And so Andrew Jackson, before reaching his fifteenth birthday had lost his father, mother, and two brothers. He was an orphan, a sick and sorrowful orphan, a homeless orphan, an orphan of the Revolution.
Many years later on his birthday, on the very same day when he disbanded the Army with which he had won the Battle of New Orleans, he said of his mother:—
“How I wish she could have lived to see this day! There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness....
“Her last words have been the law of my life. When the tidings of her death reached me, I at first could not believe it. When I finally realized the truth, I felt utterly alone.... Yes, I was alone. With that feeling, I started to make my own way....
“The memory of my Mother and her teachings, were after all the only capital I had to start in life with, and on that capital I have made my way.”
James Parton and Other Sources.
THE HOOTING IN THE WILDERNESS
It was night in the Tennessee Wilderness. A train of settlers from the Carolinas, with four-wheeled ox-carts and pack-horses, and attended by an armed guard, was winding its way along the trail through the forest toward the frontier-town of Nashville. They had marched thirty-six hours, a night and two days, without stopping to rest. They were keeping a vigilant outlook for savages.
At length, they reached what they thought was a safe camping-ground. The tired travellers hastened to encamp. Their little tents were pitched. Their fires were lighted. The exhausted women and children crept into the tents, and fell asleep.
The men, except those who were to stand sentinel during the first half of the night, wrapped their blankets around them and lay down under the lee of sheltering logs with their feet to the fire.