In August, some one brought a Philadelphia newspaper to the Waxhaws. It contained a portion of the Declaration. A crowd of Waxhaw Patriots gathered in front of the country store owned by Andy’s Uncle Crawford. They were eager to hear the Declaration read aloud. Andy was chosen to read it.
He did so proudly in a shrill, penetrating voice. He read the whole thing through without once stopping to spell out the words. And that was more than many of the grown men of the Waxhaws could do in those pioneer days, when frontier log-schoolhouses were few and far between.
OUT AGAINST TARLETON
Andrew Jackson was little more than thirteen, when the British Tarleton with his dragoons, thundered along the red roads of the Waxhaws, and dyed them a deeper red with the blood of the surprised Patriot Militia. For Tarleton fell upon the Waxhaws settlement, and killed one hundred and thirteen of the Militia, and wounded a hundred and fifty more.
The wounded men were abandoned to the care of the settlers, and quartered in the cabins, and in the old log Waxhaw meeting-house, which was turned into a hospital.
Andrew’s mother was one of the kind women who nursed the soldiers in the meeting-house. Andrew and his brother Robert assisted her in waiting upon them. Andrew, more in rage than pity, though pitiful by nature, burned to avenge their wounds and his brother’s death. For his eldest brother, Hugh, had mounted his horse the year before, and ridden southward to join the Patriot forces. He had fought gallantly, and had died bravely.
Tarleton’s massacre at the Waxhaws, had kindled the flames of war in all that region of the Carolinas. The time was now come when Andrew and Robert were to play men’s parts. Carrying their own weapons, they mounted their grass ponies—ponies of the South Carolina swamps, rough, Shetlandish, wild—and rode away to join the patriots.
Andrew and Robert served in a number of actions, and were finally taken captive.
They were at length rescued by their mother. This heroic woman arrived at their prison, and by her efforts and entreaties, succeeded in bringing about an exchange of prisoners.
Andrew and Robert were brought out of prison and handed over to her. She gazed at them in astonishment and horror,—so worn and wasted the boys were with hunger, wounds, and disease. They were both ill with the smallpox. Robert could not stand, nor even sit on horseback without support.