This was established beyond doubt, in the minds of a few old gentlemen (who afterward learned the actual facts), by an incident which happened in 1832—probably in the early part of October—at the public house or tavern kept by Capt. Bell at Bean’s Station, in Grainger county. President Jackson had left Washington, in the early part of August, 1832, in company with Francis P. Blair and others, to visit the Hermitage; and the incident about to be related occurred on the return trip to Washington. Before leaving the Hermitage, the itinerary or schedule of travel and stopping-places on the route had been made out. Bell’s tavern had been fixed upon as a point for dinner and rest, and Capt. Bell had been notified of the date. Bell had been a friend and admirer of Jackson for many years, and he and his wife naturally made great preparations to receive and entertain the President and his accompanying friends. Quite a number of leading citizens, acquaintances and adherents of Jackson, who had been apprised of the day he would arrive, were on hand to greet their old friend and leader, the President of the United States.
The party arrived on time, and the President’s carriage stopped in the public road in front of the tavern, which stood at some little distance back from the highway. Capt. Bell and others were at the carriage door to receive President Jackson, who got out immediately and “shook hands all round.” Bell, however, observed that Jackson, with an ominous storm-cloud gathering on his face, was looking intently toward a broad porch which extended along the front of the tavern, his eyes evidently fixed upon a gentleman who was walking back and forth on this porch, and who was evidently in turn eyeing Jackson with equal intensity. Suddenly, Jackson turned toward the conveyances which were accompanying him with friends, some of whom had already gotten out, and said, “Don’t get out—we will not take dinner here.” Then, turning to Capt. Bell, he said, “I regret that I can’t stop, rest awhile and take dinner with you. Tell Mrs. Bell that I could not stop.” The latter remark was made in an undertone to Capt. Bell, after which President Jackson got into his carriage and ordered his driver to go on, and his friends followed.
Capt. Bell’s curiosity was as great as his disappointment at the turn things had taken. He did not know what had caused it, but suspected that the presence of the gentleman walking on the porch had something, if not everything, to do with it. This gentleman had only stopped for dinner, and left immediately after it was over, without alluding to the Jackson incident. Indeed, no one then knew whether or not he knew who Jackson was; but Capt. Bell, during the hour or so that he remained, learned what afterward proved to be three important facts—the name of the gentleman, that he was from North Carolina, and that he was on his way to Kentucky. At that time, the thoroughfare from all East Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia was by way of Bean’s Station through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky.
Some months later, Capt. Bell learned that the gentleman in question was one of President Jackson’s most bitter and unrelenting enemies; that he was in fact the leader of the opposition to Jackson in North Carolina; that he had made public speeches in North Carolina and elsewhere against him, in the campaigns of 1824 and 1828, and was then (1832) most active in his opposition; and that he was at that time probably on his way to Kentucky to consult with Jackson’s opponents in that state. He, as Bell afterwards learned, had rehashed in his public speeches all the slanders which had been invented against Jackson, including no doubt the one which had cost Dickinson his life in 1806. After learning these facts, Capt. Bell said that he well knew the terrific struggle which Jackson had then and there, to control the storm rising within his breast as he saw, within a few yards of him, a hated foe who had committed a crime which, in Jackson’s judgment, ought to bar him out of heaven. But Bell’s idea was that Jackson—the man with a temper like a tornado, and whose very nature, as some professed to believe, was nothing but a raging torrent of fury—said to himself, “I am President of the United States; and I can not afford to bring reproach upon the people who elected me, or to degrade the highest office on earth by a scene, or a difficulty with that man, which is certain to follow if I stop here”; and he therefore immediately got into his carriage, and left without any explanation except the words given above. When Capt. Bell met Jackson again, a few years afterward, no explanation was necessary—he knew all.
Capt. Bell’s son, who as a young man was present when the incident occurred, is authority for the account given above, and for his father’s views and recollections of it. So far as I know, it has not been published hitherto.
Those who knew Andrew Jackson would agree with Bell that it took a superhuman effort even to remember, at the moment, that he was President of the United States, and to control the passion that the sight of this man aroused in him; but he did it, and, in doing it, proved himself a greater man, if possible, than many of his friends ever believed him to be. The struggle that the President of the United States had with Andrew Jackson, on this occasion, can better be understood when it is remembered that the man walking on the porch had repeated statements which, it is said, was the origin of Jackson’s trouble with Sevier and others, and which also caused Jackson, in his duel with Dickinson, after the latter had fired and hit him, to place his left hand tightly on the spot where the ball had entered, take deliberate aim with the other hand and pull the trigger; and then, when the weapon failed to fire, the hammer having caught at the half-cock notch, to examine it carefully, recock it, aim carefully again, and fire again—this time to see his enemy fall mortally wounded, dying in a few moments afterward. Jackson’s act at Bean’s Station, in leaving abruptly the presence of a calumniator of the memory of the wife whom he had worshipped in life, and at the very mention of whose name after her death tears came into his eyes and a tremor in his voice, was an exhibition of courage and self-control showing greatness in a direction and to a degree not often met with in the very greatest of great men.
On this same journey from Washington to the Hermitage, in 1832, President Jackson was given an ovation and reception which, it is believed, was the most pleasing and gratifying to him of any of the numerous public demonstrations of popular esteem theretofore shown him. This affair had its beginning four miles northeast of Jonesboro, on the public highway—the old state road—on each side of which, at the point mentioned, was an old-fashioned crooked rail fence, and also large oak and other native forest trees. It was in the latter part of August, or early in September, and the day was an ideal one. The road was on and along the top of a high ridge, with the Iron Mountain in plain view across the valley to the south. At this point, the President was met by one hundred picked men, uniformed, and mounted on a hundred of the very finest dapple-grey saddle horses that could be found in the country, to escort him into Jonesboro. This column of horsemen was under command of Samuel Greer, a life-long friend of Jackson. As it approached the carriage of the President, who had had no intimation of its approach, and got within about a hundred feet, a hundred stentorian voices simultaneously shouted: “Three cheers for Andrew Jackson, the greatest man on earth!” and the cheers which followed made the welkin ring and woke the echoes of three commonwealths.
The carriage was pulled to the right of the road, under the shade of a large oak (which was still standing as late as 1884), and the President alighted, removing his hat as he did so, and bowing three several times to the horsemen. This act of course caused another burst of applause. When quiet was restored, the column, at the command of Greer, dismounted and passed to the rear, where he introduced each one to the President. It is said that the latter, in as many as forty or more instances, while holding some young man by the hand, would tell him who his mother was before her marriage, what his father’s given name was, and in what part of the county he had lived—whether on Watauga, Nolichucky or Holston river, or on Limestone, Cherokee, Boon’s, Brush or Knob creek. After this, Jackson turned in the direction of the Iron Mountain, and as he pointed to it, said in substance: “Forty-four years ago last spring, I crossed that mountain, and settled, as I then thought, in this country permanently, amongst your fathers and ancestors; but Providence had decreed that I should not spend my life in this particular part of our great state, and took me elsewhere. Every time, for the last few days, that my carriage has been where I could see that mountain, I have been looking out at it, and letting my mind run back over my stormy and eventful life; and, at the moment you approached and gave me the first notice I had of your coming by your cheers and applause, I was thinking of whom I would meet and whom I would miss of my old friends at the old town just ahead of us, where I began life. I wish to say, before we resume the journey to the town, that in all my career I have not been the recipient of a demonstration more greatly appreciated than this one, here under the old trees, in this old road that I used to travel so often, by the sons of my old friends and acquaintances.” Then, with Greer and ten of the escort some little distance in front of the carriage, and ninety in the rear, the journey was resumed. It was understood throughout the country that Jackson would arrive in Jonesboro that afternoon, and also that he would spend the next day in the old town. This had brought thousands of people to Jonesboro; men, women and children came, on foot, on horseback and in every kind of vehicle. There was no way to house and feed the multitude that had arrived and filled the town when Jackson reached it late in the afternoon. The sides of the road were lined with people for a mile outside the town, the streets were packed, the tops of many of the houses were covered, and the President was received with waving of hats, bonnets, aprons, handkerchiefs and improvised flags and with shouts from the multitude, from the time he came in sight until he got out of his carriage and went into the hotel.
CHESTER HOTEL, JONESBORO, TENNESSEE.
On the porch of which Jackson held the reception in 1832. From a photograph taken in 1881.