The death of General Jackson’s deeply beloved wife was doubly tragic, coming as it did so closely in the wake of his triumphant campaign for the Presidency in 1828, and hastened as it unquestionably was by the heartless and slanderous attacks that were made on her character by Jackson’s political enemies in their desperate attempt to defeat his candidacy.
Her health had been increasingly bad for four or five years. She suffered from asthma and from palpitation of the heart, and the excitement and humiliation of the savage political campaign had aggravated her trouble, although she was not bedridden. Her final and fatal seizure came suddenly on December 17th while she was standing in her sitting room talking with Aunt Hannah concerning some of the household affairs. The General, who was in the fields, was hastily summoned, doctors were called, relatives and friends hurried in. For sixty hours she suffered intensely, and during all this time her adoring husband never left her bedside. At length she grew better; and her first thought was to reassure the General as to her improved condition and to urge him to get some sleep so that he would be in proper condition for the great banquet of triumph that was scheduled to be held in Nashville by his political admirers in honor of his election to the Presidency. The General at first refused to leave her side, but on the evening of the 22nd she seemed so greatly improved and she begged him so earnestly to get some rest that he reluctantly relaxed his vigil and retired to the room across the hall. Hardly had he left the sick room when the end came suddenly and without warning. With only one spasmodic cry she died in the arms of the faithful Aunt Hannah who was close by her side.
General Jackson was almost paralyzed with grief. He refused to believe her dead, and persistently urged the doctors to try every known restorative. But the doctors knew that life had left her body and ordered her laid out on a table in the old-fashioned way. “Spread four blankets on the table,” the General thoughtfully admonished the servants, tears streaming down his face. “Then if she does come to, she won’t lie so hard on it.” All through the night he sat there by her side. At intervals he would feel of her heart and pulse and look hopefully into her face for some sign of life. And all through the next day he sat there, utterly inconsolable.
The death of Mrs. Jackson, of course, put an end to the gala preparations in Nashville for the banquet of triumph. Handbills announcing her passing were hastily printed and distributed throughout the town; resolutions of regret and sympathy were adopted by the city officials, and the committee on arrangements for the banquet recommended a cessation of all business activities in Nashville in deference to the bereaved President-elect. Army officers in the city arrayed in their dress uniforms to participate in the celebration laid aside their regalia of festivity and donned the badges of mourning.
On the day of the funeral, it is recorded, every vehicle in Nashville was pressed into service in conveying the residents of the city to the Hermitage. Church bells in the city tolled steadily from 1:00 to 2:00 o’clock P.M., the hour of the services. Parton quotes an attendant at the funeral as saying: “Such a scene I never wish to witness again. The poor old gentleman was supported to the grave by General Coffee and Major Rutledge. I never pitied any person more in my life. The road to the Hermitage was almost impassable, and an immense number of persons attended the funeral. I never before saw so much affliction among servants on the death of a mistress. Some seemed completely stupefied by the event; others wrung their hands and shrieked aloud. The woman who waited on Mrs. Jackson had to be carried off the ground.” This was old Aunt Hannah who, between her sobs, said: “She was more than a mistis to us all; she was a mother.”
The day of the funeral was cold and damp and drizzly and the ground was muddy. The walkway leading from the house to the new grave in the garden was covered with cotton from the plantation gin-house to afford a firm footing to the pall-bearers and the funeral cortege. But in spite of the mud and the rain, the garden and yard were crowded with friends and neighbors. One of those at the funeral says: “More sincere homage was done to her dead than was ever done to any woman in our day and country living.”
General Jackson was heart-broken and stunned by his bereavement. Friends observed a complete change in his demeanor from that day forward. “He aged twenty years in a night,” said one observer; and all agreed that he was not only marked by a visible sadness but was from that time notably less violent in his nature and in his conversation. But, despite his feeling of desolation, the demands of the high office to which he had been elected did not permit him to sit at home and nurse his grief; and so in January, 1829, he left the Hermitage for Washington to be inaugurated President, accompanied by Andrew Jackson Donelson and Emily, Henry Lee, and Major W. B. Lewis.
After the trunks had been packed and the coach brought around to the front door, the heart-broken old General paid one last visit alone to the little mound in the corner of the garden. From a willow by the springhouse he cut four shoots and planted them at the four corners of the grave plot; then, after standing a moment with bared and bowed head, he turned and walked slowly to the waiting coach. Before stepping up into the carriage, so old Alfred used to tell, he turned for a farewell look at the Hermitage. With tears in his eyes he took off his hat and made a courtly bow of farewell to the old house, “same as if it was a lady,” said Alfred; and then he entered the coach, coachman Charles cracked his whip over the four grays, and they were off to the Hermitage landing on the river where the steamboat Fairy awaited them. A stop was made at the wharf at Nashville for other passengers, and then the Fairy swung out in the current of the Cumberland and they were started on their way to Louisville, the first leg of their journey to the capital.
A lady then resident in Nashville wrote of the departure: “When the old man finally started for Washington, a crowd of ladies were assembled on the back piazza of the City Hotel, overlooking the Cumberland River, to ‘see the conquering hero go.’ I mingled with them, and distinctly remember hearing one lady say she had a good-bye kiss from the General and she would not wash it off for a month. Oh! what a noise there was! A parrot, which had been brought up a Democrat, was crying ‘Hurrah for Jackson;’ and the clapping, shouting and waving of handkerchiefs have seldom been equaled. When the steamboat passed out of sight and they realized that he was really gone, the city seemed to subside and settle down as if the object of its being was accomplished.”
So Andrew Jackson went away to accept America’s highest honor. But no President-elect ever approached his inauguration with less enthusiasm or with a heavier heart. Without his darling Rachel by his side, it was an empty honor. Writing to John Coffee a few weeks later he said: “My days have been days of labor and my nights have been nights of sorrow; but I look forward with hope once more to return to the Hermitage and spend some days near the tomb of my dear departed wife.” And throughout the eight years he spent in the White House, eight stormy years, his memory kept stealing back to that spot in the Hermitage garden where his heart lay buried by her side.