When Men Grew Tall, or The Story of Andrew Jackson

by Alfred Henry Lewis

While the General is fuming with ink and paper against those distinguished warriors, he cools at intervals sufficiently to build the blooming Rachel a little church. The blooming Rachel is a devout Presbyterian; and, while the General is far too busy with this world to think much on the next, she prevails with him—for he never says “No” to her—to put her up a church. It is not much bigger than a drygoods box; but there are forty pews, besides a pulpit for Parson Blackburn, and the blooming Rachel is supremely happy. She owns to some illogical impression that, should the General build a church, he'll “join.” In this she goes wrong; for the General only builds.

The General mounts his horse, and rides to Washington. He meets Mr. Jefferson in Lynchburg, and that aged fine gentleman and maker of constitutions is struck by the graceful manners of the General, who has become all ease and polish where once he was as rough as a woods' colt. In Washington he is much feted and feasted, and the trump of celebration is tireless to sound his name. He gets back home in time to put a roof on the blooming Rachel's almost finished church, and listen to Parson Blackburn's dedicatory sermon.

The Red Stick Creeks from across the Florida line take to marauding and murdering in Southern Georgia, and the General decides to see about it. He sends an officer, with a force of men, to reduce Negro Fort on the Appalachicola. In giving that officer his instructions, the General expands touching the military virtues of red-hot shots; and with such satisfactory results that the first one fired at Negro Fort blows it to ruins, and with it three hundred and thirty-one of the three hundred and thirty-four blacks and reds who infest it. Three crawl from the blazing chaos, to be hilariously knocked on the head by friendly Creeks, who have attended the expedition with that fond hope and purpose. The world is much rejoiced at the demolition of Negro Fort; since murder and pillage have been the one business of its robber garrison, and the fire-torture of prisoners their one amusement.

The General presently appears at the head of his hunting-shirt men, and destroys the village of Chief Billy Bowlegs on the oft-sung Suwannee River. Then he takes St. Marks from the feeble Spaniards, and arrests a brace of conspiring English, Ambrister and Arbuthnot. The arrested ones have come across from the Bahamas, bringing English guns and lead and powder and promises to the hostile blacks and reds; and all in accordance with that policy, dear to England, of preferring bloodshed by proxy to shedding blood herself. The General hangs conspirator Arbuthnot, and shoots conspirator Ambrister; while England, in accordance with a second policy as dear as the first, disavows them both.

The General goes on to Pensacola. Here he hauls down the flag of Spain, runs up the stars and stripes, drives out the Spanish Governor, and installs one of his own with a garrison to back him. Having executed conspirators Ambrister and Arbuthnot, he now seizes on two Creek-Seminole chiefs and hangs them, to preserve, so to speak, a racial equilibrium. Having thus wound up the Spanish, the English, the negroes and the Indians in Florida, the General returns to his home, serene in the sense of duty well performed.

The General's serenity is misplaced; trouble breaks out in Washington. Mr. Monroe is President, and Statesmen Clay and Crawford and Calhoun and Adams desire to be. The quartette last named suspect in the General—about whom a responsive public is running mad—a growing rival. They decide to cripple him in the very cradle of his White House prospects. If they do not he may grow up to snatch from them the crown. Moved of this high thought, they charge the General with waging unauthorized war; and with invading Spanish territory, we at peace with Spain. They call him a “murderer” for snuffing out conspirators Ambrister and Arbuthnot and those superfluous Creek-Seminole chiefs. Also, giving a moral snuffle, they demand that he be courtmartialed and cashiered.

President Monroe shakes his head at the conniving quartette, replying as on a somewhat similar occasion did the Russian Catherine:

“We never punish conquerors.”

The General by the Cumberland hears of these weird doings in Washington, and again rides over the mountains. His object is to discover, by personal observation, who in his case, are the sheep and who the goats, and separate in his own mind his friends from his enemies. Upon his arrival the General finds himself an issue of politics. As such he is voted upon by Congress, which affirms heavily in his favor. The people have long ago decided in his favor; and Congress, ever quick to locate the butter on its bread, sharply follows the popular example. Statesman Clay and others among the General's foes express themselves freely to his disadvantage. However, the General expresses himself freely to their disadvantage, and profound judges of vituperation say that he has the sulphurous best of the exchange.

Being upheld by Congress, and having freed his mind touching his foes, the General goes to Baltimore and Philadelphia, and is extravagantly wined and dined. Then he proceeds to New York, where Fitz Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake write doggerel at him in the Evening Post; and where, also, he is “paraded” and “dinner”—honored to a degree which lays all former “parading” and “dinner”—honoring, by less fervent communities, deep within the shade.