May it yet come to pass that some time, SOME TIME, in the unfolding of higher and better things, these angels of Mercy, the Good Women of the Christian Nations, may be able to rush in between the lines, as once happened in the days of old, and stay the hands lifted to shed human blood!
Elizabeth Jackson, in the spirit of consecration, went to what seemed to her the post of duty, thinking nothing of the cost to herself.
They were in prison—her neighbors, friends, compatriots—and she did visit them. She brought to the suffering prisoners words of comfort; messages from home; the motherly sympathy which heals like a balsam; the kind word which is sweeter than myrrh.
Then the ministering angel, the best of all created things, a good woman, passed out of the ship, carrying with her the deadly fever which knew no difference betwixt the good and the bad. After a brief illness she died, and she was buried near Charleston; but, like her husband, her dust lies in a grave that cannot be found.
After the loss of his mother (in the fall of 1781), Andrew Jackson remained with Joseph White, a saddler by trade, helping him in his shop, in the making and mending of saddles and harness. At the same time, he read everything he could lay his hands on—books, pamphlets and newspapers. His uncle’s father was a local magistrate, possessed of a book of law forms and rules of common practice. Most young men would lay such a book underneath a volume of Sermons, and then spread a layer of dust over both; but Andrew Jackson afterward said that he read and re-read the law book until he knew it by heart.
But at this period in his growth an unfortunate thing happened. The death of his father and his brothers had left Andrew Jackson the heir-at-law to a considerable part of the estate of Hugh Jackson, of Carrickfergus, his grandfather.
The amount, some fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars, was just about enough to unsettle the average young man, jostling him out of the routine of dull, monotonous industry—saddle-mending, for example.
The legal representative of the Hugh Jackson estate, in America, was the William Barton, of Charleston, at whose house Elizabeth Jackson had died. Why it was that he turned over the money to the young man before he became of age is not explained. Perhaps Andrew wanted the money, and had made up his mind to get it. If so, the conduct of Barton is comprehensible. Whenever Andrew Jackson wanted a thing and made up his mind to get it, he could become a most troublesome customer. At all events, Mr. Barton paid over the money to the boy, and the boy sowed wild oats with it.
He bought a fine horse, and fine equipments for the horse; he bought fine raiment for his own person, including a gold watch; he bought a fine pair of pistols, so that he would be ready in case it became desirable to shoot somebody. In short, he went to going all the gaits of a fast young man, until his money was gone.
At the last, he made a bet which would have swept away even his horse, had he lost; but luck favored him; he won; and it is a convincing proof of his inborn good sense that he immediately paid up his debts, and rode his fine horse away from Charleston and its allurements.