One of the four guest rooms, with original furnishings typical of all the bedrooms.
So matters rocked along, and in December Jackson wrote General Coffee that Donelson’s “demeanor toward Major Eaton is more free.” He kept up a friendly correspondence with Emily back in Tennessee, and wrote Coffee that he expected her to come on to Washington in March or April. Major Donelson wrote his wife in January, 1831, that he had had “a very satisfactory conversation with Uncle in relation to our social difficulty” and that “He has left to my own discretion the period of your return, without alluding to the influence which produced your stay in Tennessee.” The Major expressed great gratification at the prospect of getting things patched up, and on March 8th left Washington for Nashville to get his little family and take them back to the White House with him.
Late in March, however, the Eaton affair boiled over in Washington again, and some new developments there made the President furious. On March 24th he wrote a long letter to Major Donelson, couched in words of genuine affection but reflecting plainly his agitation. The partially healed sore was reopened and he candidly said: “As much as I desire you and your dear little family with me, unless you and yours can harmonize with Major Eaton and his family, I do not wish you here.”
This new crisis in the Eaton affair resulted in the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton from the Cabinet, and Jackson hastily wrote Donelson on April 19th telling him of these resignations and predicting that “you will find an entire new Cabinet when you arrive.”
But now the Donelsons were offended. Upset by the strong words of Jackson’s letter of March 24th they, as General Coffee expressed it, “fear that you require more than they can consistently comply with.” In reply to this letter Donelson wrote a reply which Jackson styled “a vindictive phillippic,” the general tenor of which was that he could not return with his wife under the terms set forth in Jackson’s communication. Jackson’s reply was firm, though tempered with expressions of his affection, and showed clearly the extent to which the controversy had upset him. His letter concluded: “I am laboured almost to death, and have been a good deal afflicted; but will try amongst strangers to get a man who will aid me and who will think it no disgrace to associate with me and my friends.” This must have cut Donelson to the quick, but it did not alter his determination to sever his official relations with his godfather, the President. He went back to Washington—alone—to wind up his personal affairs there; and before leaving finally, on June 18th, he wrote an affectionate note to Jackson giving “assurance of my readiness to resume the relation which I have maintained near you for so many years, whenever you think that my services can be of any avail.” In a letter written home to his wife he told of a long conversation he had had with Jackson, and dropped the strange comment that “After what has now passed, while our duty remains the same, I am almost as well satisfied that the view which Uncle takes is correct.” Nevertheless, he went on home; and Jackson engaged as his private secretary Mr. Nicholas P. Trist (whose wife was a granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson), and he served until the reconciliation with the Donelsons.
The reconciliation, as might have been expected where there was so much mutual love and esteem, was not long in coming. Jackson kept up a friendly correspondence with Andrew and Emily as though nothing had happened, and in July two Nashville friends, John C. McLemore and John Bell, took it upon themselves to act to bring Jackson and Donelson back together. They talked to the Major, read all the letters the President had written to him, and then gave him the sensible advice to pack up his family and return to the White House “without further correspondence.” They wrote Jackson that they had given Donelson this advice and stated further that “we think there is no necessity for the specification of terms on one side or the other.” That this effort of the peacemakers was at length successful is shown by a single reference in one of Jackson’s letters to Coffee on September 6th: “Major Donelson and his little family reached here yesterday.”
Thus ended the spat between General Jackson and the Donelsons; and in all their future relations there was never anything to suggest that there had ever been the slightest asperity between them. Mischief-making Peggy Eaton drove them apart; but even she, with her genius for creating dissention, could not keep them apart.
In 1818 Major Donelson had inherited from his father a handsome plantation called Tulip Grove which lies directly across the Lebanon Road from the Hermitage; and in 1834 General Jackson, perhaps to seal the reconciliation, engaged Messrs. Reiff and Hume to build on it the handsome residence which still stands there. Emily, the innocent stormy petrel, died December, 1836, of tuberculosis. The disease wasted her strength rapidly and she died before her husband could get back from Washington where he had gone to help wind up the affairs of the Jackson administration under the impression that she was not dangerously ill. Major Donelson later married another of his cousins, herself the widow of Lewis Randolph of Virginia, who was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.
Major Donelson, after Jackson’s administration closed went back to Tulip Grove and lived the life of a farmer for a few years, keeping in touch with Uncle Jackson across the road and helping him sometimes with his flood of correspondence. By President Tyler he was appointed charge de affairs to the Republic of Texas, and he played an active and able part in promoting the annexation of the Lone Star State. When James K. Polk was elected President he was made minister to Prussia, an office which he filled with ability and distinction. Following this service he became editor of the Washington Union; and in 1856 took his last fling at politics when he was a candidate for Vice President on the ticket with Millard Fillmore. He died on June 26, 1871.
Major Donelson ever stood high in the affections of Andrew Jackson, and when the old statesman made his will in 1843 he left to him the gorgeous gold-encrusted sword which had been presented to him on July 4, 1822, by the State of Tennessee in honor of his services in the War of 1812. This priceless heirloom is still in the possession of Mrs. Bettie M. Donelson of Nashville, widow of Major Donelson’s son Alexander. There is a note of pathos in the apologetic explanatory clause embraced in the paragraph of the will in which this bequest is made: “This, from the great change in my worldly affairs of late, is, with my blessing, all I can bequeath him”; but, the dying General added: “This bequest is made as a memento of the high regard, affection and esteem I bear for him as a high-minded, honest and honorable man.” And, since a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, what more precious bequest could anyone receive?