That woman who gave her life to her country and humanity was the mother of Andrew Jackson, and that youngest son, her especial pupil, was the seventh president of the United States. He had lost his father when an infant, and his early training devolved upon that patriot mother, from whom he also inherited some of those marked and high traits of character for which he was afterwards so conspicuous. She was an earnest and devoted Christian woman, and strove, like the mother of Washington, to glorify God as much in the rearing of her children as in the performance of any other duty. She taught Andrew the leading doctrines of the Bible, in the form of question and answer, from the Westminster catechism: and these lessons he never forgot. In a conversation with him some years since, says a writer, "General Jackson spoke of his mother in a manner that convinced me that she never ceased to exert a secret power over him, until his heart was brought into reconciliation with God." Just before his death, which occurred in June, 1855, he said to a clergyman, "My lamp is nearly out, and the last glimmer is come, I am ready to depart when called. The Bible is true. Upon that sacred volume I rest my hopes of eternal salvation, through the merits and blood of our blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ."
If departed spirits, the saintly and ascended, are permitted to look from their high habitation, upon the scene of earth, with what holy transport must the mother of Andrew Jackson have beheld the death-bed triumph of her son. The lad whom she sent to an academy at the Warsaw meeting-house, hoping to fit him for the ministry, had become a man, had filled the highest elective office in the world, and was now an old man, able in his last earthly hour, by the grace of God attending his early pious instruction, to challenge death for his sting and to shout "victory" over his opening grave.
It is a faculty of the female mind to penetrate with singular facility into the true character of the young. Every intelligent mother quickly, and by intuition, discerns the native bent of her child and measures his endowments. Evidences of latent talent in any particular direction are scrutinized with maternal shrewdness, and encouraged by applause and caresses. The lonelier the cabin, the more secluded the settlement, the sharper seem to grow the mother's eyes, and the more profound this intuitive faculty. It is the mother who first discerns the native bent and endowments of her child, and she too is the quickest to encourage and draw them out. How many eminent and useful men whose childhood was passed in the outlying settlements have been able to trace their success to a mother's insight into their capabilities.
In one of the forest homes on the skirts of civilization in Pennsylvania, Benjamin West, the greatest historical painter of the last century, showed first to his mother's eyes the efforts of his infant genius. The picture of a smiling babe made on a summer's day, when the little painter was but a child of seven, caught his mother's delighted eyes, and she covered him with her kisses. Years after, when Benjamin West was the guest of kings and emperors, that immortal artist was wont to recall those electric caresses and say "my mother's kiss made me a painter."
Daniel Webster's childhood home was in a log-cabin on the banks of the Merrimac, in a sequestered portion of New Hampshire. Here he passed his boyhood and youth, and received from his admirable mother those lessons which formed his mind and character, and fitted him for that great part which he was to play in public life. She recognized the scope of his genius when she gave him the copy of the constitution on a pocket handkerchief. She pinched every household resource that he might go to Exeter Academy, and to Dartmouth College, as if she had had a prophetic vision that he would come to be called the defender of those institutions which his father fought to obtain. And when in after years he had grown gray in honors and usefulness, he was wont to refer with tears to the efforts and sacrifices of this mother who discerned his great capacity and was determined that he should enjoy the advantages of a college education.
It is the affectionate and noble ambition of many other pioneer mothers besides Mrs. Webster which has secured to their sons the benefits of a thorough academical training.
The next step from the home-school is the district-school. The cabin which shelters a single family is generally placed with shrewd eyes to its being the point around which a settlement shall grow up. Wood and water are contiguous: the soil is rich: not many seasons roll away before other cabins send up their smoke hard by: children multiply, for these matrons of the border are fecund: out of the common want rises the schoolhouse, built of logs, with its rude benches: here the school teacher is a woman—the grown-up daughter, or the maiden sister of the pioneer.
How many of our greatest men have learned their first rudiments from the lips of "school marms," in their primitive school-houses on the frontier!
Population increases by production and accession. There is soon a dearth of teachers; all along the frontier the cry is sent up to the east, come and teach us! Woman again comes to the front; the schools of the border settlements have been largely taught by the faithful and devoted female, missionaries in the cause of education from the east. These pioneer school mistresses bore the discomforts of remote western life patiently, and did their duties cheerfully. Most of them afterwards became wives and mothers, and have in both these relations done much towards building up the settlements where they made their homes. Others have enrolled their names among the missionary martyrs. The toils, hardships, and privations incident to a newly settled country have often proved too heavy for the delicate frames reared amid the comforts and luxuries of eastern homes, and they have fallen victims to their noble ambition, giving their lives to the cause they sought to promote.
One of these martyrs was Miss M. She was one of that band of lady-teachers, numbering several hundred who, nearly thirty years ago, went out to the then far west under the auspices of Governor Slade and Miss Catharine Beecher, to supply the crying need of teachers which then existed in that section of our country.