American Men of Action

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

Young Jackson, sobered by this and other experiences, applied himself with some diligence to his books, taught school for a time, studied law, and at the age of twenty was admitted to the bar, for which the standard was by no means high. To the west, the new state of Tennessee was in process of organization—an unpeopled wilderness for the most part—and early in the year 1788, Jackson secured the appointment as public prosecutor in the new state. It is not probable he had much competition, for the position was one calling for desperate courage, as well as for endurance to withstand the privations of back-woods life, and the pecuniary reward was small. In the fall of 1788, he proceeded to Nashville with a wagon train which came within an ace of being annihilated by Indians before it reached its destination.

Jackson found his new position exactly suited to his peculiar genius. His personal recklessness made him the terror of criminals; he possessed the precise qualifications for success before backwoods juries and for personal popularity among the rough people who were his clients, with whom usually might was right. At the end of three or four years, he practically monopolized the law business of the district; and he soon became by far the most popular man in it, despite a hot-headed disposition which made him many enemies, which involved him in numberless quarrels, and which resulted in his fighting at least one duel, in which he killed his opponent and was himself dangerously wounded.

It was inevitable, of course, that he should enter politics, and equally inevitable that he should be successful there. Eight years after his arrival from Carolina, at the age of twenty-nine, he was elected to represent his state in Congress, and covered the eight hundred miles to Philadelphia on horseback. From the House, he was appointed to serve in the Senate, resigned from it to accept an election as Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, was chosen major-general of the Tennessee militia, and so began that military career which was to have a remarkable culmination.

On the 25th of June, 1812, apprised of the outbreak of the second war with England, Jackson offered to the President his own services and those of the twenty-five hundred militia men of his district. The offer was at once accepted, and Jackson, getting his troops together, proceeded down the river to New Orleans. But jealousies at headquarters intervened, he was informed that New Orleans was in no present danger, his force was disbanded and left to get back home as best it could. Jackson, wild with rage, pledged his own resources to furnish this transportation, but was afterwards reimbursed by the government.

It was while he was getting his men back home again that Jackson received the nickname of "Old Hickory," which clung to him all the rest of his life, and which was really a good description of him. The story also illustrates how it was that his men came to idolize him, and why it was that he appealed so strongly to the common people. Jackson had three good horses, on that weary journey, but instead of riding one of them himself, he loaned all three to sick men who were unable to walk, and himself trudged along at the head of his men.

"The general is tough, isn't he?" one of them remarked, glancing at the tall, sturdy figure.

"Tough!" echoed another. "I should say he is—as tough as hickory!"

Jackson was lying in bed with a bullet in his shoulder, which he had received in an affray with Jesse Benton, and also, no doubt, nursing his chagrin over his treatment by the War Department, when news came of a great Indian uprising in Alabama. The Creeks had gone on the warpath and had opened proceedings by capturing Fort Mims, at the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on August 30, 1813, and massacring over five hundred people who had taken refuge there. Alabama was almost abandoned by the whites, and Georgia and Tennessee at once rushed to her relief by voting men and money to put down the Indians.

Jackson forgot wound and chagrin and took the field as soon as he was able to stir. He at once quarrelled with the other officers; but his men believed in him, though lack of food and the expiring of the short term of enlistment created so much insubordination that, on one occasion, he had to use half his army to prevent the other half from marching home. His energy was remarkable; he pushed forward into the Creek country, cut the Indians to pieces at Horseshoe Bend, and drove the survivors into Florida. At the end of seven months, the war was over, and the Creeks had been so punished that there was never any further need to fear them.

The campaign had another result—it established Jackson's reputation as a fighter, and soon afterwards he was appointed a major-general in the army of the United States, and was given command of the Department of the South. The pendulum had swung the other way, with a vengeance! But Jackson rose magnificently to this increased responsibility. He discovered that the English were in force at Pensacola, which was in Florida and therefore on Spanish territory; but he did not hesitate. He marched against the place with an army of three thousand, stormed the town, captured it, blew up the forts, which the Spaniards hastily surrendered, and so made it untenable as an English base. Perhaps no other exploit of his career was so audacious, or so well carried out. Pensacola subdued, he hastened to New Orleans, which was in the gravest danger.