As to Andrew Jackson, he himself said,
“Take it altogether, I saw and heard a good deal of war in those days, but did nothing toward it myself worth mention.”
However, he further stated that he acted for Colonel Davie as mounted orderly, or messenger, “being a good rider and familiar with all the roads in those regions.”
He witnessed the battles of Hanging Rock and Hobkirk’s Mill, and took part in a skirmish with the Tories at the house of Captain Sands.
Andrew and Robert Jackson were taken prisoners, and it was while so held that the boys were ordered, Robert first and then Andrew, to clean the boots of one of Tarleton’s lieutenants. Both refused, and to each was dealt a savage sabre-cut which had much to do with Robert’s death soon afterward, and which gave to Andrew a scar and a hatred which he bore to his grave.
To the rescue of her boys, came Mother Jackson, she who was “as gentle as a dove and as brave as a lioness.”
The lads were so young, and were in such a desperate plight with smallpox, that the British officers were perhaps glad to get rid of such an encumbrance; at any rate they were released or exchanged, and the forlorn group, the mother and her sick boys, journeyed back to their home.
But Robert was already so far gone that he died; and when the smallpox left Andrew he was a mere skeleton. “It took me all the rest of the year (1781) to recover my strength and get flesh enough to hide my bones.”
To the sacred cause of liberty, Elizabeth Jackson had already given two of her sons. The third had barely escaped a like fate. But the golden-hearted woman was not to be cast down, or taught cowardly prudence. No sooner was Andrew out of danger, than she sent him to the home of Joseph White, another brother-in-law, and set out, herself, to carry food and medicine to the sick and wounded patriots who were confined in the British hulks in Charleston Harbor.
Braver, it may be, than the soldier himself is the battlefield nurse who brings water to his parched lips, bandages to his bleeding wound, tender ministrations to his dying hours.