One day, soon after his capture, a British officer gave him a pair of muddy boots to clean. The fiery youth flashed back: “Sir, I am not your slave. I am your prisoner, and as such I refuse to do the work of a slave.” Angered by this reply, the brutal officer struck the boy a cruel blow with his sword, inflicting two severe wounds.
Andrew was kept in a prison pen about the Camden jail. As he was without shelter and almost without food, the wounds refused to heal, and in his weak and half-starved condition he fell a victim to smallpox. His mother, hearing of her boy’s wretched plight, secured his release and took him home. He was ill for months, and before he entirely recovered his mother died, leaving him quite alone in the world.
In time, however, these early hardships passed, and some years later we see Andrew, a young man of twenty-one, now become a lawyer. He is over six feet tall, slender, straight, and graceful, with a long, slim face, and thick hair falling over his forehead and shading his piercing blue eyes. He has crossed the mountains with an emigrant party into the backwoods region of Tennessee.
The party arrived at Nashville, where their life was very much like that of Daniel Boone in Kentucky.
Young Jackson passed through many dangers without harm, and by his industry and business ability became a successful lawyer and in time a wealthy landowner.
After his marriage he built, on a plantation of one thousand one hundred acres, about ten miles from Nashville, a house which he called “The Hermitage.” Here he and his wife kept open house for visitors, treating rich and poor with like hospitality. His warm heart and generous nature were especially shown in his own household, where he was kind to all, including his slaves.
“The Hermitage,” the Home of Andrew Jackson.
To the end of his life he had a childlike simplicity of nature. But we must not think of him as a faultless man, for he was often rough in manner and speech, and his violent temper got him into serious troubles. Among them were some foolish duels.
