Following his successful Presidential campaign in 1828, which included a trip to New Orleans in January with Rachel to attend the celebration of the anniversary of the battle, he left Nashville by steamboat and proceeded to Wheeling where he was met by a handsome, brand-new coach drawn by four white horses, and in this regal equipage he made his entry into Washington.
During his eight years as President, Jackson pursued the plan of returning to the Hermitage for a summer vacation in alternate years. The summer of 1829 he spent in Washington, too busy with the duties of his new office to get away for a rest; but in 1830 he returned to the Hermitage by steamboat and spent about two months at home. He paid a visit to Tyree Springs, then a fashionable summer resort near Nashville; and also found time during the summer to arrange for a parley at Franklin, Tennessee, with the six chiefs of the Cherokee Indians, with whom he concluded a treaty for the removal of the tribe west of the Mississippi.
He left the Hermitage on September 1st in his coach, and spent 24 days on the overland trip back to Washington. In the summer of 1831 he went, in company with his old friend Judge Overton, to the Rip Raps in Hampton Roads, near Norfolk. Both the old gentlemen were in bad health at the time, and they went to the rocky little island at the mouth of Chesapeake Bay for the beneficial effects of the sea bathing; but, unfortunately, there is not preserved a picture of Old Hickory in his bathing suit enjoying the Virginia surf.
His next visit home was in the summer of 1832, when the place was lightened by the presence of young Andrew and his new bride. General Jackson left Washington on July 23rd and arrived at the Hermitage on August 15th, by the overland route. In September he visited Tyree Springs; but he was back in the White House October 19th, the return trip also being made by what was then known as “the Virginia route.”
In June of 1833 Jackson took his celebrated trip to New York and New England—the famous occasion on which Harvard College conferred an LL.D. degree on the old warrior—but he was at the Rip Raps, enjoying the sea baths, in July and August.
It was not until August, in the summer of 1834, that he made his next trip to the Hermitage; and by this time he was beginning to feel the crushing weight of the Presidency on his shoulders. Writing back to a friend in Washington he announced his arrival home “worn down with ill health, bad roads and heat of weather;” but he also spoke of the pleasure he was deriving from the company of his son’s two little children—little Rachel “as sprightly as a little fairy, and as wild as a little partridge,” to whom he had brought a doll from Washington; and the infant Andrew III whom he described as “a very large, fat boy” and later referred to as “a veritable Hercules.”
One of his Washington friends wrote him during the summer expressing the hope that “in the cool and refreshing shades of your own lawns and the domestic quiet of your own hospitable mansion you will be enabled to forget, for a while at least I hope, the trouble and toil of your official station.” President Jackson doubtless did try to forget the cares of office while he was vacationing at home; but that he was not unmindful of the political possibilities of the overland journey homeward is shown in a letter he wrote back to Van Buren: “I found on my whole journey everything to cheer us; prosperity everywhere and all gratified and happy on the prospects of a circulating and stable metallic currency, and particularly the gold coin, which many had not for years seen a piece of before we presented them in payment of our bills.” And then he adds naively: “I had taken the precaution to lay in as many half eagles as paid our bills on our passage.”
The question of hard money, it will be recalled, was an acute issue in the summer of 1834; and it is not surprising that Jackson, the consummate politician, had been sufficiently foresighted to provide himself with enough gold coins to use in paying his bills as he took the thousand-mile overland trip from Washington to Nashville through Virginia and Tennessee. What an unparalleled opportunity it was for the champion of hard money to demonstrate to the people that he was its very personification; and it is not hard to form a mental picture of the old General’s breezy gusto as he slapped down his ten-dollar gold pieces on the small-town tavern counters and watched the favorable reaction of the pop-eyed citizens. As a matter of fact, gold coins were very scarce at this time and in order to furnish a supply of them Jackson had started the mint to turning out half-eagles at the rate of $20,000 a day; and while he was at the Hermitage in August there was sent to him from Washington the first eagle struck from a new die that had just been made.
In September, 1834, he started on the long drive back to Washington, accompanied by Major Donelson and Mr. Randolph. Before starting out, however—for these were the days of Spartan simplicity and unashamed frankness—he took the precaution to write to Major Lewis, who was spending the summer in the White House: “Have the House in readiness to receive us; and say to the chamber maid to have all our beds clear of bed buggs.”
The summer of 1835 was spent again at the Rip Raps, going there in July and spending 41 days.