XIII
Andrew Jackson
The Boy of the Carolinas: 1767-1845
It was hard for a boy to get much of an education in the backwoods districts of the American colonies in 1777, and especially so in such a primitive country as that which lay along the Catawba River in South Carolina. The colonies were at war with England, and all the care of the people was needed to protect their farms from attacks by the enemy, and to give as much help as they could to their country's cause.
But if the boys and girls learned little from books they learned a great deal from hard experience; courage and self-reliance foremost of all. All of the children learned those lessons at a time when they might come home any day and find their home burned down by the enemy or their father and older brothers carried away prisoners. Even more than most of his playmates however, young Andrew Jackson learned these things, because his life was harder than theirs, and he saw more of the actual fighting. By nature he was a fighter, and circumstances strengthened that trait in him.
Land in the Carolinas was so valuable for cotton raising that it was not used for building purposes in those days, so the boys who lived near the Catawba were sent to what were called "old-field schools." An "old-field" was really a pine forest. When many crops of cotton, planted season after season without change, had exhausted the soil, the fences were taken away, and the land was left waste. Young pines soon sprang up, and in a short time the field would be covered with a thick wood.
In the wood, as near to the road as possible, a small space would be cleared, and the rudest kind of log house built, with a huge fireplace filling one side of the room. The chinks in the logs were filled with red clay. The trunk of a tree, cut into a plank, was fastened to four upright posts, and served the whole school as a writing-desk. A little below it was stretched a smooth log, and this was the seat for the scholars.
A wandering schoolmaster was engaged by the farmers, only for a few months at a time, and he taught the children reading, writing, and arithmetic. When the weather was bad, and the roads, made of thick red clay, were too heavy for travel, or when there was farming to be done, the school was closed.
This was the only school Mrs. Jackson could send her son Andrew to, and he went there when he was about ten, and took his place on the slab bench, a tall, slim boy, with bright blue eyes, a freckled face, very long sandy hair, wearing a rough homespun suit, and with bare feet and legs. He was not very fond of school, but he did like to be with other boys, and to lead them in any kind of an adventure, particularly if there was the chance of a fight.