I saw personally but little of the darker side of slavery. The worst pictures I could draw from my own personal knowledge would not be sufficiently hideous to be interesting. The fairest I could draw would be of my old black "mammy." From my infancy she was the comforter, counsellor and guide whose sympathy and assistance never failed me. As dignified as a duchess; as neat in her striped, home-made dress, kerchief and turban as it was possible for mortal to be; jealous of the honor of the family; serene, affectionate, proud of her usefulness,—she is among the first from whom I expect a loving welcome in heaven. My father gave her free papers after she had nursed a sick member of the family with especial faithfulness on one occasion. She locked them up in her trunk, and that was the end of them, except when she took them out to show to her friends. I think it gratified her to receive them, however. I recollect the incredulity of a good lady from Boston, who asked her if she would not like to live there, where there were no masters and mistresses. "No indeed, honey!" was the reply.
When a girl I passed a winter in the White House. It was during the last term of General Jackson. That high white head; the perpendicular hair; the clear blue eyes—one moment melting with a woman's tenderness, the next blazing like an angry lion's—peering earnestly from under the great shaggy eyebrows and over the top of the silver spectacles; the furrowed, pained face, worn with suffering and perpetual warfare, but occasionally lighted by a sudden gleam of the old fire, which nothing but death could quench, when his cane would come down with a thump and "By the Eternal!" would break forth—the nearest approach to profanity ever heard from his lips by me, or by anybody, I think, at that period of his life,—how vividly all these come back! I saw him at his best. The storms of life had wellnigh passed. His beloved wife was beckoning him to a world of rest and peace. He was the idol of a majority of his countrymen. He occupied a second time, in obedience to their voices, what he regarded as the most honorable position that any man could hold on earth—the Presidency of the United States. In pursuing what he took to be right he had conquered everybody and everything that opposed him. He had ever been the incarnation of chivalry toward women. It is natural, therefore, that under all these circumstances, in those last days of his and first days of mine, he should have appeared to me a higher type of man than many people would judge him to be from a strictly dispassionate consideration of his whole life. I was never given to hero-worship, but at that time I did come near worshipping this old hero. I am not here questioning the justice of his latest and completest biography—Mr. Parton's—but would simply remark how difficult it is for me, seeing him as I did, and only so, to realize that he was the same being who enlivens some of the earlier scenes of that book. Toward the women he respected—and there hardly seemed to be one whom he did not respect—he had a courtliness of bearing, a considerateness, a gentleness, a nobility—in short, a charm of manner—which made him, as a mere "carpet knight," the most winning old gentleman I ever knew.
In speaking of the superstitions of the Scotch-Irish, Mr. Parton says: "General Jackson himself, to the end of his life, never liked to begin anything of consequence on Friday, and would not if it could be avoided without serious injury to some important interest." So far from abstaining from any undertaking on Friday, the general has told me himself that he made it a point to start on a journey and begin such things on that day; and he laughed at the superstition. Nevertheless, I am inclined to suspect that this very fact should be taken as evidence that the superstition did exist in him; that he was conscious of it; that his judgment told him it was an unworthy weakness; and that he was determined to conquer it. He acknowledged its influence by the care he took to defy it.
In those days visitors to the White House knocked or rang as they would at the mansion-door of any private gentleman. One rainy day a visitor thus announced himself, but for some reason no servant appeared immediately to admit him. The family heard it, and so did the general in his office, where he was writing. It did not occur to me or any one else that interference with the servants' duties was necessary. Suddenly there was a rustle of papers and an apparition. "What!" thundered the President. "A citizen of the United States stands knocking at my door in the rain, and it isn't opened!" The door was opened soon after that remark.
One day the general received a letter of four or five pages of foolscap from Ireland—I do not know whether it came from Carrickfergus or not—in which the writer said that he was a cousin of the President's, and that he recollected perfectly when the general was born, and gave the exact locality and all the attendant circumstances. He closed by saying he would like to come over. Jackson laughed over the letter, and expressed his surprise that he should have been born in Ireland and in Carolina too.
It was his custom, when he had no one dining with him besides the family, to say, as he raised his single glass of wine, "Here's to absent friends!" Then, glancing toward me, he would add in a low tone, "And sweethearts, too,——."
On one occasion, when I was ill, the general called in Dr. Hunt, his family physician. The doctor was a tall, lank, ugly man—"as good as gold," but with none of the graces that are supposed to win young ladies; yet he was married to one of the loveliest young creatures I ever knew. General Jackson accompanied him to my room, and after my pulse had been duly felt and my tongue duly inspected, they drew their chairs to the fire and began to talk.
"Hunt," suddenly exclaimed the President, "how came you to get such a young and pretty wife?"
"Well, I'll tell you," replied the doctor. "I was called to attend a young lady at the convent in Georgetown. Her eyes were bad: she had to keep them bandaged. I cured her without her ever having had a distinct view of me. She left the institution, and a year afterward she appeared here in society, a belle and a beauty. At a ball I introduced myself, without the slightest ulterior design, as the physician who had restored her sight, although I supposed she had never really seen me. She instantly expressed the most heartfelt gratitude. It seemed so deep and genuine that I was touched. That very evening she informed me that she had a severe cold, and that I must again prescribe for her. Well! it don't look reasonable, but I did it. I wrote my name on a bit of paper, folded it and handed it to her, telling her she must take that prescription. She read it and laughed. 'It's a bitter pill,' she said, 'and must be well gilded if ever I take it.' But whether it was bitter or whether it was gilded, we were married."
The hospitality of the White House at that time, like that of the Hermitage, has become proverbial. Very few brought letters of introduction who were not invited to dinner. Consequently, the table was almost always full. It seemed to me that Jackson never heard of a wrong to any human being, or what he conceived to be such, without trying to right it.