So late as 1882-3, Sir Thomas Watson, an Englishman, spent several months in Jonesboro, examining and negotiating for a valuable piece of iron property in Washington county. He would come to my office occasionally, and would sit and talk with me. On one of these occasions, an old friend of mine, some seventy years of age, came in, and I introduced him to Sir Thomas, telling him that the latter was from England. My old friend sat down, but did not address a word to the gentleman to whom I had introduced him during the half or three-quarters of an hour which ensued; but I noticed him more than once looking at the Englishman very much as if he was “drawing a bead” on him along the barrel of a rifle. When Watson left the office, the old gentleman’s eyes followed him. As the door closed after him, my old friend drew a breath of relief, and asked, “What’s he doing here?” When I told him, he appeared incredulous. “I don’t believe he’s after any good,” he said; “better have nothing to do with a Britisher. This one may be a spy. If Andy Jackson was alive, and was to hear of that man being here, I’ll bet he would drive him out of this country!”
The race-horse in Greasy Cove, in the shadow of the mountain over which Jackson had crossed a few months before, and in the midst of the early settlements of Tennessee, was not the last time he appeared on horseback in the presence of his admiring and applauding countrymen. In 1833 President Andrew Jackson rode on horseback along Broadway in the city of New York, in a “roaring wave” of shouts that came from a “sea of upturned faces” which lined the whole way of his triumphal ride through the great thoroughfare of the great city, where men, women and children had gathered to get even a passing glimpse of the hero of the hour. He was then sixty-six years old, but his horsemanship, acquired in part at the celebrated race in Greasy Cove, prevented on this occasion a serious accident to the President of the United States. It was said by those who witnessed the manner in which he sat upon and controlled the spirited and frightened charger which he rode, that the horse would have dashed any other man headlong from the saddle; but Jackson was as cool and calm as he was skillful, and soon brought the animal under perfect control—as he soon afterwards did Nicholas Biddle and the United States Bank.
CHAPTER VIII.
JACKSON’S DUEL WITH AVERY.
Waightstill Avery was the most prominent man and the leading lawyer in Western North Carolina when Andrew Jackson came to the bar. At that time, and indeed from the time of the organization of the first court west of the Blue Ridge, Avery had the most extensive practice of any lawyer attending the courts east or west of the mountains. He began his professional life west of the Alleghanies with the organization of the first court in Washington county, and was therefore a well-known, as he was a reputable and highly respected, lawyer before Jackson’s appearance there. “He was born in Norwich, Connecticut, and was educated at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1766. He was a tutor in that college for a year, when he removed to Maryland, and studied law under Littleton Dennis. He emigrated to North Carolina, and was licensed to practise law in 1769. He encouraged education and literature, and was a most devoted friend of liberty. He led the bold spirits of his day in his patriotic county, and was a member of the convention in 1775, at Mecklenburg, that declared for independence. The minutes of the proceedings show his zeal in the cause of liberty, and the confidence of his countrymen in his talents and integrity is proved by the important duties he was engaged to perform. This called down upon him the vengeance of the enemy; for, when Lord Cornwallis occupied Charlotte, the law office of Col. Avery, with all his books and papers, was burnt. In 1775, he was a delegate from Mecklenburg in the state Congress at Hillsboro which placed the state in military organization. In 1776, he was a delegate of the same to the same, which met at Halifax and formed the state constitution. He was appointed one of the signers to the proclamation bills. In 1777, he was sent by the council (of state) with orders to Gen. Williamson, at Keowee, South Carolina. He was appointed by Governor Alex. Martin (1777), with Brig.-Gen. John McDowell and Col. John Sevier, to treat with the Cherokee Indians. He was elected the first attorney general of North Carolina, in 1777, which he resigned on account of his health, and removed to Burke county in 1781, which he represented for many years, and where he, enjoying peace and plenty and the love and regard of his neighbors, died in 1821. He was at the time of his death the ‘patriarch of the North Carolina bar,’ and an exemplary Christian, a pure patriot and an honest man.” Such is the brief account given by the North Carolina historian, Wheeler,[M] of the man with whom Jackson fought the duel at Jonesboro, which shows that Avery was no ordinary man.
Avery graduated from Princeton in 1766; Jackson was born March 15, 1767. Hence, Avery must have been at least twenty years older than Jackson. The records at Jonesboro show that Avery attended the various courts up to about the time Tennessee was admitted into the Union, and that he was on one or the other side of nearly all the cases in the courts held there.
More than one version of the duel, and the cause of it, have been given. I have read and heard two of these.
Parton, in his life of Jackson,[N] gives an account of this duel, as detailed by Col. Isaac T. Avery, son of Col. Waightstill Avery, and it would seem that this version of the affair ought to be accepted. It will be noticed, however, that Parton’s account omits to state any fact or facts that caused or led up to the challenge—he merely states that the two attorneys were on opposing sides in a case at Jonesboro; that the cause was going rather against Jackson, that he became irritated, and that Avery rather exultingly ridiculed some legal position taken by Jackson, using language that was more sarcastic than was called for (as he afterwards admitted), which stung Jackson, who snatched up a pen, wrote a peremptory challenge on the blank leaf of a law book and delivered it then and there to Avery, by whom it was promptly accepted.
In my search after the facts, made years ago, among the old men of Washington and Sullivan counties, I ascertained that Jackson fought two duels at Jonesboro. When I began my investigation, I had never heard of any except that with Col. Avery, and therefore, when asking some one about the matter, I would say something to this effect: “What do you remember, or what have you heard, about Jackson’s duel fought at Jonesboro?” The answer, four times out of five, would be: “Which one do you mean—the one with Avery, or the one fought in the hollow?” They nearly all remembered the fact that there were two duels, or said that they did; they recollected all about the duel with Avery, and that it was fought on the hill on the south side of the town (not on the north side), and that the other one was fought in “the hollow” (as it was then called) north of the town; but they could not recall the name of the man with whom the latter duel was fought, nor the cause of it. I suggested to some of them that probably there was no duel fought with pistols in the meadow or hollow, but that it must have been a plain, old-fashioned fight with fists, as I had heard that the hollow in question was a favorite place for the fisticuff champions of the time to retire to and “fight it out fair.” This suggestion was invariably met with ridicule at the mere idea of Andrew Jackson fighting with anything else than a pistol, a dirk or a sword; and I gave up the duel in the hollow with much regret at not being able to learn anything at all about it, beyond the fact that Jackson did fight one there, with some one whose name they could not remember, and the cause of which they had heard but could not recall.
The account of the duel between Jackson and Avery, as given me and as I heard it given to others, twenty, twenty-five and as far back as thirty years ago, by very old native-born citizens, agrees in the following particulars with that given by others: Jackson and Avery were opposing counsel in a suit being tried in the afternoon; the case was going apparently against Jackson’s view and client; Jackson was exerting himself in an effort to escape from authorities relied on by Avery; and the latter did ridicule severely some legal position taken by his opponent. If, however, the account given me be a true one, as I have every reason to believe that it is, there is much that must be interlined in or added to the foregoing, although it can be done briefly.