The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

VI: THE HERMITAGE HOUSEHOLD

The true character of a man in public life is often misjudged by the people when only his public acts are taken into consideration; but the facts about his real disposition and inclinations are invariably revealed clearly and infallibly in his home life. Andrew Jackson stands this test admirably; for visitors to the Hermitage were always impressed with the gentle and considerate conduct of the man at home. A contemporary wrote that the Jackson household “was the abode of native dignity, artless good cheer, instinctive courtesy and a hospitality which no adjective is adequate to describe.” And, making due allowance for the permissible hyperbole of a grateful guest, it is a compliment to any family to receive such a warm tribute.

Parton records that Jackson, “so irascible sometimes and sometimes so savage, was never so much as impatient with children, wife or servants. It used to astonish people who came for the first time to the Hermitage to find that its master, of whose fierce ways and words they had heard so much, was indeed the gentlest and tenderest of men.” And then he proceeds to tell of how an unexpected visitor to the Hermitage one evening found the old man seated in his big rocking chair “with a chubby boy wedged in on each side of him and a third, perhaps, in his lap” while he was trying to read his newspaper.

A similarly flattering picture of the domestic side of the General’s life is to be found in the published recollections of Thomas H. Benton. Benton knew all sides of Jackson’s character for he was first his admiring young henchman, then his bitter enemy and then his devoted friend again. He was with Jackson on the battlefield, he was with him in the political maelstrom of Washington, he visited him frequently in the quiet seclusion of the Hermitage; and of the latter aspect of the old chieftan’s life, Benton says that “He was gentle in his house and alive to the tenderest emotions.” As an instance of this—an instance, it should be observed, greatly at variance with the popular conception of his character but worth more than a long discourse in showing what that character really was, Colonel Benton tells of how he arrived at the Hermitage one wet, chilly evening in February and came upon the General in the twilight sitting alone before the fire, a lamb and a child between his knees. “He started a little,” says Benton, “called a servant to remove the two innocents to another room, and explained to me how it was. The child had cried because his lamb was out in the cold and begged him to bring it in—which he had done to please the child, his adopted son, then not two years old. The ferocious man does not do that!” This incident made a deep impression on Colonel Benton, and he referred to it again in a eulogy on Jackson’s character delivered after the latter’s death.

Another early visitor at the Hermitage left this observation concerning Jackson, the host: “Had we not seen General Jackson before we would have taken him for a visitor, not the host of the mansion. He greeted us cordially and bade us feel at home, but gave us distinctly to understand that he took no trouble to look after any but his lady guests. As for the gentlemen, there were the parlor, the dining-room, the library, the sideboard and its refreshments, there were the servants; and if anything was wanting all that was necessary was to ring. He was as good as his word. He did not sit at the head of the table, but mingled with his guests, and always preferred a seat between two ladies, obviously seeking a chair between different ones at various times. He was very easy and graceful in his attentions; free and often playful, but always dignified and earnest, in his conversation. He was quick to perceive every point of word or manner, was gracious in approval, but did not hesitate to dissent with courtesy when he differed. He obviously had a hidden vein of humor, loved aphorism, and could politely convey a sense of polite travesty. If put upon his metal he was very positive but gravely respectful. He conversed freely and seemed to be absorbed in attention to what the ladies were saying; but if a word of note was uttered at any distance from him audibly he caught it by a quick and pertinent comment without losing or leaving the subject about which he was talking to another person—such was his ease of sociability without levity or lightness of activity, and without being oracular or heavy in his remarks.” And isn’t that a perfect picture of the gentlemanly host?

A corner of General Jackson’s bedroom. His favorite portrait of Mrs. Jackson still hangs over the mantel, as it hung during his lifetime, where his eyes could fall on it the first thing every morning.

The broad entrance hall, showing the famous scenic wall paper and the graceful spiral stairway.

As a specific and characteristic instance of Jackson’s attentiveness and courtliness to his guests one of the neighbors used to tell of how a homely young girl who had been taken by Mrs. Jackson to be raised at the Hermitage was acting the part of a wall-flower at an evening’s entertainment there one time. “When all the beautiful women and distinguished men had been introduced around,” she said, “General Jackson, seeing that she had been forgotten, caught her by the arm and introduced her with so much earnestness as to indelibly impress a pleasurable sensation with her until her death and was ever a green spot in her life.”

It is significant of the beneficent influence of Rachel Jackson on the Hermitage and its social life that no guest ever recorded his impressions of a visit there without pleasant mention of her gracious presence. Indeed, no account of the home life of the Hermitage could be complete without a deferential tribute to the spirit of this woman who occupied so large a place in Jackson’s life and whose lovable nature contributed so much to making the Hermitage a delightful place to be. “Her quiet, cheerful and admirable management of her household” made a lasting impression on Colonel Benton, and of her he says in his recollections: “She had the General’s own warm heart, frank manner and hospitable temper; and no two persons could have been better suited to each other, lived more happily together, or made a house more attractive to visitors. She had the faculty—a rare one—of retaining names and titles in a throng of visitors, addressing each one appropriately, and dispensing hospitality to all with a cordiality which enhanced its value. No bashful youth or plain old man whose modesty sat them down at the lower end of the table could escape her cordial attention any more than the titled gentlemen on her right and left. Young persons were her delight, and she always had her house filled with them—clever young women and clever young men—all calling her affectionately ‘Aunt Rachel.’ I was young then and was one of that number. I owe it to early recollections and to cherished convictions to bear this faithful testimony to the memory of its long mistress, the loved and honored wife of a great man.”

Aunt Rachel, according to another contemporary, was “the childless mother of all the young people of the neighborhood;” and the old house probably didn’t seem much like a hermitage with the young folks making the rafters ring with their laughing and singing, the General gaily joining in the chorus when his old favorite tunes were raised.

The fine ladies of New Orleans, when Rachel went there in 1815 to join in the celebration of the general’s great victory, tittered at her homely appearance and her sun-tanned arms and face; latter-day biographers and magazine writers have written of her with slightly up-tilted noses, overemphasizing her alleged lack of formal education and dwelling unduly on her old-fashioned habit of smoking a pipe by her fireside at night—a practice suggested by her family doctor as a relief from asthma. But if ever a woman had a heart of gold it was Rachel Jackson; and none ever visited the Hermitage while she was alive but went away to sing her praises.

Contrary to the popular impression, perhaps, the Hermitage household was conducted on the lines of an old-fashioned Christian home, with a regular devotional hour in the evening which was attended by the whole family and also by the house servants. This practice was followed after Rachel’s death as well as before. After the son’s marriage his wife always conducted the musical part of the devotional exercises; but when she was not at home the old General himself would line the hymn (“Alas, and Did My Saviour Bleed” was one of his favorites) and lead in prayer.

Young Mrs. Jackson’s widowed sister, Mrs. Adams, was musically talented, and during the General’s declining years she gave him much pleasure with her playing of the piano and guitar and with her singing. The General’s favorite song was “Auld Lang Syne;” but when Mrs. Adams would take her guitar of an evening, seated at the fireside, and would play and sing “Johnny Sands” or some of the other humorous songs of the day, Jackson showed his keen enjoyment even though he loved the old songs best.

Mrs. Adams, with her musical talent, was a valued and enlivening addition to the Hermitage family group, and after her coming she always provided the music for the many impromptu dances in the Hermitage parlors. Despite his advanced years the General took great delight in these affairs; and it was the customary thing for him to start off the festivities of the Virginia Reel by taking his daughter-in-law as a partner and dancing the first round with her.

It was one of the minor tragedies of Jackson’s life that he, who set such store by his home life, should have no family of his own; but to fill the vacant place in his heart left by the lack of children he legally adopted his wife’s nephew and bestowed on him the most sincere and lavish affection a father could give his own son.

It was on December 22, 1809, that the wife of Severn Donelson, Mrs. Jackson’s brother, gave birth to twin boys. The news reached the General and his wife as they sat at the breakfast table in the old Hermitage. Mrs. Jackson, upon receiving the message, looked across the table at the General and said: “I’m afraid brother’s wife will be unable to raise both the little fellows with all those other children—she isn’t very strong, you know. Suppose we take one of them.”

Rachel’s merest suggestion was law to the General; and so after breakfast the horses were brought to the door and away they went to brother Severn’s to see the new twins and suggest the adoption. The mother agreed to the proposal, the General promptly had the infant’s name officially changed to Andrew Jackson, junior; and from that day he treated him as his own son. Aunt Hannah, the most trusted of the house servants, was assigned to his special care; and it was in her strong arms that he was carried two miles through the woods from his birthplace to the Hermitage which was to be his future home. Hannah lived to be 101 years old, and never tired of telling of how she reared the young master. Later she was assigned to the duty of looking after Mrs. Jackson; and then Alfred took charge of little Andrew and helped bring him up to the estate of young manhood. Those were gay days on the Hermitage farm when little Andrew was growing up, and the loyal and loving Alfred was taking him hunting and fishing, along with the little Donelson cousins.

The tender and patient devotion of the old General to his adopted son is one of the most touching chapters of his life. From the day old Hannah brought him in her arms across the threshold of the Hermitage, the General ever referred to him as “my son;” and had the boy actually been his own offspring he could not have treated him with more kindly and enduring affection. In his letters to his wife, while he was off fighting the Indians in Alabama, he never failed to mention little Andrew; and in one of these letters, following the bloody battle with the Creeks at Tallapoosa, he wrote: “Tell Andrew that I have for him a warrior’s bow and arrow.” The picture of the rough, turbulent, Indian-fighting frontiersman painted by conventional history does not tell us much of this side of the old soldier’s nature.

When the General returned from the Indian wars, Mrs. Jackson went to Huntsville to meet him and carried the little boy along; and when she went to New Orleans in 1815 to attend the popular celebration given there by the citizens in honor of her illustrious husband’s great victory over the British, little Andrew again went with her. A current account of visit of the General’s family to New Orleans brings out the fact that little Andrew was a pet at headquarters; and it is easy to believe the statement that the General could not deny him anything and spent every leisure moment in playing with him, often holding him in his arms while he transacted business. One evening, so the story goes, some companies of soldiers stopped beneath the windows of headquarters and the crowd began to cheer the General and call for his appearance. Little Andrew, asleep in the next room, was waked up by the commotion and began to cry. The General had already started to the window to answer the cheers of the people in the street below, but when he heard the boy whimpering he went to his bedside, picked him up, soothed away his tears and carried him along to the balcony where he bowed to the people and, at the same time, amused little Andrew with the scene in the street.

When the General was made Governor of the Florida Territory in 1821, and went there with Mrs. Jackson to take up his residence, they took Andrew with them as Mrs. Jackson would not think of leaving him behind; but the country around Pensacola was not, with its heat and its mosquitoes, an ideal place for a child, and so in August he was sent home when one of Jackson’s staff officers returned to Tennessee.

As the boy grew older he was sent to college in Nashville and was given every opportunity available to the son of a prosperous and distinguished father; and it is easy to see, from what Jackson said and wrote, that he had the greatest ambitions for the boy he had chosen to be his son and to perpetuate his name.

When he went to Washington to be inaugurated President in 1828 he left young Andrew at the Hermitage to help wind up affairs there; but Andrew went on to Washington in a few months, as soon as his foster father had got settled in the White House. After a brief stay in Washington he returned to the Hermitage, however, chiefly because of a love affair with a young lady of the neighborhood, a ward of their neighbor Colonel Ward who lived at Hunter’s Hill and mentioned in one of Jackson’s letters as “the daughter of my deceased friend,” but now known only as “Miss Flora.”

Jackson’s solicitude for his son’s happiness and well-being was never more strongly revealed than in the benevolent letters of fatherly advice he wrote him from Washington during the late summer of 1829 when the young man was back at the Hermitage prosecuting his suit. It is a little amusing to find the President setting aside the affairs of state to dip his oar into the management of the courtship; but Jackson had a flair for match-making, and also his affection for Andrew was so great that he did not want to see him make any mistake. While the love affair was progressing he made no direct objection to it, although he repeatedly expressed the firm conviction that Andrew should not permit the young lady to trifle with him but should press her for a positive answer one way or the other; and he was obviously relieved when his son wrote him at last to say that he had been rejected. The General wrote Andrew a kindly letter of consolation, venturing the sour-grapes comment that Miss Flora was “a fine girl, but a coquette;” and he begged the young man not to enter into any more love affairs without consulting him.

Young Andrew returned to the White House after the shattering of his Tennessee romance; but it wasn’t long before he again fell a victim. This time the object of his affections was Miss Sarah York of Philadelphia, one of three orphan sisters of good family and social standing. Miss Sarah was a spirited young lady and had declared her unwillingness to marry the ordinary run of suitors. Indeed, she was quoted as saying that she “wouldn’t marry less than a prince.” But the sons of kings were hard to find in this republican country, and so she evidently decided to lower her sights sufficiently to be satisfied with a mere President’s son. Jackson approved of the match when told of his son’s new flame, and the wedding took place in Philadelphia on November 24, 1831. Acting on the old General’s instructions, Andrew brought his bride to the White House at once; and, from the moment he clasped his new daughter in his arms at the front door of the White House, she had a place in his affections until the time of his death that was never disputed by anyone.

Andrew and his young wife remained with Jackson in Washington until the spring of 1832, setting out on April 12th to take up their residence in the Hermitage, which was to be their home all the remaining years of their lives. Accompanying them on the journey to Tennessee was Sarah’s cousin, Miss Emma Forbes, who came along to keep Sarah company while she was getting accustomed to her new home, and the General strictly enjoined Andrew to “give all your attention to Sarah and Emma. They are strangers in a strange land.” Evidently Andrew made the strangers feel very much at home, so much so that Miss Emma soon fell in love and married Andrew’s own twin brother, Thomas Jefferson Donelson, and became a resident of the Hermitage community.

Young Andrew was at this time twenty-three years old; and although the General expressed the fullest confidence in him and made it clear to him that he wanted him to take charge of affairs at the Hermitage and run the place, he nevertheless took the precaution to write out for him before he left a memorandum which is a model of thoughtful and thorough suggestions for a young man about to assume the management of an extensive estate. In this memorandum he authorized the son to purchase from Samuel Donelson a tract of 100 acres adjoining the Hermitage for $1,500; instructed him to have a settlement with the contractor, Mr. Morrison, who had been making the additions to the Hermitage and building the tomb in the garden; instructed him to arrive at a settlement of the accounts of Steele, the overseer, giving him a detailed account of all the involved transactions in which that worthy had tangled himself; reminded him that he was expecting Steele to make enough brick to build a new stable for the riding and carriage horses, with suggestions as to the plan for the stable; gave careful instructions about the desired procedure in connection with the horses and other cattle. “When you reach home,” he wrote, “I hope you will find the supplies and furniture which I have sent on safe at the Hermitage. The pipe of Maderia wine you will have placed on its stand and one-half gallon of best French brandy put into it and after two or three days it will be fit for use. You will have the old dining room newly papered for Sarah’s and your bedroom as it will be more convenient than upstairs; but when she sees the house she can judge for herself. The carpet in the portrait room shall be taken for that, and the one in the parlor put in one of the rooms upstairs. Sarah will arrange the rooms and furniture. If the supplies I have sent on reach home in safety you will have an abundant supply of sugar, coffee, Maderia and Sherry wines, etc. Salt and flour will be the only articles to be laid in, but you will have now to begin to learn the wants of a family and supply it. This will require economy and care, which you will have to learn and attend to if you expect to get through life well—by always knowing your means and living within them you will get well through life. This has been my rule and I recommend it to you.”

Sarah undoubtedly enjoyed her new rôle of mistress of the President’s home place, and she immediately set about giving the Hermitage that deft touch of feminine management which it had lacked since Rachel’s death. Within a few days she was writing to the General about the need for a carpet for the dining room, more table linen and some additional silverware for the table. Jackson promptly attended to these matters, doubtless greatly pleased at Sarah’s interest in household affairs.

Sarah’s interest in her new home, however, was apparently not shared to any great extent by her husband. Jackson in his parting memorandum had urged his son to write him fully about the state of affairs on the farm; but Andrew neglected to do so, and from that time forward Jackson’s published correspondence reveals clearly the difficulty he had in impressing on young Andrew the importance of attending strictly to business and the apprehension the absentee planter in Washington was caused by the slack management of the plantation by the young man.

There were forebodings of trouble on this score from the very first. As early as May 25, 1832, Overseer Steele wrote Jackson: “I have prest on Andrew to pay strict attention to the management and manner in which your affairs has been conductied during your absence but it appears that he don’t take the least pride or feel the least intrusted in the farm or aneything there pertaining.”

At this very time Jackson was writing his son: “I have no wish to acquire wealth for myself. If I can add to your and Sarah’s comforts whilst I live and leave you comfortable and independent of the world when I die, I am contented.” A few days later he wrote him: “The jewelry of your dear mother is under your care. Present to Sarah, with my affectionate regard, the pearl necklace, ear rings, etc.”

Andrew and Sarah were back in the East early in 1833 to visit Jackson in the White House and Sarah’s family in Philadelphia. In July they accompanied the President and his party to the Rip Raps in Hampton Roads for a summer vacation of six weeks, and then after another visit in Philadelphia they were back at the Hermitage in October. While in Philadelphia Andrew had instructed one of his friends there to order a chest of tools for use on the farm; and when the bill was presented to the President in November he paid it and wrote Andrew the following revelatory letter, one of the very few of his family letters in which the sardonic note intrudes:

My son: Inclosed you will find Mr. Toland’s receipt to Mr. Brown for the chest and tools laid in for you by your friend Mr. Hart, and Mr. Brown’s receipt for a check for $62.03 drew by me in his favor, being in full for that bill. You will find the chest (from the price charged, a nice piece of furniture for the parlour) not well suited to a negro’s workshop; and the tools very fine, such I suppose as cabinet-makers use. Be this as it may, bought wit is the best—when not bought too dear; and I could not permit either your feelings or character to suffer for the amount of the bill; but I think that it will henceforth admonish you to purchase your own tools for the farm and not entrust it to an agent. Remember my advice, my son: Never purchase any useless article. Those that are needed for your comfort or that of your dear little family purchase always as far as you have the means; and be always certain, if you wish to die independent, to keep your wants within your means; always, when you have the money, paying for them when bought. I have said before and now repeat: The world is not to be trusted. Many think you rich, and many you will find under false pretensions of friendship would involve you if they can, strip you of your last shilling and afterwards laugh at your folly and distress.

In the ensuing years there must have been many times when Andrew Jackson, junior, looked back on the sage advice embraced in that letter and wished that he had indeed learned a lesson from the injudicious purchase of the tool-chest suited for a parlor and the tools such as cabinet makers use. He had plenty of “bought wit” in the years to come; and most of it was, indeed, “bought too dear.”

Andrew also caused the old man considerable worry at this time by having purchased a slave in Maryland before returning to the Hermitage, paying only a part of the purchase price in cash and leaving a balance due. He neglected to say anything to Jackson about the unpaid balance, and he learned of it only when the Maryland slavetrader dunned him for the money. This annoyed and embarrassed Jackson, but his chief concern was evidently not the money involved; he was worried about Andrew’s careless business habits. “Why will you not, my dear Andrew,” he wrote him, “attend to my admonition about money matters?” And, further, “My son, at all times and on all occasions state to your father things just as they are.”

Inattentive to these admonitions, however, Andrew gave further cause for annoyance during that summer when he repurchased the old Hunter’s Hill property adjoining the Hermitage. Jackson had consented that Andrew make the purchase if he thought it advisable, encouraging the young man to take the initiative and make the decision for himself; but he was particular to impress on Andrew that he wanted him to have the terms of the sale reduced to writing and a copy of the agreement forwarded to him. Nevertheless, his first knowledge of the purchase was a draft drawn on him for the first payment on the purchase price; and then began a long succession of letters from father to son unsuccessfully seeking to learn the exact details of the trade. Similarly, he was unable to get from Andrew information as to the number of pounds of cotton baled and shipped to New Orleans. “My son,” he wrote in May, “surely it is a duty that you would owe to an entire stranger, surely more imperious to me, to acknowledge the receipt of such business letters as these.” And again, despairingly, in June: “My son, why will you not learn to transact your affairs like a man of business?”

Andrew, apparently, was incorrigibly negligent about answering letters; for in October, when Jackson had returned to Washington after spending the summer at the Hermitage, he wrote him: “Thirty-one days have elapsed since we left the Hermitage, Sarah on a sick bed. I had your promise that you would write me how they were; and I am now, even now, without one line from you.”

To add to the old General’s worries at this stage of young Andrew’s career, there is strong evidence that he had reason to be fearful of his son’s falling into intemperate habits. Perhaps the young wife conveyed the idea to the old man. At any rate, Sarah went on a visit to Philadelphia early in April, 1835, leaving Andrew at home, supposedly looking after the work of rebuilding the burned Hermitage; and on April 14,1835, Jackson wrote him a long and pointed fatherly letter concerning the evils of intemperance, in the course of which he said: “When I reflect on the fate of your cousin Savern, brought on him by intemperance, from being an honor to his friends reduced to the contempt of all by his brutal intemperance, I shudder when I see any appearance of it in any other branch of our connection. Your conduct, standing as my representative, the son of the President, draws upon you the eyes of the world, and the least deviation from the rules of strict decorum and propriety are observed and commented upon by all our enemies and those who envy you of your situation. Added to this, your charming little wife and sweet little ones’ respectability in society depends on your upright course in your walks of life. This, my son, ought always to be before your eyes, and I am sure must be; and your pledge to me on the point of intemperance assures me that you never will permit spirits to enter your lips again.”

A few weeks later, taking as his text the experience of a Washington friend who had been humiliated by public drunkenness, Jackson wrote Andrew another letter of warning against “intoxication, which reduces the human being below that of the brute,” concluding his letter with: “Oh, my son, if you were to be found in such condition it would destroy me.”

These letters apparently had the desired effect, for Major Lewis after visiting the Hermitage in May, 1835, wrote Jackson that he was much gratified at the fine and healthy appearance of the young man, that he looked like a different person; and, he concluded: “I have no doubt he has faithfully complied with his promise to you to the letter.” Jackson, upon receipt of Major Lewis’s letter, wrote at once to Andrew telling him how delighted he was at the favorable report of his good conduct and healthful appearance and his good standing with everybody. “This, my son,” he said, “is more grateful to your dear father than all the wealth of Peru, and I have now the greatest confidence in your good conduct through life”—which confidence, the future revealed, was well placed.

Early in the summer of 1835 Andrew joined Sarah and the children at the White House and they went with the President for another vacation at the Rip Raps in July and August. They went on a visit to Philadelphia in September, and late in that month Andrew went back to the Hermitage, leaving Sarah to return to Tennessee later. They were there at the Hermitage in the summer of 1836 when Jackson came to look at his rebuilt home, but they went to Philadelphia again in October and then for a final visit to the White House. They left there with the worn-out ex-President in March, 1837, and all returned to the Hermitage together.

At this time the son’s little family consisted of his wife, Sarah, and a little son and daughter: Andrew, III, born April 4, 1834; and Rachel, born in 1832. Both the children were born at the Hermitage, and they were a never-failing source of pleasure and comfort to the old General in his declining years. Little Rachel was his especial pet from the time she was born, and she was one of those who stood by his bedside when he died.

Like every doting grandfather, he was inordinately proud of her cunning little ways; and he chuckled as he related to his friends how the little girl, upon her arrival at the White House with her mother following the burning of the Hermitage, greeted him with: “Grandpa, the great fire burned my bonnet; and a big owl tried to kill Poll, but Papa killed the owl.” Needless to say, Grandpa dropped all the affairs of State long enough to see that little Rachel was supplied with a new bonnet without delay. And he probably joined her in rejoicing over the narrow escape of old Poll from the owl, for the old Hermitage parrot was a great pet of the General’s. In his letters home he inquired about her, and William Donelson in writing to him in December, 1829, said: “Poor Poll is doing well. She is as fat and saucy as ever. From her continued good health I think she will live to be an old bird. Elizabeth desires to be remembered affectionately to you, and says that she will insure Polly’s life till you return.” As a matter of fact, the old bird outlived the General himself; and she distinguished herself by introducing an element of the grotesque into the solemnity of the funeral services when she suddenly startled the assembled mourners by bursting into a loud torrent of profanity which made it necessary to suspend proceedings until her perch could be removed from the upper front portico to a more remote vantage point.

Second only to his adopted son in General Jackson’s affections was Andrew Jackson Donelson, son of Samuel Donelson, one of Mrs. Jackson’s brothers. Samuel had been Jackson’s law partner in his early days and he it was whose elopement Jackson had aided back in 1797 when Samuel romantically stole his bride, Polly Smith from the window of the “Rock Castle” home of her father, General Daniel Smith—the same Daniel Smith who helped survey the much disputed extension of the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. The eloping couple had fled to Jackson’s near-by home at Hunter’s Hill to have the wedding ceremony performed; and, strangely enough, it was at the Hermitage that Samuel died in 1802, death overtaking him there suddenly one evening when he had stopped by to pay a fraternal visit. He left three young sons—Andrew Jackson, Daniel and John—and General Jackson was made the guardian of the eldest of the three, his namesake. At first all three boys continued to live with their mother at the home of her father, General Smith; but one day when Jackson paid a visit to them, little Andrew returned to the Hermitage with him, riding behind the General on his horse. He came to spend a few days; but so firm a hold did he gain on Jackson’s affections that he was never sent home. From then on the Hermitage was his home, and he was reared there with all the love and care that could be shown one’s own son.

Young Donelson was educated at Cumberland College (University of Nashville), Transylvania University at Lexington, and at West Point. Throughout his college life he was an outstanding student, and at the Military Academy he distinguished himself by finishing the four-year course in three years and graduating second in his class. Upon his graduation he was appointed an aide-de-camp to General Jackson, at the latter’s special request, and served with him in the Florida wars. After his return to Nashville he practiced law for a short while, but soon abandoned this and began to take an active and useful part in General Jackson’s political activities.

Jackson had a genuinely high regard for young Donelson. “I have reared and educated him as my son,” he wrote a friend on one occasion; and that the old General had the most unlimited ambitions for him is shown by a letter he wrote to him while he was at Transylvania College encouraging him to seek his associates and friends among the better class of students and concluding: “I look forward, if you live, to the time when you will be selected to preside over the destinies of America.” Donelson did not climb that high on the political ladder, but he did achieve distinction in his own right in public affairs; and there were many of his friends who thought that his star might have shone with greater brilliance had it not been dimmed by the too-close effulgence of his famous guardian and friend.

By the time Jackson was elected President in 1828 the young man had reached such a place in his confidence and affection that he was his spontaneous choice as private secretary, and he went with him to Washington in this capacity. The Jackson administration, however, had not been afloat very long before it ran on the rocks of the Peggy Eaton embroglio, that tempest in a teapot that threatened for a while to upset the government; and Major Donelson and his wife became the storm centers of this furious affair. Mrs. Donelson was a niece of Mrs. Jackson’s, the major having married his own first cousin, Emily, daughter of Captain John Donelson; and Jackson felt for her a very real avuncular affection when he installed her as mistress of the White House. Red-headed Miss Emily, however, was a spunky individual with a spirit of her own; and, although she reluctantly consented to receive Peggy Eaton coldly but courteously as an official guest at the White House, she flatly refused to visit Mrs. Eaton or to have any other social contacts with her. This brought about strained relations in the White House family, but the affair was temporarily kept from coming to a head; and the President and the Donelsons returned in amity together to Tennessee to spend the summer of 1830. There had almost been a flare-up before leaving Washington. The Eatons had been invited to dine at the White House, and the petulant Peggy had refused to enter the house while the Donelsons were there, claiming that Emily had publicly snubbed her a short while previously. This naturally riled the General and he raised considerable of a rumpus. In his flurry of anger he threatened to take the Donelsons home and leave them there, and this threat got under the Donelsons’ skin. Accordingly, when they all got back to Tennessee in June, the Donelsons did not go to the Hermitage to stay but went to the home of Mrs. Donelson’s mother, then a widow. The Eatons made a rather showy and carefully pre-arranged visit to Tennessee during this summer, a feature of the trip being their entertainment at the Hermitage; and Major Donelson later explained that he and his wife went to Mrs. Donelson’s to stay because they did not want to put themselves in the way of the honors General Jackson intended to pay to the Eatons at the Hermitage. But the President’s feelings were hurt. “When I expected you and Emily to go to my house and remain with me as part of my family, it was declined,” he wrote in a letter to Major Donelson that fall when the two of them were back in Washington carrying on that childish interchange of formal letters within the walls of the White House which almost precipitated a crisis at that time.

Jackson smelt trouble brewing as early as July, when he mentioned in a letter to Major Lewis from the Hermitage: “It may so happen that I shall return to the city in company with my son alone,” and asked the Major to be looking about for some eligible man to serve as his secretary. “My connections have acted very strangely here,” he wrote; adding, with characteristic fire: “but I know I can live as well without them as they can without me, and I will govern my own household or I will have none.” When the time came to return to Washington in October, Mrs. Donelson announced that she would spend the winter in Tennessee with her widowed mother; and it is not recorded that General Jackson interposed any violent objection to this program. Major Donelson, however, went along with him.

Hardly had they got back to Washington before General Jackson wrote back to Emily’s sister, Mary Eastin, saying that “Major Donelson has informed me that the house appears lonesome; and on his account it would give me great pleasure if you and Emily and the sweet little ones were here.” He went on to say, however: “Provided you will pursue my advice and assume that dignified course that ought to have been at first adopted, of treating every one with attention and extending the same comity and attention to all the heads of Departments and their families.” He told Miss Eastin to convey this qualified invitation to Emily and he himself told Major Donelson what he had written. Then ensued that absurd and pathetic intramural correspondence between these two strong-willed men who lived in the same house, worked together daily in the close and confidential relations of a President and his private secretary—but who fought out their private quarrel by means of long, formal letters.

Jackson had a deep and sincere affection for Major Donelson, but he felt that his honor was at stake; worse than that, he had tortured the shabby controversy into a “conspiracy” to strike at him through Eaton and through him at his departed Rachel. Donelson, on the other hand, while his letters breathed love and respect for his uncle, felt that his and his wife’s dignity and self-respect would not permit of any dictation as to their social contacts.

The stairway in the side hall, with its unusual architectural features. This is the stairway now used by the public in ascending to the second floor.

One of the four guest rooms, with original furnishings typical of all the bedrooms.

So matters rocked along, and in December Jackson wrote General Coffee that Donelson’s “demeanor toward Major Eaton is more free.” He kept up a friendly correspondence with Emily back in Tennessee, and wrote Coffee that he expected her to come on to Washington in March or April. Major Donelson wrote his wife in January, 1831, that he had had “a very satisfactory conversation with Uncle in relation to our social difficulty” and that “He has left to my own discretion the period of your return, without alluding to the influence which produced your stay in Tennessee.” The Major expressed great gratification at the prospect of getting things patched up, and on March 8th left Washington for Nashville to get his little family and take them back to the White House with him.

Late in March, however, the Eaton affair boiled over in Washington again, and some new developments there made the President furious. On March 24th he wrote a long letter to Major Donelson, couched in words of genuine affection but reflecting plainly his agitation. The partially healed sore was reopened and he candidly said: “As much as I desire you and your dear little family with me, unless you and yours can harmonize with Major Eaton and his family, I do not wish you here.”

This new crisis in the Eaton affair resulted in the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton from the Cabinet, and Jackson hastily wrote Donelson on April 19th telling him of these resignations and predicting that “you will find an entire new Cabinet when you arrive.”

But now the Donelsons were offended. Upset by the strong words of Jackson’s letter of March 24th they, as General Coffee expressed it, “fear that you require more than they can consistently comply with.” In reply to this letter Donelson wrote a reply which Jackson styled “a vindictive phillippic,” the general tenor of which was that he could not return with his wife under the terms set forth in Jackson’s communication. Jackson’s reply was firm, though tempered with expressions of his affection, and showed clearly the extent to which the controversy had upset him. His letter concluded: “I am laboured almost to death, and have been a good deal afflicted; but will try amongst strangers to get a man who will aid me and who will think it no disgrace to associate with me and my friends.” This must have cut Donelson to the quick, but it did not alter his determination to sever his official relations with his godfather, the President. He went back to Washington—alone—to wind up his personal affairs there; and before leaving finally, on June 18th, he wrote an affectionate note to Jackson giving “assurance of my readiness to resume the relation which I have maintained near you for so many years, whenever you think that my services can be of any avail.” In a letter written home to his wife he told of a long conversation he had had with Jackson, and dropped the strange comment that “After what has now passed, while our duty remains the same, I am almost as well satisfied that the view which Uncle takes is correct.” Nevertheless, he went on home; and Jackson engaged as his private secretary Mr. Nicholas P. Trist (whose wife was a granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson), and he served until the reconciliation with the Donelsons.

The reconciliation, as might have been expected where there was so much mutual love and esteem, was not long in coming. Jackson kept up a friendly correspondence with Andrew and Emily as though nothing had happened, and in July two Nashville friends, John C. McLemore and John Bell, took it upon themselves to act to bring Jackson and Donelson back together. They talked to the Major, read all the letters the President had written to him, and then gave him the sensible advice to pack up his family and return to the White House “without further correspondence.” They wrote Jackson that they had given Donelson this advice and stated further that “we think there is no necessity for the specification of terms on one side or the other.” That this effort of the peacemakers was at length successful is shown by a single reference in one of Jackson’s letters to Coffee on September 6th: “Major Donelson and his little family reached here yesterday.”

Thus ended the spat between General Jackson and the Donelsons; and in all their future relations there was never anything to suggest that there had ever been the slightest asperity between them. Mischief-making Peggy Eaton drove them apart; but even she, with her genius for creating dissention, could not keep them apart.

In 1818 Major Donelson had inherited from his father a handsome plantation called Tulip Grove which lies directly across the Lebanon Road from the Hermitage; and in 1834 General Jackson, perhaps to seal the reconciliation, engaged Messrs. Reiff and Hume to build on it the handsome residence which still stands there. Emily, the innocent stormy petrel, died December, 1836, of tuberculosis. The disease wasted her strength rapidly and she died before her husband could get back from Washington where he had gone to help wind up the affairs of the Jackson administration under the impression that she was not dangerously ill. Major Donelson later married another of his cousins, herself the widow of Lewis Randolph of Virginia, who was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.

Major Donelson, after Jackson’s administration closed went back to Tulip Grove and lived the life of a farmer for a few years, keeping in touch with Uncle Jackson across the road and helping him sometimes with his flood of correspondence. By President Tyler he was appointed charge de affairs to the Republic of Texas, and he played an active and able part in promoting the annexation of the Lone Star State. When James K. Polk was elected President he was made minister to Prussia, an office which he filled with ability and distinction. Following this service he became editor of the Washington Union; and in 1856 took his last fling at politics when he was a candidate for Vice President on the ticket with Millard Fillmore. He died on June 26, 1871.

Major Donelson ever stood high in the affections of Andrew Jackson, and when the old statesman made his will in 1843 he left to him the gorgeous gold-encrusted sword which had been presented to him on July 4, 1822, by the State of Tennessee in honor of his services in the War of 1812. This priceless heirloom is still in the possession of Mrs. Bettie M. Donelson of Nashville, widow of Major Donelson’s son Alexander. There is a note of pathos in the apologetic explanatory clause embraced in the paragraph of the will in which this bequest is made: “This, from the great change in my worldly affairs of late, is, with my blessing, all I can bequeath him”; but, the dying General added: “This bequest is made as a memento of the high regard, affection and esteem I bear for him as a high-minded, honest and honorable man.” And, since a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, what more precious bequest could anyone receive?

* * * *

Andrew Jackson Donelson was not by any means General Jackson’s only ward. Another namesake and relative of his wife’s who was bequeathed to him and who was brought up at the Hermitage was Andrew Jackson Hutchings, orphan son of his old partner in the mercantile business, John Hutchings, who died in Alabama in November, 1817. The elder Hutchings was then a widower, and when he knew that death was upon him he sent for his old partner and asked him to consent to act as guardian to the little five-year-old boy he was leaving behind him. Jackson took the boy (“little Hutchings” he generally called him in his letters about him), and carefully reared him at the Hermitage, giving him every possible attention and advantage.

When Jackson went to Florida in 1821 he did not take Hutchings with him, the reason assigned, in a letter to John Coffee, being a strange one: “I am aware if I did and an accident happen his grandfather would believe I had destroyed him that his estate should go to his father’s family.” So he engaged a combination nurse and tutor to take up her residence at the Hermitage during his absence and keep the boy at his studies; and in his letters home from Florida he never neglected to inquire about the lad’s health and send him messages. “Say to him his cousin Andrew will bring him a pretty present when he returns, and I will buy him a pony.”

Hutchings, as the years passed on, developed into a rather difficult subject. Jackson had hardly arrived at the White House in March, 1829, heart-broken over his wife’s recent death and naturally worried over the tremendous burden of responsibility he was taking on his shoulders, when news reached him that the boy had been suspended from the University of Nashville. Much perturbed, he wrote to William Donelson asking him to send Hutchings to the school conducted by Mr. Otey at Franklin. “I wish him taught penmanship, arithmetic and bookkeeping, algebra and some of the other branches of mathematics, moral philosophy, belles letters and such other branches that may be profitable to him as a farmer and private gentleman. I have lost all hope of making him a classic scholar, and do not wish him to touch the languages except to review those books of Latin and Greek that he has read, but wish him to understand his grammar well.” He also wrote Hutchings directly that he wished him to enter the school at Franklin, but Hutchings was having too good a time back home at the Hermitage where there was no restraining hand save that of the overseer, and he began to parley about a choice of schools, claiming that he had an aversion to Mr. Otey’s school and would prefer to go to one conducted by Mr. Williford at Columbia. While all this was going on, Jackson’s friend Colonel Charles J. Love visited the Hermitage and wrote: “Young Hutchings is very much in the way at the Hermitage. He rode one of the brood mares away the other day and got her eyes put out. A letter from you might be of service. Mr. Steel is anxious he should leave the place.”

Hutchings finally went off to the Columbia school, but did not last long there. In July Jackson wrote General Coffee, who was helping him manage the boy’s estate: “His conduct has filled me with sincere regret. I can not think of letting him be lost, and have concluded to bring him here and place him at the college at George Town under the control of the Catholics. It is an excellent university and perhaps, under my own eye, I might be able to control him and convince him of the impropriety of his ways.” Accordingly he came on to Washington when Andrew, junior, returned from a visit to the Hermitage a little later; but in April Jackson sent him back to Mr. Williford’s school at Columbia. “Hutchings has behaved well at college,” he wrote Coffee, “but he has such a great dislike to this place and his health not good that I have consented to let him return under a promise that he will abandon his extravagance.” But after he had left Washington Jackson found that he had left a lot of bills unpaid, and he instructed Coffee to “notify everyone that no accounts will be paid only those authorized by you. This will be necessary to preserve him from bankruptcy and ruin.”

Instead of going back to Columbia to school, however, Hutchings simply went back to the Hermitage and began to idle his time away again. Before long Jackson had a letter from Overseer Steele complaining of “a quarrel and fight” he had had with Hutchings over the youth’s desire to whip a slave who had offended him; and again the harrassed guardian had to write to Coffee asking him to use his influence to get the boy to go back to school. “At the Hermitage he is to have a home, but I expect he will aid in keeping peace rather than be its disturber,” Jackson wrote.

Hutchings apparently never did go back to school at Columbia, but in September turned up in Washington again and wheedled Jackson into sending him to the University of Virginia. “He says he is now determined to become a learned man,” the hopeful Jackson wrote Coffee; and for a brief time it appeared that there might be something to this hope, for the boy’s professors reported his good conduct early in October. In November Jackson wrote him reproving him for not fulfilling his promise to write to him every week, but inviting him to come and spend the Christmas holidays with him at the White House. Hutchings accordingly came, and the President rounded off the holidays by permitting him to go to Philadelphia to visit his cousin, Miss Mary McLemore of Nashville, who was in school there and with whom he thought he had fallen in love.

By February, 1832, the boy’s determination to become a learned man had faded away. By absenting himself from his classes he laid himself liable to dismissal, and to escape this ignominy he withdrew from the school. Jackson was much chagrined and humiliated when notified of this state of affairs, but derived such consolation as he could from the fact that his ward was accused of no moral delinquency. He urged Hutchings to come to Washington; but the young man was evidently ashamed to face his guardian, and so wrote to General Coffee asking him to send him enough money to return to his farm in Alabama which had been left him by his father. Coffee sent the money, but instead of going to Alabama to take up the life of a farmer, Hutchings was back at the Hermitage again in April—and again causing trouble, this time in connection with the handling of some colts.

It was no doubt with a distinct feeling of relief that the harassed President was at last able to relinquish his guardianship in March, 1833, when Hutchings came of age. In writing to General Coffee, instructing him about turning over the young man’s patrimony to him, Jackson said: “I know I have performed my pledges to his father on his dying bed”; and in a letter to Hutchings he gave him some kindly and wholesome advice about the manner in which he should conduct himself.

Despite all the trouble he had had with him, however, Jackson seemed to have a real feeling of high regard for the orphan boy, son of his old partner and grandson of his wife’s sister Catherine; and he kept up a fatherly correspondence with him all the rest of his life. A significant sidelight on Jackson’s high principles in such matters is revealed by his response when Hutchings, checking over the accounting of his estate noticed that there was no charge made for administration and wrote Jackson notifying him of the supposed oversight. “I have no charge against your estate,” Jackson wrote him, “I never charged an orphan one cent for either time or expense, and I shall not now begin with you.”

Jackson took a particular interest in the progress of his ex-ward’s love affairs. His affection for his cousin Mary McLemore having cooled, Hutchings upon settling down on his farm in Alabama fell in love with another cousin, General Coffee’s daughter Mary; and Jackson, obviously in favor of the match, helped it along with encouragement to the swain and an occasional adroit word of commendation for Hutchings when he was writing to Mary. They were married on November 14, 1833. Jackson wrote warm letters of congratulation to both of them; and, as early as June, 1834, he was writing Hutchings: “You have not even hinted whether a cradle will be necessary to compleat the furniture of your house. Do inform me.”

Andrew Jackson Hutchings, his harum-scarum young days behind him, developed into a responsible and respected citizen and planter. Jackson kept in touch with him through correspondence and occasional visits, and he enjoyed great gratification at Hutchings’s success in establishing himself as a substantial and respected man. When Hutchings, following the death of his wife in 1840, went to Cuba in an effort to restore his own health, Jackson wrote a letter of introduction in which he described him as “a gentleman of the highest principles of honor and honesty.” The trip to Cuba, however, was ineffectual, and Hutchings returned to Alabama to die in January, 1841.

* * * *

Donelson and Hutchings were but two of the numerous children Jackson took into the Hermitage and brought up as his own. A complete roster of them would be a long list. Apparently Jackson’s friends had a habit of dying and leaving their orphans to his care. His old friend Edward Butler, for instance, appointed the General guardian of his two sons and two daughters when he died in 1804, and there were other odd children left under his wing from time to time. But Rachel had a heart big enough to find room for them all; and Jackson, despite his engrossing responsibilities and his excruciating headaches, never objected to their noisy play as they tumbled about in the Hermitage while he was talking business and politics with his numerous visitors.

An exotic and pitiful member of the Hermitage household for a few years was Lyncoya, the young Indian whom General Jackson rescued from the Creek battlefield of Tallushatches in November, 1813. When this bloody battle was over, this year-old infant boy was found at the breast of his dead mother, lying on the field. The baby was brought by John Coffee to the tent of General Jackson who sought to have some of the surviving Indian women take it and nurse it. With savage indifference they refused to make any effort to save the baby’s life; indeed, they sullenly suggested that the baby might as well be killed since its parents had already been slaughtered by the whites. General Jackson, however, determined to take it upon himself to see that the little waif survived. Accordingly he had it fed regularly on brown sugar and water and bread crumbs, and on this rude fare it survived until it could be sent back to civilization and given proper diet and attention. First the baby was sent to Huntsville, to be cared for there by Colonel LeRoy Pope; and it was his daughter, so tradition says, who conferred the name Lyncoya on the child. At last the little Indian reached the Hermitage, and under the kindly Rachel’s care soon bloomed with health again. General Jackson had written home that he was sending the little Indian as a present to little Andrew—much as one would speak of sending a puppy or lamb or some other form of pet. “I wish to know if little Andrew got his little Lyncoya and what he thinks of him,” the General wrote later to Rachel; and in all of his subsequent letters home he had something to say about the derelict Indian baby. “How is Lyncoya?” he wrote to Rachel from Mobile late in 1814. “Although he is a heathen he is an orphan, and I know you will extend a motherly care over him.” And Rachel did.

The exact status of Lyncoya in the Hermitage menage is now not entirely clear. General Jackson probably shared the frontier sentiment that an Indian was just barely a human being, and at first he seems to have looked upon him as little more than a novel sort of pet for little Andrew. But the young redskin must have grown in Old Hickory’s affections, for in subsequent letters he refers to “my little sons, including Lyncoya,” and as soon as he was old enough he went to school along with the white boys. Lyncoya, according to tradition, soon showed signs of his racial origin: He decorated his head with turkey feathers, and with a bow and arrow that he made for himself he kept the chicken yard in an uproar. As he grew older, General Jackson’s plans for him grew more ambitious. In 1823 he wrote from Washington to Mrs. Jackson: “I would be delighted to receive a letter from our son, little Hutchings and even Lyncoya. The latter I would like to exhibit to Mr. Monroe and the Secretary of War, as I mean to have him received at the Military School as early as I can.” But by the time Lyncoya was old enough to enter the Military Academy the national administration had changed and Jackson’s enemies were in power. Accordingly, the General decided to have the young Indian learn a trade, and so took him to Nashville and carried him around town so that he could see with his own eyes men working in the various shops, and then let him decide which one was most attractive to him. Lyncoya for some reason (and by a strange coincidence, since Jackson himself had worked in his boyhood at the same trade) chose the shop of a saddler as the scene of his future labors. So he was apprenticed to a Nashville saddle maker in 1827; but it was his custom to spend his Sundays at the Hermitage, riding one of the General’s fine saddle horses to and from Nashville. The confinement of the shop, however, did not agree with him and within a year he fell ill with a heavy cold that settled on his lungs. He was given permission to go home to the Hermitage, where he was carefully nursed by Mrs. Jackson, but he grew gradually worse and died June 1, 1828—his being the first death to occur in the Hermitage. Just where he was buried nobody seems to know. At least one chronicle has stated that he was buried in the garden; but, if so, there is no sign of it. No stone there bears his name, and there is no unmarked grave in the family plot. It has also been suggested that he was probably buried in the slaves’ graveyard down in the thicket, back of the carriage house. But all this is mere conjecture.

Lyncoya must have been a problem to General Jackson who, in common with other pioneers, hated the Indians as a race, although he apparently had nothing but affection and pity for the forlorn individual he had brought to live under his own roof. That he trusted him implicity is shown by a brief note in Jackson’s handwriting now in the possession of a Nashville connection: “Mr. John Summerville will please send me by Lyncoya, who will hand him this, fifty dollars in small notes. Please enclose it under cover to me and oblige your friend Andrew Jackson.” Mr. Summerville lived in Nashville, and if Jackson had not had the greatest confidence in him he would never have sent a thirteen-year-old boy on that long, lonesome horseback ride to Nashville and back to get that money.

* * * *

An almost lifelong resident of the Hermitage, described by General Jackson as “my friend and companion” was Ralph E. W. Earl, the artist who married Mrs. Jackson’s niece. He was born in 1788, the son of Ralph Earl, an artist of distinction; and, following his father’s example, took up the profession of artist himself. He came to Nashville in 1816, and through painting Jackson’s portrait established an acquaintance with the General which ripened into lifelong friendship. One of his friends in a contemporaneous letter described him as “the very soul of goodness and honor”; and that seems to have been the general opinion of him.

While in Natchez exhibiting a portrait of Jackson which he had painted, Earl met Miss Jane Caffery, a daughter of Mrs. Jackson’s sister Mary, whom he married after a short courtship. Upon their return to Nashville they were invited to live at the Hermitage, and when Mrs. Earl died a few months afterwards, Jackson insisted that Earl continue his residence there. From then until his death he was the intimate friend of General Jackson, going to Washington with him when he was elected President, and accompanying him as a companion on most of his travels.

During the latter part of his life Earl spent most of his time painting portraits of Jackson, and came to be known in a jesting way as the “court painter.” It was intimated around political circles in Washington that Earl’s influence on the President was such that his friendship was a good thing to have; and it was hinted that Earl received many commissions to paint Jackson’s picture from practical men who were less interested in having a hand-painted portrait of the President than they were in currying favor with him. Be that as it may, Earl enjoyed painting the picture of his old friend and benefactor and Jackson enjoyed Earl’s companionship; so everybody was happy. Earl is described by his contemporaries as a man of quiet and gentle ways, and he must have been an excellent foil for the fiery old General.

That he was not without a streak of humor is shown by his skylarking when President Jackson left him in Washington when he returned to the Hermitage in the summer of 1836. He was entrusted with the duty, during Jackson’s absence, of opening the President’s mail and distributing the letters to the proper departments. Earl, with dry wit, remarked to Francis P. Blair that this would place on the Cabinet members the unusual responsibility of attending to their own duties; and there was a good deal of chaffing and carrying-on in the official family while the well-liked pseudo-President was occupying the chair in the White House office with mock gravity. Earl would joke the Cabinet members by seriously referring to them all of the incoherent letters of rattle-brained cranks, including an inventor of a perpetual motion machine who wrote him from the Philadelphia lunatic asylum; and when one of them jokingly objected to being so annoyed, Earl remarked that while he was sitting in the President’s chair he was tempted to go ahead and make some needed changes in the government and thus save Mr. Van Buren (the heir apparent) the trouble. Blair thought all of this great sport and wrote to Jackson back at the Hermitage telling him all about it. “He is thus playing the part of Sancho Panzo,” chuckled Blair, “with those whom he ventures to joke with, making some pretty good hits.” Jackson was never much of a hand for horse play and buffoonery; but if he had any objection to all this pranking of Colonel Earl’s he never voiced it.

Upon the expiration of Jackson’s term as President Earl returned to the Hermitage with him, but did not live long. In addition to being an artist he was also a dabbler in the art of landscape gardening. He had designed the concentric flower beds in the middle of the garden; and when Jackson in the summer of 1837 started to build the guitar-shaped driveway from the gate to the front door of the Hermitage it was Earl who drew the plans and helped supervise the work. The sun shines fiercely in Tennessee in early September, and while engaged in this work Earl suffered a heat stroke which passed into a congestive chill from which he never recovered. He died on September 16, 1838, leaving uncompleted a portrait on which he was working of Jackson in his major-general’s uniform. In writing to his former secretary, Nicholas P. Trist, notifying him of Earl’s death Jackson said: “His death is a severe bereavement to me. He was my sincere friend and constant companion, and when I was able to travel always accompanied me. He was an invaluable friend, a most upright and honest man; but he is gone to happier climes than these ‘where the wicked cease to trouble and the weary are at rest.’” Earl was buried in the family plot in the corner of the garden, and Jackson made his little niche in history secure by directing that there be engraved on his headstone the words: “Friend and companion of General Andrew Jackson.”

In the journal of a Nashville citizen of that era, Mr. Matthew Delamere Cooper, the funeral of Colonel Earl is commemorated in a quaint and touching poem which he has entitled “The Burial,” in introducing which he says: “That the following lines may be understood it is necessary to mention that they were written on the occasion of the burial of Colonel Earl, a portrait painter of considerable eminence, for many years the intimate friend of General Jackson and long an inmate of the General’s house. He was followed to the grave by a few friends, amongst them the venerable hero, who did honor to his memory and consecrated the accumulating heap over his remains by a few tears that would not be represt. The man of iron soul, the hero of a hundred battles, wept over his departed friend! He was buried near a weeping willow and within a few feet of the cenotaph destined to receive the mortal remains of Andrew Jackson. (May it long be an empty tomb!!)”

The Burial

There was no gloomy pomp to strike the eye;

There fell no toll of bell upon the ear.

To where a new made grave was opened nigh,

In silence slowly followed we the bier.

And was he little valued, little known,

Who reached obscurity thus life’s journey’s end?

No, Art had made a brilliant name his own

And him the hero honored as his friend.

Yet in the latest office due the dead,

To him without parade thus sadly done,

Was he not honored much for whom was shed

That old man’s tears, by veteran friendship won?

How touching is such grief; who does not sigh

To see the sorrow-stricken hero bend;

The tear that mocks restraint, big in his eye,

Falls on the gathering heap above his friend.

Not the deep tolling of the solemn bell

Or martial funeral pomp for fallen chief,

Pall, long procession, pageant, all that tell

The magnitude of a paraded grief;

Not all were worth that solitary tear.

One drop from such a fount would nerve the brave

To court the deadliest danger without fear,

So might such honor wait him at the grave.

Hidden forever now, calm be thy sleep.

The ground is hallowed where thy place is made.

A spot all aftertimes shall sacred keep

Sharer with it the weeping willow’s shade.

And when to see where he, the great man, lies

Hither hereafter pilgrim patriots come,

Remembered shalt thou be, and tearful eyes

Shall mark thy grave beside the hero’s tomb.

* * * *

One of history’s shadowy figures who lived at the Hermitage for the better part of two years was Major Henry Lee of Virginia, scapegrace son of General Henry (Lighthorse Harry) Lee by his first wife. As his father’s eldest son Major Lee had become the master of Stratford Hall, the seat of the Lee family in Virginia; but as the result of an amour with his wife’s sister he had been forced to leave Stratford and exile himself beyond the boundaries of his native state. Attracted by the rising star of General Jackson, under whom he had served in the War of 1812, he came to Nashville to seek a connection with him; and Jackson, despite the social stigma attached to the expatriated Virginian, gave him asylum and gave him secretarial employment.

Major Lee’s polished diction is to be seen in many of Jackson’s formal state papers of this period, notably his first inaugural; and during the campaign of 1828 he wrote copiously in behalf of the General’s candidacy. He was on Jackson’s staff at the time of Mrs. Jackson’s death; and tradition has it that he was the author of the gem-like epitaph inscribed on her tomb. When the Indian boy, Lyncoya, died in 1828 Lee wrote a tribute to him which appeared in one of the Nashville daily papers and was greatly admired at the time.

When President Jackson was inaugurated in 1829 Major Lee aspired to be the chief clerk in the Department of State, an office for which his talents and education eminently well fitted him; but the black sheep son of Lighthorse Harry (“Black Harry” he was sometimes called) by reasons of his indiscretion in Virginia had made some powerful enemies there. They went to Washington and waged a vigorous and successful fight against his being elevated to such a high place in the Federal government, and so his ambition in this direction was thwarted. Jackson then appointed him to a diplomatic post in Algiers, and Lee went there to take over the duties of this office; but his Virginia enemies were relentless and succeeded in preventing the Senate’s confirmation of this appointment. Major Lee left Algiers and went to Paris, where he died a few years later. He planned to write a biography of Jackson and actually completed a part of the manuscript; but after his death this uncompleted manuscript could never be found.

It is of passing interest to observe that Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commander, was appointed to the Military Academy at West Point by President Jackson in 1829; and it is not improbable that this appointment was the direct result of his elder half-brother’s friendship with the President.

A charming impression of the Hermitage household is recorded in the book of recollections written in 1872 by Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia who, as few people now recall, spent his honeymoon in the Jackson home. Henry Wise, a promising young barrister, in August, 1828 came to Nashville from his home in Virginia for the purpose of marrying the daughter of Dr. O. Jennings, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Nashville attended by General Jackson and his wife when they were in the city. Dr. Jennings was not only their pastor but their close personal friend; and so, with characteristic hospitality, the Jacksons insisted that the young couple must spend their honeymoon at their country home.

The back parlor, with mantel of Tennessee marble and original furnishings. The center table is part of the furniture presented to General and Mrs. Jackson on the occasion of their visit to New Orleans.

The dining room, showing the ornate sideboard purchased in New Orleans by Mrs. Jackson, and some of the Decatur silver. At this banquet table have dined nine Presidents—Andrew Jackson, James Monroe, Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“We arrived at the Hermitage to dinner,” writes Governor Wise, “and were shown to a bridal chamber magnificently furnished with articles which were the rich and costly presents of the city of New Orleans to its noble defender. The first or second evening of our stay, Mr. Lee had drawn about him his usual crowd of listeners; but we were the more special guests of Mrs. Jackson. She was a descendant of Colonel Charles Stockley, of our native county, Accomack, Virginia; and we had often seen his old mansion, an old Hanoverian hip-roofed house standing on the seaside not far from Metompkin; and she had often heard her mother talk of the old Assawaman Church, not far above Colonel Stockley’s house. Thus she was not only a good Presbyterian, whose pastor’s daughter was the bride, and she a Presbyterian too, but the groom was from the county of her ancestors in Virginia and could tell her something about traditions she had heard of the family from which she sprung. With pious devotion to her mother’s family she desired to have a talk with us particularly, and formed a cosy group of quiet chat in the northeast corner room leading to the garden. This room had a north window, diagonal from the door leading to the garden. At this door her group was formed, fronting in a semi-circle the north window of the room, the garden door on our right. First, on our right, next the window, was old Judge Overton, one of General Jackson’s earliest and best friends. He was a man who had made his mark in law and politics, but was not pious and was a queer-looking little old man. Small in stature and cut into sharp angles at every salient point; a round, prominent, gourd-like, bald cranium; a peaked Roman nose; a prominent, sharp but manly chin; and he had lost his teeth and swallowed his lips. Next to him, on his left, sat General Jackson, his hair always standing straight up and out, but he in his mildest mood of social suavity. On his left the Reverend Doctor Jennings, one of the sweetest men in society, very distinguished as a lawyer first and then as a divine, with a rare sense of humor which even his religious zeal could not always repress, and yet awfully earnest and severe against all levity. On his left was Mrs. Jackson, a lady who doubtless was once a form of rotund and rubicund beauty, but now was very plethoric and obese and seemingly suffered from what was called phthisis, and talked low but quick with a short and wheezing breath, the very personification of affable kindness and of a welcome as sincere and truthful as it was simple and tender. On her left was ourself, responding to her every inquiry about things her mother had handed down concerning the Stockley family; and on our left sat Henry Baldwin, the son of Judge Baldwin of the Supreme Court of the United States, one of the groomsmen, a gentleman of fine culture, good sense and taste.”

Clearly the Jackson household was an attractive one and a pleasant one to visit. No wonder the Hermitage was always full of guests!

Henry Wise and his wife recalled with sadness that happy scene in the northeast room when they were back there from Nashville just a few months later to attend the funeral of Mrs. Jackson, held in that same room where they had all been so merry but a short time before.

The death of General Jackson’s deeply beloved wife was doubly tragic, coming as it did so closely in the wake of his triumphant campaign for the Presidency in 1828, and hastened as it unquestionably was by the heartless and slanderous attacks that were made on her character by Jackson’s political enemies in their desperate attempt to defeat his candidacy.

Her health had been increasingly bad for four or five years. She suffered from asthma and from palpitation of the heart, and the excitement and humiliation of the savage political campaign had aggravated her trouble, although she was not bedridden. Her final and fatal seizure came suddenly on December 17th while she was standing in her sitting room talking with Aunt Hannah concerning some of the household affairs. The General, who was in the fields, was hastily summoned, doctors were called, relatives and friends hurried in. For sixty hours she suffered intensely, and during all this time her adoring husband never left her bedside. At length she grew better; and her first thought was to reassure the General as to her improved condition and to urge him to get some sleep so that he would be in proper condition for the great banquet of triumph that was scheduled to be held in Nashville by his political admirers in honor of his election to the Presidency. The General at first refused to leave her side, but on the evening of the 22nd she seemed so greatly improved and she begged him so earnestly to get some rest that he reluctantly relaxed his vigil and retired to the room across the hall. Hardly had he left the sick room when the end came suddenly and without warning. With only one spasmodic cry she died in the arms of the faithful Aunt Hannah who was close by her side.

General Jackson was almost paralyzed with grief. He refused to believe her dead, and persistently urged the doctors to try every known restorative. But the doctors knew that life had left her body and ordered her laid out on a table in the old-fashioned way. “Spread four blankets on the table,” the General thoughtfully admonished the servants, tears streaming down his face. “Then if she does come to, she won’t lie so hard on it.” All through the night he sat there by her side. At intervals he would feel of her heart and pulse and look hopefully into her face for some sign of life. And all through the next day he sat there, utterly inconsolable.

The death of Mrs. Jackson, of course, put an end to the gala preparations in Nashville for the banquet of triumph. Handbills announcing her passing were hastily printed and distributed throughout the town; resolutions of regret and sympathy were adopted by the city officials, and the committee on arrangements for the banquet recommended a cessation of all business activities in Nashville in deference to the bereaved President-elect. Army officers in the city arrayed in their dress uniforms to participate in the celebration laid aside their regalia of festivity and donned the badges of mourning.

On the day of the funeral, it is recorded, every vehicle in Nashville was pressed into service in conveying the residents of the city to the Hermitage. Church bells in the city tolled steadily from 1:00 to 2:00 o’clock P.M., the hour of the services. Parton quotes an attendant at the funeral as saying: “Such a scene I never wish to witness again. The poor old gentleman was supported to the grave by General Coffee and Major Rutledge. I never pitied any person more in my life. The road to the Hermitage was almost impassable, and an immense number of persons attended the funeral. I never before saw so much affliction among servants on the death of a mistress. Some seemed completely stupefied by the event; others wrung their hands and shrieked aloud. The woman who waited on Mrs. Jackson had to be carried off the ground.” This was old Aunt Hannah who, between her sobs, said: “She was more than a mistis to us all; she was a mother.”

The day of the funeral was cold and damp and drizzly and the ground was muddy. The walkway leading from the house to the new grave in the garden was covered with cotton from the plantation gin-house to afford a firm footing to the pall-bearers and the funeral cortege. But in spite of the mud and the rain, the garden and yard were crowded with friends and neighbors. One of those at the funeral says: “More sincere homage was done to her dead than was ever done to any woman in our day and country living.”

General Jackson was heart-broken and stunned by his bereavement. Friends observed a complete change in his demeanor from that day forward. “He aged twenty years in a night,” said one observer; and all agreed that he was not only marked by a visible sadness but was from that time notably less violent in his nature and in his conversation. But, despite his feeling of desolation, the demands of the high office to which he had been elected did not permit him to sit at home and nurse his grief; and so in January, 1829, he left the Hermitage for Washington to be inaugurated President, accompanied by Andrew Jackson Donelson and Emily, Henry Lee, and Major W. B. Lewis.

After the trunks had been packed and the coach brought around to the front door, the heart-broken old General paid one last visit alone to the little mound in the corner of the garden. From a willow by the springhouse he cut four shoots and planted them at the four corners of the grave plot; then, after standing a moment with bared and bowed head, he turned and walked slowly to the waiting coach. Before stepping up into the carriage, so old Alfred used to tell, he turned for a farewell look at the Hermitage. With tears in his eyes he took off his hat and made a courtly bow of farewell to the old house, “same as if it was a lady,” said Alfred; and then he entered the coach, coachman Charles cracked his whip over the four grays, and they were off to the Hermitage landing on the river where the steamboat Fairy awaited them. A stop was made at the wharf at Nashville for other passengers, and then the Fairy swung out in the current of the Cumberland and they were started on their way to Louisville, the first leg of their journey to the capital.

A lady then resident in Nashville wrote of the departure: “When the old man finally started for Washington, a crowd of ladies were assembled on the back piazza of the City Hotel, overlooking the Cumberland River, to ‘see the conquering hero go.’ I mingled with them, and distinctly remember hearing one lady say she had a good-bye kiss from the General and she would not wash it off for a month. Oh! what a noise there was! A parrot, which had been brought up a Democrat, was crying ‘Hurrah for Jackson;’ and the clapping, shouting and waving of handkerchiefs have seldom been equaled. When the steamboat passed out of sight and they realized that he was really gone, the city seemed to subside and settle down as if the object of its being was accomplished.”

So Andrew Jackson went away to accept America’s highest honor. But no President-elect ever approached his inauguration with less enthusiasm or with a heavier heart. Without his darling Rachel by his side, it was an empty honor. Writing to John Coffee a few weeks later he said: “My days have been days of labor and my nights have been nights of sorrow; but I look forward with hope once more to return to the Hermitage and spend some days near the tomb of my dear departed wife.” And throughout the eight years he spent in the White House, eight stormy years, his memory kept stealing back to that spot in the Hermitage garden where his heart lay buried by her side.

Thus closed one distinct era in the history of the Hermitage. Without Rachel’s presence the old house was never quite the same again. When Jackson came back there to live in 1837 it was to a new Hermitage, erected on the ruins of the one he had built for Rachel in 1819; and although it was a larger and a finer house, although he still entertained lavishly and took delight in the presence in the house of his little grandchildren, he was merely paying out the numbered days of his life, waiting to be laid at rest beside that lonesome grave in the corner of the garden.