Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, gave the name “Hermitage” to his home. In his inspiring memory it is preserved.
Youth
Andrew Jackson’s father, for whom he was named, died several days before he was born. His mother, Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, to whom tribute should be paid as a truly remarkable woman, heroically met the hard situation of rearing and educating her three small sons. Young Andrew was nourished in the Revolutionary sentiment, which was rife in the late sixties and early seventies, bursting into flame in 1775. He and his mother and brothers were patriots from the inception of the Revolutionary movement. These fires of patriotism in the Waxhaws were fanned by the fact that there was much Tory sentiment. When in August, 1776, a newspaper reached the Waxhaws carrying the Declaration of Independence young Andrew Jackson, then in his tenth year, was called upon to read it to an assemblage. In 1781, at the age of fourteen, he enlisted with the South Carolina forces and was later made prisoner and struck down by a sword in the hands of a British officer whose boots he refused to black. His two brothers also enlisted in the war and gave up their lives. His mother, as a result of a mission service to Charleston to nurse prisoners from the Waxhaws there on shipboard, contracted yellow fever and died. At the successful end of the struggle of the Colonies young Andrew Jackson, in his fifteenth year, emaciated from desperate prison illness, found himself alone in the world, an orphan of the Revolution.
Early Career
Military
New Orleans
The victory at New Orleans, one of the most decisive defensive victories of history, will always be celebrated as an illustrious feat of the American arms and of the military genius of Andrew Jackson. Jackson mobilized incongruous elements, every available resource, into defense against the enemy attack. The forces thus assembled, consisting of Tennessee militia, Kentucky militia, Louisiana militia, and small contingents of regulars, Baratarian privateers, free men of color, Mississippi Dragoons, and friendly Choctaw Indians, numbered in all a little over five thousand. The invading army consisted of about twelve thousand seasoned British regulars. The British soldiers fought bravely, as British soldiers always do, but they could not stand against the well-planned, unerring fire from the American breastworks. The assault continued for twenty-five minutes, and then the British retreated in confusion, having lost in killed, wounded, and captured over twenty-five hundred of their number, including General Pakenham, chief in command, and General Gibbs, second in command, both having been killed. The American loss was put at thirteen killed and wounded. On the west bank of the river the British succeeded in capturing a small redoubt, but owing to the catastrophe of the main attack, this was abandoned.
Jackson was too prudent to yield to the impulse to pursue the retreating enemy, which he knew still outnumbered him by two to one, but kept in readiness against a return assault. The British ten days later broke camp and retired to their ships, and on January 28 set sail for the Dauphine islands. Jackson maintained himself in constant readiness against possibility of a return attack.