The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

There are no slave quarters to be seen at the Hermitage, for in Jackson’s day the slaves who worked in the fields were scattered in their cabins about the plantation and did not all live in one long row of houses as was the prevailing custom in the South generally. There remains, however, a two-roomed log cabin just to the north of the garden which was the home of Uncle Alfred to the day of his death.

Uncle Alfred was born on the Hermitage plantation just about the time Jackson moved there from Hunter’s Hill and lived there all of his days. Living a long lifetime of almost a complete century, the span of his existence covered the years of Andrew Jackson’s whole life after his rise to distinction. He saw the building of the Hermitage, he saw it burned and rebuilt, he witnessed its decline and its rescue and its development into a magnet for visitors from all over the country. As a shiny-eyed boy of twelve he stood with the other slaves, young and old, at the big gate that never-to-be-forgotten day in 1815 when the General returned triumphant from his great victory at New Orleans; and thirty years later it was his strong arms that helped support the emaciated body of the old statesman as he sat up in his bed and gasped out his dying breath.

Born and living sixty years a slave, he was too old to change his ways when the state of Tennessee enacted the emancipation amendment to its Constitution in January, 1865. Freedom meant nothing to him then; he just went on living with the Jacksons until he could get his bearings—and then, in a few weeks, his master died and he stayed on with his old mistress because he felt that she needed him. When the state turned the property over to the Ladies’ Hermitage Association and the next generation of Jacksons moved out, he still went on living there in his same old cabin. Nobody ever seemed to consider the possibility of his moving away. Through the years he seemed to have become an integral part of the property, just as much a fixture as the stout log cabin in which he lived.

Alfred’s mother was Betty the cook; and in his youth his duties were those of a hostler and attendant at the stables. In the caste system of slavery he was undeniably of a higher stratum than the field hands; but the house servants, the real elite, always referred to him contemptuously as being from “across the yard”—their aloof designation of the stable area. At times Alfred rode the General’s horses in some of their important races, drove teams on the farm when needed for that duty, and occasionally served as driver of the family carriage. In all these duties he was noted for the way he had with horses and for his careful manner of handling them. When little Andrew, the adopted son, grew too old to be tied to the apron strings of his black mammy-nurse, Aunt Hannah, he was turned over to the tender care of Alfred—six years his senior—who served him faithfully in the complex rôle of nurse, companion, bodyguard, mentor, valet, and chum—that indescribable relationship known now only as a memory lingering in the recollections of those old men whose youthful days were spent in the loving care and companionship of slaves who were not merely servants but guardians and tutors—and friends.

When Andrew reached young manhood and was old enough to travel about the country, Alfred sometimes was called upon to go with him as his body servant; and the members of the family for years enjoyed telling of how Alfred saw to it that the young master had the best of the available accommodations whenever they went together.

On the occasion of Alfred’s first service in the unfamiliar rôle of valet, young Andrew was setting out on a steamboat trip to New Orleans. His body servant was taken sick just on the eve of their departure, so Alfred was called in from the fields to take his place—not, however, without some misgiving on the master’s part. Alfred was given some superficial coaching in his new duties and off they started. The next morning young Jackson was aroused from his slumbers by the noise of a disturbance on deck, and emerged from his stateroom to find Alfred in bellicose possession of the washbasin, soap, and towels, defying the early-rising passengers who desired to make use of the steamboat’s primitive toilet facilities. “Can’t nobody wash hisself till Massa Andrew’s used these things,” he was declaring stoutly. “Reckon I knows my business better’n dat.”

When Andrew, junior, married in 1831 and brought his bride to the White House, President Jackson presented to his new daughter-in-law a young slave woman named Gracey to act as her personal maid. When the young couple came on to the Hermitage in the spring of 1832 Gracey came with them, and the young maid from Virginia soon attracted Alfred’s favorable attention. The master and mistress looked with favor on the match, and so they were married in the fall of 1837. Mrs. Jackson made a gala affair of the wedding, having the ceremony performed in the large central hall of the Hermitage and giving the couple a handsome wedding supper.

The story of the fidelity of Alfred and Gracey to their white folk is the familiar idyl of the Old South—the faithful slaves’ devotion to their former masters in the time of the latter’s adversities. Gracey and Alfred had been with the Jacksons when they were in the White House, the first family of the land, they had enjoyed the flush days of the old General’s successes and popularity. And when the evil days came—when Alfred’s young master, now no longer young, cast off the burden of life and was laid to rest in the corner of the garden, and Gracey’s mistress faced life lonely and impoverished, with no farm left to work and no slaves left to work it—then Alfred and Gracey did not go off to set up homes of their own, in their new-found freedom, as did all of the other Hermitage black folks, but stayed there in their cabin to serve the mistress they loved as long as she lived.

Gracey died in 1887, shortly before the death of Mrs. Sarah York Jackson; but Alfred lived until 1901, and played no small part in making the Hermitage a place of interest to visitors. As long as he was physically able he served as a guide, and those who came from afar to visit the Jackson shrine deemed it a rare privilege—as indeed it was—to be shown through the house and garden by one who had been there when the spark of his old master’s vibrant personality made the Hermitage a place alive with his presence.

Alfred was fully conscious of the fact that he was a living connecting link between the departed great man and his living admirers, and he never tired of telling visitors stories illustrative of the greatness of the old General. To Uncle Alfred there was no flaw or blemish in his old master’s character or fame. His idolatrous veneration was well illustrated by his often quoted reply to a visitor who asked him if he thought General Jackson went to Heaven. “Co’se he went to Heaven,” Uncle Alfred answered with vigor, “if he want to. If he want to go dere, who gwine stop him?”