For amount of Reiff and Hume bill per agreement contract $3,950
For extra work done upon change of plan 239
For work done on west wing and new kitchen, finding everything 186
For the full-length two-story porch added, finding everything 750
$5,125
To cash paid Reiff and Hume at sundry times $2,285
ditto paid 25 April 1,000
ditto paid by A Jackson in work 513
ditto paid June 24 500 $4,298
$ 827
For Amt bill Higgins plastering $900
To cash paid Higgins in part $500
ditto ditto June 24 225 725 175
For Amt bill of painting, paints, oils, etc. $400
To cash paid Horn and Wells (Horn 100) $188
do paid Horn 50
do paid Wells 25 263 137
Do paid Horn 2nd of August 1836 pd by A. J. jr. 85
$ 52

“The house is well built and convenient and in appearance greatly improved upon the old one,” Colonel Armstrong wrote Jackson upon its completion; and so the old General found it when he returned to the Hermitage in June, 1836.

When the fire occurred Andrew, junior, and his family went to live temporarily at the nearby Hunter’s Hill place, but later took a house in Nashville. In November, 1834, Mrs. Jackson and the children went to Washington to spend the winter in the White House, with interspersed trips to Philadelphia to visit her family and buy furniture for the Hermitage, but Andrew stayed in Nashville to look after the rebuilding work. He joined Sarah and the children for a vacation with the President at the Rip Raps in July and August, 1835, but he came back to Nashville in September.

III: RESCUE AND RESTORATION

Those who believe in special dispensations of Fate affecting human affairs must feel that there has ever been watching over the Hermitage some kindly guardian angel to protect it from the wasting touch of time and especially to frustrate the numerous and varied efforts that have been made to utilize it for some purpose which would have made it impossible to maintain it as a national shrine for patriotic Americans.

Andrew Jackson had been dead hardly ten years before it was proposed to convert his old home into a military school. Immediately following the War Between the States, during the Reconstruction period, it was suggested that it would be an ideal location for a home for Federal soldiers. Later it was selected as the proper place for a Confederate veterans’ home. Then some misguided persons wanted to establish a reform school and penal farm there. Still later a movement was started to convert the plantation into a model farm for educational purposes. These were but a few of the plans advanced for making use of the Hermitage; but in every instance a benevolent Providence intervened and helped to preserve it as simply the home of the patriotic old pioneer Tennessean whose burning love for his country transcended every other emotion.

When General Jackson died in 1845 he left the entire Hermitage estate to his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, junior. When the old General made his last will in 1843 one of his closest friends, Major W. B. Lewis, who felt no restraint in volunteering his advice, offered the suggestion that for the protection of the interests of the adopted son’s wife and children it might be advisable to leave a part of the estate to them in some such way as to insure their continued comfort and security “in case his son’s speculations should continue to be unsuccessful.” But Jackson’s sense of loyalty to his adopted son was so great that he refused to entertain this suggestion. “No,” he said firmly, “that would show a lack of confidence in Andrew;” and, pointing to his wife’s tomb in the garden, he continued: “If she were alive she would wish him to have it, and to me her wish is law.” But the General’s loyalty did not exceed his frankness, and in the preamble of his will he sets forth the lamentable fact that “my estate has become greatly involved by my liabilities for the debts of my well-beloved and adopted son, Andrew Jackson, Jun.”

The exact condition of Jackson’s estate at the time of his death was set forth in detail in a communication from a Nashville citizen which was printed in a daily paper in 1889: “At the death of General Jackson he owed but two debts of any magnitude, one of them $15,000 to Frank Blair of Washington, the other to General Planchin of New Orleans. His estate consisted of the Hermitage, then containing about 1,200 acres, on which he had about 100 negroes besides stock of all kinds. Besides this he owned his plantation in Mississippi which the adopted son and heir afterward sold with the negroes then on it for $40,000. This left the Hermitage, with the negroes and all else on it, clear and free after paying the $21,000 of debt, with a surplus of $19,000 in cash. So, to sum it all up, the estate at the General’s death was worth, clear of debt, somewhere near $150,000. This was well known by those near him and was generally believed by the community. It has been repeatedly stated by his opponents that the General was deep in debt when he died in 1845, if not insolvent. This is a great mistake, as I have endeavored to show from the facts here given, which are from my own knowledge received from my intimate business relations with the adopted son and heir, Andrew Jackson, Jr.”

Andrew Jackson, junior, in retrospect presents rather a pathetic picture. As the President’s adopted son he had every opportunity before him; but apparently the germ of success was simply not in him. General Jackson lavished affection and attention on him throughout his childhood and youth, and a real son could not have been reared more tenderly. “I have no doubt he will take care of us both in our declining years,” the General wrote Rachel in 1813. And in 1832 he wrote an old friend that “Andrew is now married and I mean to throw the care of the farm on him. I shall never more pester myself with this world’s wealth.” But, somehow or other, something always seemed to be going wrong with the things to which Andrew gave his attention. All accounts agree in describing him as exceptionally amiable and engaging in his personality; he was well educated, being a graduate of the old University of Nashville; he was charming socially; he was beloved and venerated by his family—but he seemed unable to develop the rugged aggressiveness and forcefulness of his illustrious namesake, and gradually the estate bequeathed him by General Jackson slipped between his fingers. Cholera took off 26 of his slaves in one year; another year there was a calamitous crop failure; ill-advised kindness led him to endorse friends’ notes—with the usual result; and an unwise business venture cost him the $15,000 he had invested in it.

An estate of $150,000 was a notably large bequest back in 1845; but by 1853 the heir’s fortunes were so shrunken that he was reduced to the necessity of mortgaging the Hermitage to secure a $15,000 debt, and in 1856 he was forced to the sad extremity of placing the estate on the market—having already sold off all of the land except 500 acres.