BY THOS. E WATSON.

AAndrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767.

There has been a hot dispute over the place of his birth, but the weight of the legal evidence favors South Carolina.

His parents were immigrants from the northern part of Ireland, where the people are mainly Presbyterians in religion, and where there is an inter-mixture of Scotch blood; but there seems to be no positive proof that the Jacksons belonged to the over-worked family of Scotch-Irish.

They were poor people, living at Carrickfergus, linen weavers by trade, and, if any one of them had ever been prominent in any way, the story is lost. The most painstaking researches made by enthusiastic hero-worshipers have failed to trace the Jackson lineage to a single cattle-lifting lord, or to any other member of that upper world into which the biographical snob is so eager to cast his anchor.

The Jacksons were plain, common, industrious, honest folks, who held a respectable, independent place in their own community, but who were not so prosperous as to resist the temptation to try their fortunes in the New World.

Hugh Jackson, brother to Andrew’s father, had been a soldier in a British regiment, and had served in America. He was present at Braddock’s defeat, and may have known Fausett, the Virginia scout, who is said to have given the rash British general the wound of which he died. (See note.)

Apparently, Hugh Jackson became interested in the efforts of the Catawba Land Company to colonize its holdings in the Carolinas, for upon his return to Ireland he began to get together a band of kinspeople, neighbors and friends, for the purpose of emigrating to America.

Among those whom Hugh Jackson persuaded was his brother, Andrew. But, before everything could be got ready for the voyage, Hugh Jackson fell in love with the daughter of well-to-do parents, and married her; and the wife of Hugh was so satisfactory in herself and her surroundings that the happy husband decided to remain in the old country—his wife having vetoed his emigration scheme.

His brother Andrew, however, had probably already made his arrangements to go to America, and, having got unsettled, found it not so easy to sink back into his former life; therefore, after some hesitation, he and the three Crawfords, one of whom was the husband of his wife’s sister, took ship for Charleston.

Upon his coming to North Carolina, it seems that Andrew Jackson was too poor to buy land. Instead, therefore, of locating in the Waxhaws Settlement, where most of the immigrants from Carrickfergus had bought homes, he went to Twelve-mile Creek, a branch of the Catawba.

Here he was seven miles distant from the Waxhaws Settlement, and was face to face with the gigantic task of carving out a farm from the wilderness.

The historian, the orator, the painter, have been eager in the duty of blazoning the deeds of our pioneer missionaries, law-makers and soldiers. The names of these heroes live, and deserve to live, in letters of light upon the records of our country. But, to our pioneer farmers, justice has never been done. Theirs was a combat calling for every soldierly trait of John Smith and Miles Standish. The patient courage which swung the axe, in the depths of primeval woods, was no less heroic than the bravery which made the musket conquer. The toil of the warrior’s march was slight by comparison with the homely, but exhausting, work of preparing the soil for the sowing of seed. The arrows of the red men were not more deadly to the soldier than were the fevers which rose from the swamps and pulled down the settler as he struggled to open out his farm.

In the South, in the East, in the West, the story of the pioneer plowman of America is one of dauntless courage, of quiet heroism. He found the New World a wilderness and he has well-nigh made it a garden. His axe, his spade, his hoe, his plow, his muscle, his brain, his very heart and soul have all been enlisted in the work; and never once have his lips uttered the craven’s plea for “Protection.” Never once has he gone to the doors of legislation begging special favors. Never once has he lied to government and people for the purpose of securing a selfish advantage at the expense of his fellowman.

No. He has not only not demanded of the government either Protection or Privilege, but he has submitted—yes, for one hundred years he has submitted!—to be robbed of a portion of his annual produce in order that our Infant Industry Capitalists should be able to build up the corporate power which now, in the form of Trusts, dominates the Republic and secures the lion’s share of all the wealth created in every field of industry.

Like many another pioneer of the American wilderness, Andrew Jackson found the task too hard. He died under the strain. The impression which his famous son had as to the immediate cause of his death was that he ruptured a blood vessel in the handling of a heavy log.

The body of the hero who had fallen in the fight for his wife and little ones—the fight to make a home for them in the wilderness—was buried in the graveyard of the Waxhaw Settlement church. In after years, when efforts were made to identify the spot it could not be done.

***

According to local tradition, there was held at the cabin-home of the dead man the grewsome “wake” which was customary among the Irish in the Old Country. Relatives from the Waxhaw settlement came out to Jackson’s “clearing,” when they learned that he was no more; and, after preparing the body for burial, their grief gradually wore itself out, and the whiskey-jug became the ruling factor of the occasion. As lamentation gave place to revelry, it is said that “the corpse came in for his share of the refreshments.” What this may mean, each reader shall judge for himself.

The same tradition claims that the body was hauled from the cabin to the graveyard upon a rough wooden frame or sled, and that such was the disorder of the journey that the corpse was jolted off the sled and “tumbled on its face in a little bottom,” on the banks of Waxhaw Creek, near the crossing.

The man who was riding the horse, which was hitched to the sled, had not known that he had lost his load until one of the funeral party in advance, happening to look back, saw “the sled bouncing up and down, in a very light way.”

They had to go back miles before they came to the spot where the body had rolled off the sled.

The numerous biographers of Andrew Jackson have shunned this local tradition as something entirely too horrible to put in print; yet books are only valuable to the extent that they tell the truth. The story is useful as an illustration of the extreme roughness of frontier conditions at that time; the poverty of the Jacksons, and the rude simplicity of border funerals.

The immigrant had gone into the unbroken wilderness to build his log cabin; and apparently there was no wagon road from his “clearing” to the Waxhaw Settlement.

The use of the wooden frame or sled to carry the body on, would indicate more strongly the lack of a road than the lack of a wagon, for, even though the Jacksons had no such vehicle, the Waxhaw relatives would have brought one if there had been a passable road. The corpse, tumbling off the sled and being left behind on its face in the little bottom, is uncanny, but to the dead the uncanny is not the uncommon.

The brilliant soldier—son of the Emperor Charles V—Don John of Austria, who broke the sea-power of the Turks in the battle of Lepanto, died dismally in the Netherlands; and his body was carried on horse-back to Spain, in two sacks—half of the body in one sack and half in the other.

When Abraham Lincoln died, his face discolored so rapidly that those in charge, to save the feelings of the people who would want to gaze upon the revered features, painted out the shocking discoloration; and, thus artificially masked, the martyred President was borne to his tomb.

***

The widow Jackson and her two little boys did not go back to the distant, lonely cabin on Twelve Mile Creek. From the church-ground where the husband and father had been buried, they went to the home of George McCamie, who had married Mrs. Jackson’s sister. Here, within a fortnight of the funeral, a son was born to the widow; and this son she named Andrew, after his father.

As soon as she was able to travel, the widow Jackson left the McCamie home and went to live with James Crawford, her brother-in-law.

Mrs. Crawford was an invalid, and Mrs. Jackson took charge of the Crawford housekeeping. Thus she and two of her boys lived for several years, the oldest son, Hugh, remaining with George McCamie.

The family name of Andrew Jackson’s mother was Hutchinson. She had, at least, a primary English education, for it was she who taught Andrew to read. That she was a woman of strong, lovable traits, is proven by the sound advice she impressed upon the mind of her great son, and by the passionate attachment to her which he carried throughout his life.

After the battle of New Orleans, when the victor had been crowned with laurel in the Cathedral and acclaimed like a demi-god through the streets, it was of his mother that he spoke to the officers whom he was about to disband—their glorious work being done.

“Gentlemen, if only SHE could have lived to see this day!”

As you follow the narrative of Andrew Jackson’s career, you will hear him say many things that you will not approve, will see him do many things which you cannot applaud, but when you recall that at the very top-notch of his success and his pride, his heart stayed in the right place, and was sore because his mother could not be there to gladden her old eyes with the glory of her son—you will forgive him much in his life that was harsh and cruel and utterly wrong.

During each Winter, for two or three years, after he had reached the age of seven, Andrew Jackson was sent to the old-field school of a Mr. Branch. After this, he attended the select school which a Presbyterian preacher, Dr. David Humphreys, taught in the Waxhaw settlement. He appears to have been going to this higher school in the spring of 1780, when the inroad of Tarleton created a panic in that portion of the Carolinas. At some later period of his youth, he is said to have attended the old Queen College or Seminary at Charlotte a couple of terms, but the time is not definitely known.

As to education, therefore, it may be safely stated that Andrew Jackson enjoyed much more than the ordinary advantage of a back-woods boy of his time. At the age of ten, he had become so good a reader that he was often chosen to read the newspaper to the assembled neighbors; and he remembered with pride, in after years, that he had thus had the honor of “reading out loud” the Declaration of Independence upon its arrival in the Waxhaws. For a lad of ten this was, indeed, something to remember with honest pride.

He also learned to write “a good hand,” which can be easily read even to this day: he was well up in arithmetic, and was fond of geography: grammar he detested, as most of us did. While yet a school-boy he wrote a composition which was in the nature of a patriotic proclamation, reminding his countrymen that they must expect occasional defeats and that they could hope to win only by steady effort and resolute courage.

From the advent of Tarleton, in 1780, and the Buford Massacre, until the surrender of Cornwallis, the widow Jackson and her boys were tossed hither and thither in the whirlwind of the Revolutionary War. The people of the Carolinas were divided, as they were in other states, some being Tories and in favor of remaining as subjects of Great Britain, while the majority were Whigs, and in favor of Independence.

The feud between the two local factions waxed bitter, splitting into savage groups almost every neighborhood, and often setting in hostile array, the one against the other, members of the same family.

The troops sent over to this country by King George committed many atrocities, some of which historians have shrunk from recording, but it is also true that many a nameless horror was perpetrated by our own people upon each other. In the later stages of the conflict, almost no mercy was shown by Tory to Whig, or by Whig to Tory.

After Gates’ disastrous defeat at Camden, Andrew Jackson made his home for a while at the house of Mrs. Wilson, a distant connection of Mrs. Jackson. This lady lived a few miles from Charlotte. During his stay with her, Andrew made himself useful pulling fodder, going to mill, driving the cows to pasture, gathering vegetables for the table, carrying in the wood, and taking farm tools to the blacksmith shop to be mended.

Mrs. Wilson had a son who became Andrew Jackson’s playmate and friend; and this son, who was afterward a prominent minister of the Gospel, used to relate that whenever young Jackson went to the blacksmith shop he would bring back with him some new weapon, spear, club, tomahawk, or grass blade with which to kill the British.

Dr. Wilson remembered having told his mother one day, when speaking of Jackson, “Mother, Andy will fight his way in the world.”

A girl of the neighborhood, who became in due time Mrs. Smart, happened to see Andrew Jackson as he passed along the road, on his way to the home of Mrs. Wilson.

She described the lad as being almost a scarecrow. He was riding a little grass-fed pony or colt, which was so small that the long thin legs of “the gangling fellow,” Jackson, could almost meet under the horse’s belly. The rider wore a wide-brimmed hat which flapped down over his face, which was yellow and worn. His figure was covered with dust, and as this Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance galloped along the road, he and his shabby little horse presented the forlornest spectacle that had ever greeted the laughing eyes of the girl who was to become known in Jacksonian annals as Mrs. Susan Smart.

Hugh Jackson, the oldest of the three boys, joined the band of patriots which was raised and equipped, at his own expense, by that noble leader, Colonel William R. Davie, of South Carolina. Only sixteen years of age, Hugh Jackson left the field hospital, where he had been suffering from fever, and joined in the assault upon Stono Ferry. The excitement, the exertion, the heat of the day (June 20, 1779), brought on a relapse, and the gallant youth died.

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.

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.

Chapter II.

Studying Law!

To that stage had Andrew Jackson came, in 1785, steered by the unseen forces which govern the world. It is doubtful whether he himself could have explained how he happened to drift into that profession rather than some other.

In the finding of one’s life-work there is much more of feeling around in the dark than is generally supposed. Cervantes did not begin to write Don Quixote until he had tried success by many routes, and had landed on the wrong side of a prison door. Bacon’s best work was done after his disgrace as an officer of state and after Queen Elizabeth had expressed the weighty opinion that he didn’t know much law.

Oliver Goldsmith, the neglected physician, wrote “The Deserted Village” and “The Vicar of Wakefield” after he had waited in vain for patients bringing fees.

Had Napoleon been a success as an author, he might never have meddled with politics.

Had General Lew Wallace been a success as a soldier, he might never have written “Ben Hur.”

Had U. S. Grant been a money-maker at the outbreak of the Civil War, he might never have commanded on the winning side at Appomattox.

Had Sam Houston been able to wear with credit the harness of social and political existence in Tennessee, he might never have thrown himself amid the wilder men of the Southwest and won fame as a builder of empire!

Patrick Henry’s failure in other fields shunted him into the legal profession; and Jefferson’s partial failure as a lawyer became a stepping-stone into the higher calling of practical statesmanship.

Happy is the man who can find out, early in life, the work which he is best fitted to do. Among the most pitiable of the wretched is he who grows old at a task which, too late, he learns was not set for him.

The gray-haired school-teacher or commonplace preacher, who realizes that he should have been a merchant, lawyer, doctor or civil engineer, is pathetic. To know what to try to do is the great problem, and it may be that even the men who succeed in their chosen calling could have rendered mankind better service in some other field.

Henry Brougham’s shrewd old mother bewailed his quitting the House of Commons to don the robes of Lord Chancellor: Dr. Samuel Johnson lamented the fate which never gave him a chance to try his hand in Parliament: Edmund Burke writhed under Goldsmith’s famous lashing of him “who to party gave up what was meant for mankind.”

What is it that draws the most ambitious men of modern times into “the study of law”?

The reward, of course. All things considered, no other profession offers so great a return upon the investment of time, talent and industry.

While the nations are standing in arms, clothed in steel from head to foot, the purpose is not so much to fight as to discourage attack from without and insurrection from within. The standing army gives the education whose watchword is “Obey!” It cultivates the class-pride and prejudice upon which caste rule is built. It interests millions of citizens in the maintenance of “Law and Order”—the law which imposes the yoke of the ruling caste and the order which restrains its victims from revolt.

The military profession, therefore, is one which irresistibly attracts very many aspirants to influence, to position, to power; but even the military profession does not win over so many ambitious young men as does “the study of the law.”

In the building up of our civilization we have complicated matters to such an extent that the lawyer is indispensable, almost omnipotent.

Does the layman know anything about his own rights as a citizen? Very little. Upon the simplest things only is he informed. At every turn he finds himself under the necessity of getting help from the lawyer. Great is the corporation—the bank, the railroad, the trust—but the corporation dares not move a step without a lawyer in the pilot-house.

From the Justice’s Court in the rural district and the Mayor’s Court in the village, all the way up to Presidential policies and Governmental problems, the lawyer is the doctor who must be called in to look at the tongue of the difficulty, and to write out a prescription.

In the business world the lawyer levies his tribute upon the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the hayseed farmer and the silk-hat financier.

Our Wall Street Money-Kings would no more think of organizing a rascally scheme of High Finance without the help of lawyers than the buccaneers of old would have thought of flying the pirate flag without guns on board.

In the political world the lawyer is omnipresent, indispensable.

Who organizes the Machine and steers the Boss on his cruise, keeping him off the reefs and bars of the Criminal Code?

The lawyer.

Who maps out the campaign, devises a fraud upon the people which the statute cannot quite reach, and then, after the election has been stolen from the people, shows the Boss how to keep the stolen goods in defiance of right and in spite of the legal proceedings?

The lawyer.

Who is it that the beneficiaries of class-legislation naturally select to advance their claims, voice their demands, guard their interests in the legislatures of states, in the Congress of the United States, in the Cabinet of the President?

The lawyer.

Under our system, so complex has it become, the man who wants to do right doesn’t know how. Except in the simplest transactions, a lawyer must show him how. If, on the contrary, a bad man wants to do wrong, but wants to escape punishment, he needs, and can generally get, a lawyer to show him the way.

The innocent man, accused of crime, needs a lawyer; is not safe without one, and may be convicted, even then, if he happens to employ a sorry one, who can be outwitted by the prosecution.

The guilty man, accused of crime, needs a lawyer; is not safe without one; and if he employs a good one, while the prosecution is managed by a sorry one, the jury may be forced to turn him loose, although they feel that he is “as guilty as a dog.”

Thus, looked at from the standpoint of mere ambition, sordid selfishness, the “study of law” powerfully attracts young men who want to get on in the world.

But there is another point of view—thank God!

It is not every student of Blackstone or Coke who licks his chops, by anticipation, over the sweets of mental prostitution.

It is not every student of the law who means to become the jackal to the lion, the doer of dirty work for hire, the seller of divinely fashioned genius to the highest bidder—with the morals of a harlot, without that excuse of dire necessity which the harlot can often give.

In most cases the boy who comes to the study of the law is actuated by nobler motives, a higher purpose. A generous ambition to gain knowledge, to fit himself for a leader’s place among men, to arm himself with the weapons which enable him to fight the battles of the weak and to defend the right against the wrong, find place in his mind and heart, just as they do in the beautiful language of the oath which he must take.

Almost in the very words—and quite in the identical spirit—that ancient Chivalry solemnly swore the Knight-Errant to his duty, pledging him to champion the cause of the weak and the oppressed, the oath of office consecrates the young lawyer to his work by the same holy vows. For it must be remembered that no profession has a more glorious tradition and heritage than that of the law.

The Crusaders who have in modern times gone forth to redeem the Holy Sepulchre of Truth from the Infidel have been led, by whom?

The lawyer.

The Knight-Errant who rode forth, panoplied in burnished steel, to break the chains, lift the yoke, batter down the prison door of the captive, the weak, the oppressed, has been, whom?

The lawyer.

Great was Mirabeau, but he dreamt only of changing France into a constitutional monarchy, leaving Divine Right on the throne and hereditary Privilege in force.

It was Danton, the lawyer, who led the Revolution, and sketched the Democratic state, in which all the people should rule for the benefit of all.

It was the lawyer who led in the long, hard fight for Civil liberty in England; the lawyer who slew the monsters of her Criminal Code; the lawyer who armed the private citizen with school-book and ballot.

It was the lawyer who pleaded Ireland’s cause at the bar of Public Opinion, wrung from British intolerance Religious Freedom, compelled the recognition of the Irishman’s rights in Irish land, and so won upon the conscience and the fear of the ruling caste that the triumph of the Cause of Ireland has become a question of time rather than a matter of doubt.

In our own history, whose record is better than that of the lawyer?

Would our forefathers ever have gone to war with Great Britain had they awaited the lead of Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson and George Washington?

Never in the world.

Not until Patrick Henry and Dabney Carr and Thomas Jefferson and James Otis and John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, the hot-headed young lawyers, had fired the woods, and the flames were leaping onward with a rush which none could stop, did those more cautious and conservative citizens, Franklin, Dickinson and Washington, commit themselves to the movement of the Colonies against the Mother Country.

The lawyer lit the signal fires of that Revolution, the lawyer wrote the Declaration of Independence, the lawyer framed the Constitution, the lawyer organized the Government. The lawyer struck down Feudalism in America, wrote the statute for Religious Liberty, swung wide the doors of individual opportunity, and forged, ready for use, every weapon against tyranny which a free people need to protect themselves from oppression.

Even at that early period there was another side to the shield, not so bright as that which I have presented, but, throughout the Revolutionary Era, the patriotic service of the lawyer was so splendidly conspicuous that the reverse side of the shield was as the spot on the sun.

When Andrew Jackson rode into Salisbury, N. C. (1785), and put up at the Rowan House, the old-fashioned tavern, he was eighteen years old, and had already gone to the school of experience, to an extent which few of his future competitors for national honor had equaled.

His boyhood had breathed in the hot atmosphere of war. The sound of musketry, of rifle fire, of cannon play, had been familiar to his ear. The sight of bloodshed, scenes of carnage, the ruthless deeds of Tory hate and Whig revenge had burnt their impressions upon mind and heart. The dangers amid which he had lived, the hardships which he had endured, the lust of victory and the panic of defeat, the sudden flight from the deadly attack, the narrow escape from awful death, the loss of his brothers and mother, the imprisonment and maltreatment of himself, the wild disorders and appalling cruelties of foreign invasion added to Civil strife—all these things were factors in the molding of Andrew Jackson.

When he entered the office of Spruce McCay to read law under that influential attorney, he had already given evidence of the traits of character which afterward made him one of the best loved and best hated men that ever lived.

It had already been shown that he would fight at the drop of a hat; that he was headstrong, impatient of contradiction, and overbearing. Weaker boys who turned to him for protection got it. He would “take up” for the small boy, and, if need were, wage his battle. He was high-tempered, quick as powder, hard to get along with—and the boy who laughed at him because he had what was called “a slobber mouth” had to run or fight.

He had shown that he was fond of outdoor life, outdoor sport games, and recreations. He loved to hunt, was a good shot, an expert horseman and rode admirably, excelled in running and jumping. Some say that even when thrown by a stronger man he “wouldn’t stay throwed”; others relate that John Lewis could out-jump him and throw him down; and that when John Lewis threw him, Andy did “stay throwed.” That he was believed to have a generous nature is proven by the fact that he is said to have been a great friend to this same John Lewis.

The eighteen-year old Jackson had already shown his fondness for gambling at cards, on chicken fights and horse races, on the throw of a dicebox, on almost any sort of game or contest. He was known also as a wild young fellow who would drink too much whisky, indulge in too many coarse practical jokes, and who, when inflamed by anger, could out-curse anybody in all the regions round about.

During his stay of two years in Salisbury Jackson’s character continued to unfold itself along those lines. He was not much of a student; it is not recorded that he did any office work for Spruce McCay; nor does any biographer explain how it was that he paid for his board and lodging.

It seems that he kept his horse, and that he was active in horse-racing, cock-fighting, card-playing circles; but it is not probable that he relied upon his winnings to pay his way.

How, then, did he do it?

Perhaps his work as school-teacher should be assigned to this period of his life, and it is possible that some remnant of his legacy may have tided him over.

Illustrative of the rougher side of his character is the practical joke which he played upon the eminent respectabilities of Salisbury by sending cards of invitation to the Christmas ball to two notorious strumpets of the town. The unclean birds came to the ball, as per Andrew Jackson’s cards, and the uproar in the fowl-house was considerable. But Andy was a great favorite with the ladies—as “wild” young men have ever been—and he succeeded in getting rid of the disturbers and at the same time holding the admiration of the eminently respectable.

Another anecdote of the period represents him engaged with boon companions in a carousal, which lasted throughout the night and wound up with a general smashing of all the furniture in the room.

A flood of light is poured upon his standing with the “unco’ good and rigidly righteous” at this time by the exclamation of the old lady of Salisbury, who, on being told, forty years later, that Andrew Jackson was a candidate for President, cried out:

“What! Jackson up for President? Jackson? Andrew Jackson? The Jackson that used to live in Salisbury? Why, when he was here, he was such a rake that my husband would not bring him into the house! It is true, he might have taken him out to the stable to weigh horses for a race, and might drink a glass of whisky with him there. Well, if Andrew Jackson can be President, anybody can.”

From the office of Judge Spruce McCay Jackson went to that of Colonel John Stokes, where he continued his studies until he thought himself ready for admission to the Bar. In the spring of 1787 he applied for and received his license to practice law.

For a year after his admission to the Bar he appears to have lived at a village in Martinsville, N. C., where two friends of his kept a store. Tradition says that he helped them in running the business, and that he accepted a local position as constable or deputy-sheriff. At any rate, he realized soon that he was gaining no foothold in North Carolina, and he made up his mind to try his fortune in the new country beyond the mountains, where Robertson and Donelson and Sevier were planting the beginning of another state on the Cumberland.

Before we follow Jackson into Tennessee, let us pause “to take his picture.”

He was tall and slender—standing six feet and one inch in height. Carrying himself straight as a ramrod, and stepping with a quick, springing clearlift walk, he made the impression upon the observer that he was as active as a cat—lithe, sinewy, tough, and with not a lazy bone in his body.

He had a shock of red hair, and a pair of fine blue eyes, which rested unwinkingly upon one in conversation, and which blazed when he was aroused. His face was sallow, freckled, long, thin, angular, with a fighting jaw.

His bearing toward men was open, frank, confident, self-assertive.

Toward women he was deferential, most attentive and polite. Surprising as it may seem, there is no room for doubt that Andrew Jackson’s manner toward ladies was from the first, captivating to a marked degree. By the time he reached the age of eighteen he had developed a taste for good dressing. The same trait which led him to want the finest-looking horse, the richest caparison, the best pistols and guns, the best dogs and game chickens, led him to choose for himself a style of wearing apparel, both in the material and the make, which was far above the average of the backwoods.

Some of his lady friends went to the courthouse the day he was examined for admission to the Bar, and one of these has left a description of him as he then appeared.

Those who recall Albert Gallatin’s statement that Jackson, when in Congress, looked and dressed like an uncouth backwoodsman may not be able to reconcile his testimony with that of Mrs. Anne Rutherford, who says:

“He always dressed neat and tidy, and carried himself as if he was a rich man’s son.

“The day he was licensed he had on a new suit, with a broadcloth coat, ruffled shirt, and other garments in the best of fashion.”

There is no disputing about taste; and the reader is left to the conclusion that a style of dressing which appeared to be the best of fashion to a country girl of North Carolina may have seemed “irregular” to such a cosmopolitan gentleman as Gallatin.

The red breeches of Thomas Jefferson had been “the best of fashion” in Paris, but when he wore them in New York, as a member of Washington’s Cabinet, social rumblings were heard and social upheavals feared.

(To be Continued.)