He also learned to write “a good hand,” which can be easily read even to this day: he was well up in arithmetic, and was fond of geography: grammar he detested, as most of us did. While yet a school-boy he wrote a composition which was in the nature of a patriotic proclamation, reminding his countrymen that they must expect occasional defeats and that they could hope to win only by steady effort and resolute courage.
From the advent of Tarleton, in 1780, and the Buford Massacre, until the surrender of Cornwallis, the widow Jackson and her boys were tossed hither and thither in the whirlwind of the Revolutionary War. The people of the Carolinas were divided, as they were in other states, some being Tories and in favor of remaining as subjects of Great Britain, while the majority were Whigs, and in favor of Independence.
The feud between the two local factions waxed bitter, splitting into savage groups almost every neighborhood, and often setting in hostile array, the one against the other, members of the same family.
The troops sent over to this country by King George committed many atrocities, some of which historians have shrunk from recording, but it is also true that many a nameless horror was perpetrated by our own people upon each other. In the later stages of the conflict, almost no mercy was shown by Tory to Whig, or by Whig to Tory.
After Gates’ disastrous defeat at Camden, Andrew Jackson made his home for a while at the house of Mrs. Wilson, a distant connection of Mrs. Jackson. This lady lived a few miles from Charlotte. During his stay with her, Andrew made himself useful pulling fodder, going to mill, driving the cows to pasture, gathering vegetables for the table, carrying in the wood, and taking farm tools to the blacksmith shop to be mended.
Mrs. Wilson had a son who became Andrew Jackson’s playmate and friend; and this son, who was afterward a prominent minister of the Gospel, used to relate that whenever young Jackson went to the blacksmith shop he would bring back with him some new weapon, spear, club, tomahawk, or grass blade with which to kill the British.
Dr. Wilson remembered having told his mother one day, when speaking of Jackson, “Mother, Andy will fight his way in the world.”
A girl of the neighborhood, who became in due time Mrs. Smart, happened to see Andrew Jackson as he passed along the road, on his way to the home of Mrs. Wilson.
She described the lad as being almost a scarecrow. He was riding a little grass-fed pony or colt, which was so small that the long thin legs of “the gangling fellow,” Jackson, could almost meet under the horse’s belly. The rider wore a wide-brimmed hat which flapped down over his face, which was yellow and worn. His figure was covered with dust, and as this Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance galloped along the road, he and his shabby little horse presented the forlornest spectacle that had ever greeted the laughing eyes of the girl who was to become known in Jacksonian annals as Mrs. Susan Smart.
Hugh Jackson, the oldest of the three boys, joined the band of patriots which was raised and equipped, at his own expense, by that noble leader, Colonel William R. Davie, of South Carolina. Only sixteen years of age, Hugh Jackson left the field hospital, where he had been suffering from fever, and joined in the assault upon Stono Ferry. The excitement, the exertion, the heat of the day (June 20, 1779), brought on a relapse, and the gallant youth died.