The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

Second only to his adopted son in General Jackson’s affections was Andrew Jackson Donelson, son of Samuel Donelson, one of Mrs. Jackson’s brothers. Samuel had been Jackson’s law partner in his early days and he it was whose elopement Jackson had aided back in 1797 when Samuel romantically stole his bride, Polly Smith from the window of the “Rock Castle” home of her father, General Daniel Smith—the same Daniel Smith who helped survey the much disputed extension of the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. The eloping couple had fled to Jackson’s near-by home at Hunter’s Hill to have the wedding ceremony performed; and, strangely enough, it was at the Hermitage that Samuel died in 1802, death overtaking him there suddenly one evening when he had stopped by to pay a fraternal visit. He left three young sons—Andrew Jackson, Daniel and John—and General Jackson was made the guardian of the eldest of the three, his namesake. At first all three boys continued to live with their mother at the home of her father, General Smith; but one day when Jackson paid a visit to them, little Andrew returned to the Hermitage with him, riding behind the General on his horse. He came to spend a few days; but so firm a hold did he gain on Jackson’s affections that he was never sent home. From then on the Hermitage was his home, and he was reared there with all the love and care that could be shown one’s own son.

Young Donelson was educated at Cumberland College (University of Nashville), Transylvania University at Lexington, and at West Point. Throughout his college life he was an outstanding student, and at the Military Academy he distinguished himself by finishing the four-year course in three years and graduating second in his class. Upon his graduation he was appointed an aide-de-camp to General Jackson, at the latter’s special request, and served with him in the Florida wars. After his return to Nashville he practiced law for a short while, but soon abandoned this and began to take an active and useful part in General Jackson’s political activities.

Jackson had a genuinely high regard for young Donelson. “I have reared and educated him as my son,” he wrote a friend on one occasion; and that the old General had the most unlimited ambitions for him is shown by a letter he wrote to him while he was at Transylvania College encouraging him to seek his associates and friends among the better class of students and concluding: “I look forward, if you live, to the time when you will be selected to preside over the destinies of America.” Donelson did not climb that high on the political ladder, but he did achieve distinction in his own right in public affairs; and there were many of his friends who thought that his star might have shone with greater brilliance had it not been dimmed by the too-close effulgence of his famous guardian and friend.

By the time Jackson was elected President in 1828 the young man had reached such a place in his confidence and affection that he was his spontaneous choice as private secretary, and he went with him to Washington in this capacity. The Jackson administration, however, had not been afloat very long before it ran on the rocks of the Peggy Eaton embroglio, that tempest in a teapot that threatened for a while to upset the government; and Major Donelson and his wife became the storm centers of this furious affair. Mrs. Donelson was a niece of Mrs. Jackson’s, the major having married his own first cousin, Emily, daughter of Captain John Donelson; and Jackson felt for her a very real avuncular affection when he installed her as mistress of the White House. Red-headed Miss Emily, however, was a spunky individual with a spirit of her own; and, although she reluctantly consented to receive Peggy Eaton coldly but courteously as an official guest at the White House, she flatly refused to visit Mrs. Eaton or to have any other social contacts with her. This brought about strained relations in the White House family, but the affair was temporarily kept from coming to a head; and the President and the Donelsons returned in amity together to Tennessee to spend the summer of 1830. There had almost been a flare-up before leaving Washington. The Eatons had been invited to dine at the White House, and the petulant Peggy had refused to enter the house while the Donelsons were there, claiming that Emily had publicly snubbed her a short while previously. This naturally riled the General and he raised considerable of a rumpus. In his flurry of anger he threatened to take the Donelsons home and leave them there, and this threat got under the Donelsons’ skin. Accordingly, when they all got back to Tennessee in June, the Donelsons did not go to the Hermitage to stay but went to the home of Mrs. Donelson’s mother, then a widow. The Eatons made a rather showy and carefully pre-arranged visit to Tennessee during this summer, a feature of the trip being their entertainment at the Hermitage; and Major Donelson later explained that he and his wife went to Mrs. Donelson’s to stay because they did not want to put themselves in the way of the honors General Jackson intended to pay to the Eatons at the Hermitage. But the President’s feelings were hurt. “When I expected you and Emily to go to my house and remain with me as part of my family, it was declined,” he wrote in a letter to Major Donelson that fall when the two of them were back in Washington carrying on that childish interchange of formal letters within the walls of the White House which almost precipitated a crisis at that time.

Jackson smelt trouble brewing as early as July, when he mentioned in a letter to Major Lewis from the Hermitage: “It may so happen that I shall return to the city in company with my son alone,” and asked the Major to be looking about for some eligible man to serve as his secretary. “My connections have acted very strangely here,” he wrote; adding, with characteristic fire: “but I know I can live as well without them as they can without me, and I will govern my own household or I will have none.” When the time came to return to Washington in October, Mrs. Donelson announced that she would spend the winter in Tennessee with her widowed mother; and it is not recorded that General Jackson interposed any violent objection to this program. Major Donelson, however, went along with him.

Hardly had they got back to Washington before General Jackson wrote back to Emily’s sister, Mary Eastin, saying that “Major Donelson has informed me that the house appears lonesome; and on his account it would give me great pleasure if you and Emily and the sweet little ones were here.” He went on to say, however: “Provided you will pursue my advice and assume that dignified course that ought to have been at first adopted, of treating every one with attention and extending the same comity and attention to all the heads of Departments and their families.” He told Miss Eastin to convey this qualified invitation to Emily and he himself told Major Donelson what he had written. Then ensued that absurd and pathetic intramural correspondence between these two strong-willed men who lived in the same house, worked together daily in the close and confidential relations of a President and his private secretary—but who fought out their private quarrel by means of long, formal letters.

Jackson had a deep and sincere affection for Major Donelson, but he felt that his honor was at stake; worse than that, he had tortured the shabby controversy into a “conspiracy” to strike at him through Eaton and through him at his departed Rachel. Donelson, on the other hand, while his letters breathed love and respect for his uncle, felt that his and his wife’s dignity and self-respect would not permit of any dictation as to their social contacts.

The stairway in the side hall, with its unusual architectural features. This is the stairway now used by the public in ascending to the second floor.