The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

There would have been no such simplicity as this about Old Hickory’s final resting place, however, if some of his admirers had had their way. Early in 1845, only a few months before Jackson died, Commodore J. D. Elliott of the United States Navy, commander of the old Constitution, brought home from Palestine the marble sarcophagus in which had rested the remains of the Roman emperor, Alexander Severus. Commodore Elliott wrote to General Jackson, advising him that he had brought home this handsome relic and deposited it with the National Institute with the suggestion that it be tendered Jackson for his own tomb. “I pray you, General,” wrote Elliott, “to live on in the fear of the Lord; dying the death of a Roman soldier, an emperor’s coffin awaits you.”

But General Jackson, as might have been expected, while courteously expressing his appreciation of the spirit of veneration that prompted the proffer, firmly declared that: “I can not consent that my mortal remains shall be laid in a repository prepared for an emperor or king.”

“My republican feelings and principles forbid it;” Jackson’s letter continues, “the simplicity of our system of government forbids it. Every monument erected to perpetuate the memory of our heroes and statesmen ought to bear evidence of the economy and simplicity of our republican institutions and of the plainness of our republican citizens, who are the sovereigns of our glorious Union and whose virtue is to perpetuate it. True virtue can not exist where pomp and parade are the governing passions. It can only dwell with the people—the great laboring and producing classes—that form the bone and sinew of our confederacy.... I have prepared an humble depository for my mortal body beside that wherein lies my beloved wife where, without any pomp or parade, I have requested, when my God calls me to sleep with my fathers, to be laid; for both of us there to remain until the last trumpet sounds to call the dead to judgment when we, I hope, shall rise together clothed with that heavenly body promised to all who believe in our glorious Redeemer who died for us that we might live, and by whose atonement I hope for a blessed immortality.”

Walnut desk used by General Jackson, with chair made from the wood of the frigate Constitution, presented to him by Levi Woodbury.

General Jackson’s office or library, showing his armchair, presented to him by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, beside the candle-stand where he customarily opened his mail. For thirty years this room was the political center of the United States.

When the new Hermitage was built in 1819 and the garden was laid out, one of General Jackson’s first acts was to walk out into the garden with Rachel and select the spot where their remains would rest side by side when life had passed. At this time the General’s health was precarious, racked as he was by eight years of almost continuous campaigning while in a debilitated physical condition, and he frankly expressed the belief that he would not live long. At that time it seemed highly improbable that he would outlive the blooming Rachel by nearly seventeen years.

This burying ground in the corner of the garden is not, legally speaking, now a part of the Hermitage property. To insure its permanent care, General Jackson on September 17, 1832, executed a formal indenture with John H. Eaton, John Coffee, and Andrew Jackson, junior, “and their heirs forever,” whereby he “bargained, sold, conveyed and delivered” to them in trust “one-fourth part of an acre of ground, out of the Hermitage tract, to be laid off and run out so as to include the tomb or monument placed on the remains of his dear departed wife, Rachel Jackson, and designed as the deposit of the remains of the said Andrew Jackson when it pleases God to take him hence, and the family of Andrew Jackson, junior, and his heirs.” It is provided that the trustees and their heirs shall preserve the sacred deposit made upon said ground and let the tomb or monument remain undisturbed and “hold the ground subject to the use and purpose mentioned, forever.” This conveyance is duly registered in the courthouse at Nashville, and was taken into consideration when the Hermitage property was transferred to the state in 1857.

Here in this quiet corner, sheltered by the heavy green foliage of the old magnolias that guard the tomb of the General and Rachel, are the graves of the adopted son and his family connections. Here lie Andrew Jackson, junior (the adopted son), and his wife, Sarah York Jackson; Colonel Andrew Jackson (the adopted son’s son), his wife Amy A. Jackson and his younger brother Captain Samuel Jackson, who was killed at Chickamauga; also the two other sons of Andrew Jackson, junior, who died in infancy; Rachel Jackson Lawrence, daughter of Andrew Jackson, junior, her husband, Dr. J. M. Lawrence and their son and daughter, John Marshall Lawrence and Sazie Lawrence Winn; Mrs. Marion Adams, sister of Sarah York Jackson; and R. E. W. Earle, the artist.