Mary French Caldwell

“ The spring, of course, remains; the Cumberland flows gently along its distant, tree-lined banks; and fertile fields still yield up their annual tribute to careful husbandry. But marks of Jackson’s occupation of the land are obliterated and, except as the story is pieced together from bits of information gathered here and there, its history is lost in obscurity.
More is known of the log Hermitage, although its history is far from complete. Most of the letters of people who were guests of the Jacksons during this period are tantalizing for their lack of detail. ”

“ Jackson retired to his Hermitage and devoted himself to his business, his farm, and his blooded stock. Truxton, the innocent cause of this tragedy, blossomed under the friendly skies of Tennessee, but neither he nor his master were destined to remain long in retirement. Life stretched out temptingly before them, and it was not long until Truxton was the acknowledged king of the turf, and upon his master’s brow were the laurels won in his defense of New Orleans. ”

“ Fame turned its spotlight upon the household, but the simple hospitality of the log cabin period was not abandoned. The spacious rooms of the new Hermitage rang with the laughter of a great bevy of nieces, of nephews, and neighbors’ children. General Jackson’s “military family,” friends, and associates came from here, there, and everywhere, bringing with them members of their families and staying for weeks at a time. But the Hermitage acres were broad and fertile, the slaves were numerous and contented—and the mistress an excellent manager. ”

“ It is this conception of Jackson that the Hermitage perpetuates. The little museum which was once the nursery of his grandchildren houses relics of his military career and a rare collection of his state papers. Of this side of his life the nation is already well informed. The house itself speaks eloquently of the life which once vibrated its now quiet rooms. His office is xiii filled with books which knew the frequent touch of his hands; his dressing gown lies across a chair in his bedchamber, and the miniature of Rachel is in its accustomed place on the table at his bedside. ”

“ The period of transition from the log cabin to the ante-bellum mansion had begun, but most of the men who had fought their way to a financial security which justified the mansions still remembered their early days in pioneer cabins. Society was young and unexacting, and in the West they took Jeffersonian democracy literally. Andrew Jackson was himself the democrat of all democrats, but he had a poise and assurance which made him at home in all companies, and made all classes of people at ease in his presence. ”

“ The dining room, once the center of a lavish hospitality, is quiet, and the kitchen is no longer filled with negroes, bustling about and singing before a great open fire. It requires no great powers of imagination to people these rooms again. The inanimate objects are there. They have been carefully preserved by a patriotic group of women who realized their value in time to keep them in their original setting. ”

“ The famous Frenchman and his entourage had hardly left when the Hermitage became the gathering place for a great corps of notables, who entered heart and soul into the campaign which placed its master in the President’s chair and which completely vindicated its 69 mistress. Never in the history of the nation has such a bitter, unscrupulous attack been waged against a candidate for public office; and never, under any circumstances, has an American woman received such shameful treatment at the hands of a political party. ”

“ Lawrence’s statement does not definitely place the laying out of the flower beds in the center of the garden. It is possible that, in those lonely days after his young wife’s death in 1819, he worked with Rachel Jackson in the garden of her new home. Frost, the English gardener may have worked with them. At any rate, the garden grew as the estate developed and, through the twenty years of his residence at the Hermitage, it must have delighted the beauty-loving soul of the artist. ”

“ It was, most likely, the most important book at the Hermitage in 1809, when Rachel and Andrew took into their hearts the infant nephew who became their adopted son and heir.
Slaves.—No history of the Hermitage is complete without at least a reference to the slaves who toiled in its fields, attended the thoroughbreds in its stables, or performed duties at “the big house” with well-bred courtesy and ease. Some few live by name, but most of them, like shadows in a brilliantly colored picture, have passed into a hazy, undefined background. ”

“ To this gracious, devoted woman was given the privilege of guarding Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage and its cherished garden through long, weary years of war, sorrow, poverty and neglect, until the hands of other women reached out to carry the responsibilities which Death alone caused her to relinquish. ”

“ The log cabin years, in spite of the struggles and tragedies sprinkled through them, were, on the whole, happy and eventful ones. The financial structure of the Hermitage household was strengthened, the public affairs of its master prospered, and his personal contacts with those who disagreed with him became less violent. Children had always been a part of the household. Rachel’s brothers and sisters lived near by and their children, from babyhood to maturity, were her delight as well as General Jackson’s. ”

“ Nothing reveals the gentle, human side of Andrew Jackson more completely than a study of the contacts made through various avenues of his home life. Nor xii can anything else as thoroughly prove his wisdom and good common sense. He had the greatest deference for women and a great tenderness for children. He was a compassionate master of slaves, a great lover of horses and fine cattle, and an excellent farmer. ”

“ Mrs. Jackson had not been confined entirely, however, to her own family circles and the log Hermitage. After the victory at New Orleans she went south to join her husband. In the same year she accompanied him on a visit to Washington and to Virginia, and at all places she shared with him the honors showered upon him by an adoring populace. She accompanied him, too, when he went to Pensacola to assume the office of Governor of the Floridas, and from these trips returned laden with gifts and purchases which were somewhat out of place in the humble quarters to which they were brought. ”

“ The poor old gentleman was supported to the grave by General Coffee and Major Rutledge. I never pitied any person more in my life. The road to the Hermitage was almost impassable, and an immense number of persons attended the funeral. The remains were interred in the lower part of the garden. I never before saw so much affliction among the servants in the death of a mistress. Some seemed completely stupified by the event; others wrung their hands and shrieked aloud. The woman who had waited on Mrs. Jackson had to be carried from the ground.... ”

“ General Jackson was interested, too, in the willows which he had planted by Mrs. Jackson’s tomb and in the flowers she had loved. In a letter written to Andrew Jackson, Jr., on August 20, 1829, he expresses deep concern for the care of her grave in the garden:
“In your letter although you have informed me of your visit to your dear mother’s tomb, still you have not informed me of its situation, and whether the weeping that we planted around it are growing, or whether the 104 flowers reared by her industrious and beloved hands, have been set around the grave as I requested. ”

“ She has made patient research into old records and other documents, bringing to light Jackson’s transactions in certain lands, his acquisitions of home sites, and building and rebuilding of homes. She has restated who were his immediate kin by affinity and his closest local friends. She has revived the color and atmosphere of life at the Hermitage in the years when its master was its beloved and dominating personality in the flesh. ”

“ General John Coffee, who married Mary Donelson in 1809; William Eastin, who married Mrs. Coffee’s sister, Rachel Jackson Donelson, in the same year; and John C. McLemore, of Nashville. General Coffee’s daughter, Mary, who as a young lady was a member of the Jackson household at the White House, married Andrew Jackson Hutchings, ward and grand-nephew of General Jackson. Through all the years the Jackson household knew the happy confusion which is common to large families—love, laughter, tears, and all of the things which go to make life full and interesting. ”

“ John Overton, another young lawyer, had come West from Virginia by way of Kentucky, and it soon happened that he and young Jackson found common quarters at the home of the Widow Donelson. The young men were fortunate, for fare in such a home as Mrs. Donelson’s was far better than that in the few stations or military posts which offered the only other shelter for young unattached men. Many of the families still lived in the stations and, in the most severe periods of Indian hostilities, every home which was not a well-manned fortress was abandoned. ”

“ Down through the years they will be guarded jealously by women who follow in the footsteps of the founders of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association, and so will be preserved the home of one of the greatest of all Americans and the setting of one of the most beautiful love stories of all times. ”

“ This was Rachel Jackson’s Hermitage—the Hermitage in which she entertained Monroe, Lafayette, and all that gay and distinguished company which, as stars in the great Jackson constellation, were destined, for a time, to dazzle the nation. And how many of them had known the kindly hospitality of the mistress of the Hermitage ... the quiet, studious, James K. Polk, who as “young Hickory” was to carry the Jackson banner 76 again to the president’s chair; Sam Houston, gay, lovable, and erratic, who was to be president of the Lone Star Republic ”

“ But the log cabin days were ending. Fame came 46 slowly, but certainly, to the humble dwelling in the midst of the fertile acres of the Hermitage. It was not sought by the master of the household, and it certainly was not welcomed by its mistress. It was impossible, however, for such a dynamic nature as Jackson’s to avoid following an active and forceful course in the events of the period. He could no more stay at home when his presence was needed in the field than he could avoid taking a leader’s place when he got into action. ”

“ We come to a low iron gate in a white wooden frame, which admits us to an avenue of young cedars, ending in a grove, through which a guitar-shaped lawn is visible.... We alight, at length, on the stone steps of the piazza, and the Hermitage is before us.... A two-story brick house, with a double piazza both in front and in the rear; the piazza wooden and painted white supported by thick grooved pillars of the same material and color. The floors of the lower piazza are of stone, and each terminates in a wing of the house.... ”

“ It is fitting that this letter should be published for the first time in a volume on the Hermitage, for it is an interesting contribution to the incomplete records of Andrew Jackson’s early career in Tennessee. It is not strange, of course, that these records should be scant. Jackson was too young, too busy, and too completely unaware of the greatness which awaited him to have an interest in preserving personal records of this early period. Certainly his acquaintances could not have seen in the tall, slender, red-haired young attorney a future president and a great general. ”

“ Art may indeed be inadequate to do justice to such a subject, but its details will be indelibly engraved on the minds and memories of the present and of each succeeding generation of Americans, worthy of the name. ”

“ The picture which it is hoped that this little volume will create in the minds of the readers is that of Andrew Jackson, the husband and father, the host to friends and neighbors, and to such of the nation’s great as came to his doors; the farmer who delighted in the productivity of his broad acres; the merchant who rode each day to his store at Hunter’s Hill or Clover Bottom; the warrior who returned with the laurels of New Orleans to a log house ”

“ To tell the story of Jackson’s horses would be to write the history of racing and breeding of thoroughbreds from the early days of the settlements in Middle Tennessee until after the Civil War. There was a close association between General Jackson and the owners of thoroughbreds in Sumner County, where, for a long period of years such men as Bailie Peyton, Barry, Carter, the Rev. Hardy Cryer and others produced magnificent horses. ”

“ Stokely and Andrew J. Donelson, around him every day, and his adopted son, Andrew Jackson, relieved him of all the minute attentions to guests.
“Henry Lee, of Virginia, was, we may say, resident 72 for the time with him, as he was engaged in writing for his election some of the finest campaign papers ever penned in this country. One of Lee’s fugitive pieces, on the death of an Indian youth, the son of a chief who was killed at the battle of the Horseshoe, whom the general had taken as a godson, an orphan of one of his victories, is a precious pearl of poetry in prose. ”

“ Ball’s Florizel horse, who was got by the same Diomed, and who now stands unrivalled in Virginia as a race horse.
“Truxton, by old sportsmen and judges, is admitted to be amongst the best distance horses they ever run or had to train. His speed is certainly unknown to all those who have run against him. He has, on the most unequal terms, started against the very best mile horses in Kentucky and Tennessee, and beat them with great 42 ease; and in no one instance has ever run with any horse, when he himself was in order, but he either could or did distance him with ease. ”