackson—the man with a temper like a tornado, and whose very nature, as some professed to believe, was nothing but a raging torrent of fury—said to himself, “I am President of the United States; and I can not afford to bring reproach upon the people who elected me, or to degrade the highest office on earth by a scene, or a difficulty with that man, which is certain to follow if I stop here”; and he therefore immediately got into his carriage, and left without any explanation except the words given above. When Capt. Bell met Jackson again, a few years afterward, no explanation was necessary—he knew all.
Capt. Bell’s son, who as a young man was present when the incident occurred, is authority for the account given above, and for his father’s views and recollections of it. So far as I know, it has not been published hitherto.
Those who knew Andrew Jackson would agree with Bell that it took a superhuman effort even to remember, at the moment, that he was President of the United States, and to control the passion that the sight of this man aroused in him; but he did it, and, in doing it, proved himself a greater man, if possible, than many of his friends ever believed him to be. The struggle that the President of the United States had with Andrew Jackson, on this occasion, can better be understood when it is remembered that the man walking on the porch had repeated statements which, it is said, was the origin of Jackson’s trouble with Sevier and others, and which also caused Jackson, in his duel with Dickinson, after the latter had fired and hit him, to place his left hand tightly on the spot where the ball had entered, take deliberate aim with the other hand and pull the trigger; and then, when the weapon failed to fire, the hammer having caught at the half-cock notch, to examine it carefully, recock it, aim carefully again, and fire again—this time to see his enemy fall mortally wounded, dying in a few moments afterward. Jackson’s act at Bean’s Station, in leaving abruptly the presence of a calumniator of the memory of the wife whom he had worshipped in life, and at the very mention of whose name after her death tears came into his eyes and a tremor in his voice, was an exhibition of courage and self-control showing greatness in a direction and to a degree not often met with in the very greatest of great men.
On this same journey from Washington to the Hermitage, in 1832, President Jackson was given an ovation and reception which, it is believed, was the most pleasing and gratifying to him of any of the numerous public demonstrations of popular esteem theretofore shown him. This affair had its beginning four miles northeast of Jonesboro, on the public highway—the old state road—on each side of which, at the point mentioned, was an old-fashioned crooked rail fence, and also large oak and other native forest trees. It was in the latter part of August, or early in September, and the day was an ideal one. The road was on and along the top of a high ridge, with the Iron Mountain in plain view across the valley to the south. At this point, the President was met by one hundred picked men, uniformed, and mounted on a hundred of the very finest dapple-grey saddle horses that could be found in the country, to escort him into Jonesboro. This column of horsemen was under command of Samuel Greer, a life-long friend of Jackson. As it approached the carriage of the President, who had had no intimation of its approach, and got within about a hundred feet, a hundred stentorian voices simultaneously shouted: “Three cheers for Andrew Jackson, the greatest man on earth!” and the cheers which followed made the welkin ring and woke the echoes of three commonwealths.
The carriage was pulled to the right of the road, under the shade of a large oak (which was still standing as late as 1884), and the President alighted, removing his hat as he did so, and bowing three several times to the horsemen. This act of course caused another burst of applause. When quiet was restored, the column, at the command of Greer, dismounted and passed to the rear, where he introduced each one to the President. It is said that the latter, in as many as forty or more instances, while holding some young man by the hand, would tell him who his mother was before her marriage, what his father’s given name was, and in what part of the county he had lived—whether on Watauga, Nolichucky or Holston river, or on Limestone, Cherokee, Boon’s, Brush or Knob creek. After this, Jackson turned in the direction of the Iron Mountain, and as he pointed to it, said in substance: “Forty-four years ago last spring, I crossed that mountain, and settled, as I then thought, in this country permanently, amongst your fathers and ancestors; but Providence had decreed that I should not spend my life in this particular part of our great state, and took me elsewhere. Every time, for the last few days, that my carriage has been where I could see that mountain, I have been looking out at it, and letting my mind run back over my stormy and eventful life; and, at the moment you approached and gave me the first notice I had of your coming by your cheers and applause, I was thinking of whom I would meet and whom I would miss of my old friends at the old town just ahead of us, where I began life. I wish to say, before we resume the journey to the town, that in all my career I have not been the recipient of a demonstration more greatly appreciated than this one, here under the old trees, in this old road that I used to travel so often, by the sons of my old friends and acquaintances.” Then, with Greer and ten of the escort some little distance in front of the carriage, and ninety in the rear, the journey was resumed. It was understood throughout the country that Jackson would arrive in Jonesboro that afternoon, and also that he would spend the next day in the old town. This had brought thousands of people to Jonesboro; men, women and children came, on foot, on horseback and in every kind of vehicle. There was no way to house and feed the multitude that had arrived and filled the town when Jackson reached it late in the afternoon. The sides of the road were lined with people for a mile outside the town, the streets were packed, the tops of many of the houses were covered, and the President was received with waving of hats, bonnets, aprons, handkerchiefs and improvised flags and with shouts from the multitude, from the time he came in sight until he got out of his carriage and went into the hotel.
CHESTER HOTEL, JONESBORO, TENNESSEE.
On the porch of which Jackson held the reception in 1832. From a photograph taken in 1881.
The hotel at which he stopped was on the main street, and had a broad porch that extended the full length of the house. This was about eight or ten feet high, projecting out over the sidewalk, and was reached by a stairway at each end. On the following day, the President held a reception on this porch, and there shook hands with all of the people who had assembled to see him, they passing up at one end of the porch and down at the other. On this porch, on this day, was dispelled from the minds of some of his friends every vestige of the slight suspicion which had been produced by vile hired slanderers, that his fierce nature, turbulent spirit and stormy life had sapped his mental powers, judgment and reason, and that he was no longer the real Andrew Jackson of New Orleans, but was surrounded and controlled by designing, unscrupulous scoundrels, who were feeding the vanity of the old man in his dotage on flattery which he was then unable to detect and resist. President Jackson stood on the hotel porch at Jonesboro, and, possibly at the very moment when public speakers and editors in other parts of the country were lamenting(?) the loss of his former “energy of character” and the decay of his mind and judgment, gave to those people the very highest evidence that he was the Andrew Jackson of old: his form, although he was sixty-five years old, was “straight as a gun-barrel,” and his eyes as flashing and his mind as clear as on the night of the fire, or on the day when he left the bench and arrested Russell Bean, in that very town. As his old friends would approach him in their plain and simple garb, with their wives and children,[R] he would call out their names, grasp their hands, put an arm around them, kiss their daughters, compliment their younger children, and tell the wife that the good-looking boys and girls “favored her” more than they did the father. Incidents of his early life would suggest themselves to his mind—a lawsuit, a fox chase, a deer drive or something else—as they came up, and he would refer to it in some way, in the few moments which he could spare to that particular individual. His famous horse-race with Col. Love in Greasy Cove was mentioned; and it came very near bringing down the porch when a kinsman of Col. Love, by the same name, grasped the old hero by the hand and asked him if he had any better race horses at the Hermitage than he had when he lived in that country; to which he promptly and laughingly replied: “Yes, better than either one of us had that day; come over to the Hermitage, and you shall have one.” Such were the scenes and incidents of that memorable day on the hotel porch in the historic old town of Jonesboro.[S]
The “bank conspirators,” as they were called, had been at work incessantly, and they had a few—a very few—helpers in that country, who had been furnished with and had repeated (with great regret?) this charge of imbecility of old age, which rendered it dangerous to the liberties of the people and perilous to the government to re-elect the once great man, then a mental wreck. It may, even at this late day, be of benefit to reproduce in part an editorial from one of the newspapers of the period—a strong and powerful one—which, it was said, had been hired to desert and slander President Jackson, and to wait until he was in the midst of his journey through the country to the Hermitage, before it made its first assault on him. This editorial, among other things, said:
Since 1823 I have been the firm, undeviating friend of Andrew Jackson, through good and through evil report. I have defended his reputation and advocated his cause; and, for the last five years, my exertions in his behalf, as the conductor of a public journal, have been known to this country. But the time has now arrived when I owe it to the people, to the institutions of the country and to myself to declare my deliberate conviction that he has not realized the high hopes which his reputation and previously written and declared opinions promised, nor redeemed the sacred pledges which he voluntarily gave on his election to the first station in the world. Let us not be misunderstood: I do not—I never will—impeach his patriotism or his integrity; but as a sentinel at my post, true to the duty which I voluntarily assumed when I became the editor of a public journal, I feel called upon to proclaim to the people that Andrew Jackson is not their President; that, enfeebled by age and the toils, cares and anxieties of an active and laborious life, he no longer possesses his former energy of character or independence of mind, but, confiding in those who have wormed themselves into his confidence, he has entrusted the affairs of this great nation and the happiness of thirteen millions of freemen to the hands of political gamblers and money-changers, time-serving politicians, who, in the pursuit of their unhallowed purposes, threaten ruin to the country and to that sacred charter of our liberties which was maintained by the wisdom of our fathers, after having been purchased with their blood and the sacrifice of every selfish motive on the altar of public good.[T]
The foregoing is from a three-column editorial which appeared during the very week that Jackson was in Jonesboro, and only about two days previous to his reception in that town. Eight newspapers that had theretofore supported Jackson immediately followed the lead of the Courier and Enquirer, took the names of Jackson and Van Buren from their mast-heads, and went over to the support of Nicholas Biddle and the banks, on the ground that the President had lost his mind and his “former energy of character”; but they all lived long enough to find out how the people of Jonesboro received the slander,[U] and also to learn that the whole country knew that they had been hired to traduce the life, character, abilities and public services of this great soldier, statesman and patriot, and to have the finger of indignant, honest scorn point them out as traitors to the cause and slanderers of Andrew Jackson.
Space has been given to this reception at Jonesboro for the reason that it took place during the period of ten days within which nine or ten of the newspapers in the east which had been supporting Jackson suddenly discovered that he had “lost his former energy of character and independence of mind,” and was so “enfeebled by age” that his re-election would endanger the happiness of the people and the “sacred charter of liberty.” This was nothing more nor less than the first move in the conspiracy that was formed to defeat his re-election and destroy him. These newspapers had been bought, the price paid and the trade closed, some time after Jackson’s nomination on the 21st of May preceding, at Baltimore; but they were instructed to reserve their opening fire upon him until an opportune time. It was ascertained that he was about to visit the Hermitage, and that he was going “overland” down across Virginia and on through Tennessee. When he was about midway on this journey, with no telegraph or fast mail communication to give him information, these “bushwhackers” fired on his character, his integrity and his administration, and yet protested in the same editorials that they did not intend to “impeach his patriotism or his integrity.”
The cold-blooded, savage brutality of this conspiracy; its “lying in wait,” concealment in ambush for weeks, to catch the victim away from home, out in the interior on a long journey, and then assault and attempt to assassinate his character, is without parallel in American political warfare. But the people could not be bought, deceived, driven nor intimidated. Of the popular vote cast in the election, that year, Jackson received 687,502, and Clay 530,189. Jackson carried seventeen out of twenty-four states, and received 219 out of 288 electoral votes.
If the men who became the tools of this conspiracy to ruin his usefulness, and to cloud his former fair name and fame, had any sensibilities left, what must have been the depth of their humiliation when, in June, 1833, Andrew Jackson, then President of the United States for a second term, and sixty-six years of age, rode on horseback along Broadway in the city of New York. Parton describes it in a few words:
And what a scene was that, when the Old Man, victorious over nullification, and about to deal his finishing blow at the bank, visited New York, and was borne along Broadway on one roaring wave of upturned faces and flashing eyes; when it seemed, said a spectator, as if he had but to speak the word, and they would have proclaimed him on the spot a king.[V]
This ovation in New York was after he had been elected; the other mentioned was before he was elected, and was given to the man, in a country road, between crooked rail fences, under the shade of the native oaks.
President Jackson, during his second term, carried out his “previously written and declared opinions and promises,” and “redeemed the sacred pledges which he voluntarily gave,” by crushing the United States Banks and freeing the people, commerce and trade from their domination, bringing shame and disgrace upon the conspirators and the hired traducers of this great man, whose name and fame will not perish until the departed spirit of American Independence shall shake hands with the ghost of Liberty across the grave of the greatest republic that has ever existed.