Andrew Jackson, continuedIn 1781, the British returned, burned the Presbyterian Church, and made Andrew and his brother prisoners. Boys in their early teens enlisted for service and were treated with the same harshness as adults when captured by the British. Andrew refused to clean an officer’s boots and was slashed with his sword. In prison, he contracted smallpox as did his brother, Robert, who perished from wounds and the deadly disease. Shortly after, his mother and other Waxhaw women, moved by compassion for American soldiers imprisoned in warships at Charleston, took medicine and clothing to relieve their acute suffering but she died of “ship’s fever” [typhus] on her way home. At fourteen, Andrew was alone in the world, carrying scars of aBritish sword on his hand and face and memories of blood and death. Andrew nursed an implacable hatred of the British which did not diminish with the passage of time. From Congress in Philadelphia in 1798 he wrote to James Robertson, the original settler of Nashville, describing his excitement at the prospect of Napoleon landing in England. Were he to invade, Jackson imagined, “Tyranny will be humbled, a throne crushed and a republick will spring from the wreck — and millions of distressed people restored to the rights of man by the conquering arm of Bonaparte.” As the years passed, the Waxhaw experience and the suffering of the patriots remained alive in his memory. Jackson’s mother taught him to read when he was very young. Later, she sent him to James White Stephenson’s school, thinking that classical instruction might prepare him for the Presbyterian ministry. It was not to be, but Jackson always showed particular respect for ministers. Stephenson’s interest in the education of Native Americans and African Americans prompted the 1801 General Assembly to appoint him an advisor to John Chavis, the first African American Presbyterian Minister. Stephenson migrated to Tennessee in 1808 where he was Jackson’s neighbor in Maury County. Stories of a wild, dissipated youth who gambled, indulged in cockfights, horse races and other depravities are retold, often with relish, by Jackson biographers. Some of them appear to be later fabrications. Jackson was obviously no angel but whatever the sins of his youth, he was guided by a furious ambition, determined to win the respect of his friends and the concession of his foes. In his teens, he set his sights on becoming a lawyer. To begin legal training, he asked Waightstill Avery, a Princeton graduate and a distinguished figure in North Carolina political life, to guide his studies. Avery rejected his request. Jackson turned to Spruce Macay in Salisbury, who oversaw his first efforts at the law from 1784 to 1786. It was a move with a powerful influence on his future. John McNairy and Bennett Searcy were fellow students and he would come with them to Tennessee. The Macay household obviously vibrated with exciting talk of vast, rich lands opening in Tennessee and Kentucky. Macay’s father-in-law was Judge Richard Henderson who founded the Transylvania Land Company and sent Daniel Boone to explore the “dark and bloody” Kentucky wilderness. Boone, as a boy, lived up the Yadkin River from Salisbury, where his legend still lives, and his parents are buried in the old Joppa Presbyterian Cemetery at Mocksville. Bennett Searcy and his younger brother, Robert, were sons of Reuben Searcy and Susannah Henderson, Judge Henderson’s sister. By 1784, Reuben Searcy had invested in lands on the Cumberland River near Nashville. Millions of acres in the West, waiting for the intrepid immigrant, obviously appealed to the imagination of an impecunious young law student. To further his legal training, Jackson sought out Colonel John Stokes, now a distinguished North Carolina lawyer. Stokes survived the massacre at Waxhaw and his severed hand was replaced with a silver knob but nothing could hide the livid scars across his face. Stokes and William Richardson Davie not only shared the wounds of war but long worked together in building the University of North Carolina. Jackson stayed at Stokes’ vast plantation in Randolph County and after six months, he appeared in Superior Court where the judges found him a man of “unblemished moral character” and granted him a license to practice law. John McNairy, Jackson’s fellow-student in Salisbury, was appointed by the North Carolina legislature in 1788 as judge in future Tennessee. He offered Jackson the job of public prosecutor and it became his ticket to the promised land. With Bennett Searcy, whose family interests in Tennessee and Kentucky were well established, they crossed the mountains into the opening West. It was a region where danger still lurked; Nashville itself was protected by blockhouses. Bennett’s uncle, Bartlett Searcy, had been killed in Kentucky by hostile Native Americans, but the lure outweighed the risk. Hardly had Jackson begun legal practice at Jonesborough when he again encountered Waightstill Avery, whose refusal to teach him sent him to Salisbury. It was not in a regular court session but a remark by the older man enraged Jackson, who took it as a slur on his character. His anger flamed and he did the unthinkable: he challenged Avery to a duel. Avery, an elegant gentleman and an active Presbyterian, at first ignored the rash demand. Jackson sent a second note, still extant, and they met. By pre-arrangement, pistols were fired into the air but Jackson dramatized his point: Death before dishonor! Jackson plunged into public affairs in Davidson County and Middle Tennessee. As judge of the Superior Court, John McNairy granted him a law license in 1788. In 1789 he was appointed attorney general for the Mero District, made up of Davidson, Sumner and Tennessee Counties, and by 1791 he was a Major General in the Mero District Militia and a trustee of Craighead’s Davidson Academy.
RACHEL JACKSON — by Ralph E. W. Earl — Courtesy of The Hermitage: Home of President Andrew Jackson, Nashville, TN When he arrived in Nashville, Andrew met Rachel, the daughter of John Donelson, and their subsequent relationship was a love story as remarkable as any in American annals. Both were twenty-one. Her charm and vitality were equal to his but a tragic impediment overshadowed their romance. She married in her teens a man in Kentucky with a difficult, perhaps psychotic personality. After a series of breakdowns in the relationship, she remained in her mother’s home in Nashville where Jackson had his quarters. Her father was killed, supposedly by Indians, in 1786 and when Lewis Robards, her Kentucky husband, proved a continuing threat, Jackson intervened but was met with gross accusations. He moved to new quarters and Robards returned to Kentucky. Then, on Robard’s threat to take Rachel by force from Nashville, she determined to escape to Natchez, with Jackson and Colonel Stark and his wife accompanying her. He returned to his law practice in Nashville and a rumor, perhaps a malicious attempt to ensnare the infatuated Jackson, alleged that a divorce had been granted Robards in Kentucky. Heedlessly, Andrew went to Natchez, where he and Rachel were married. The rumor was false but Andrew and Rachel were remarried in Nashville, January 1, 1794, and no one raised a question. Their mutual devotion was extraordinary by any standards. Tragically, in the presidential campaign of 1828, Jackson’s foes began an unexampled campaign of slander against her and the irregularity of her marriage, aiming to damage Jackson’s reputation. continued on next page
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