Jackson, Tennessee

“ He was appointed district attorney of Tennessee when that country became a federal territory, and in 1796 when Tennessee became a State, he was a man of [238] no small wealth. On January 11th, 1796, a convention met at Knoxville to draft a constitution for the new State, and Jackson was chosen one of five delegates from Davidson county to meet the other members from over the State. He was appointed on the committee to draft that important document. ”

“ His ideas were distinct, his sentiments unmistakable; and although he was fond of a kind of spread-eagle eloquence, his views on public questions were generally just and vigorously expressed. A Tennessee general, brought up with horse-jockeys, gamblers, and cock-fighters, and who never had even a fair common-school education, could not be expected to be very accomplished in the arts of composition, whatever talents and good sense he naturally may have had. Certain it is that Jackson's mind was clear and his convictions were strong upon the national policy to be pursued by him ”

“ Traveling almost constantly over the wretched roads and through the dark forests, dodging Indians, swimming his horse across torrential streams, sleeping alone in the 16 woods with hand on rifle, threatened by desperate wrongdoers, Andrew Jackson became the best-known figure in all western Tennessee and won at this time a great measure of that public confidence which later became his chief political asset. ”

“ The Tennessee Legislature called for volunteers, and resolved to exterminate the troublesome tribe. In spite of the wound which Jesse Benton had given him, Jackson was soon in the field, and with Colonel Coffee, his former partner, defeated the Indians severely at Talladega and at Tohopeka or Horseshoe Bend on the Tallapoosa River. Jackson distinguished himself in these military operations by his boundless energy. ”

“ Andrew Jackson never accepted payment twice for the same service.
Section 1 of the same act appropriates two hundred dollars “to Archibald Roane, as full compensation for services as Attorney General for the District of Hamilton under the territorial government.”
Jackson did not arrive at Nashville until the fall of the year 1789 or the spring of 1790—most probably the latter. He “settled” in Jonesboro, in what was then Washington county, North Carolina, and is now Washington county, Tennessee, in the early part of the spring of 1788. ”

“ It may, and it should, be interesting to those who love and revere the memory of Andrew Jackson to know something of the life, habits and characteristics of the people among whom he first settled at Jonesboro, as well as of those with whom he afterwards made his permanent home at Nashville; for whatever can be said to the credit and glory of either the early settlers on the Watauga or those upon the Cumberland can be truthfully said of the others. ”

“ A fourth candidate, at that time a Senator from Tennessee, was Gen. Andrew Jackson. He was a rough frontiersman, skilled in Indian wars, but so insubordinate in temper that in 1818 he had invaded Florida without instructions; and Calhoun as Secretary of War had suggested in the cabinet that he be court-martialed. Jackson himself at first held back, but in 1822 he received the nomination of the Tennessee legislature, and in 1824 that of the legislature of Pennsylvania. Benton has called him "the candidate of the people, brought forward by the masses;" ”

“ General Jackson.--Born in the backwoods of Carolina, Jackson had early crossed the Alleghanies and settled in Tennessee. Whenever trouble came to the Western people, whenever there was need of a stout heart and an iron will, Jackson was at the front. He always did his duty. He always did his duty well. Honest and sincere, he believed in himself and he believed in the American people. ”

“ Vehement and tenacious as the democracy was, strenuously as each man contended with his neighbor for the spoils of the new country that opened before them, they all had respect for the man who best expressed their aspirations and their ideas. Every community had its hero. In the War of 1812 and the subsequent Indian fighting Jackson made good his claim, not only to the loyalty of the people of Tennessee, but of the whole West, and even of the nation. He had the essential traits of the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier. It was a frontier free from the influence of European ideas and institutions. ”

“ Webster had written of him: "General Jackson's manners are more presidential [Pg 110] than those of any other candidate. He is grave, mild, and reserved." But now he was once more the Jackson of the tavern brawl, of the Dickinson duel. Politics had come to be a fight, and his friends had no more need to urge him on. He resigned his place in the Senate, and was at once, for the second time, nominated for President by the Tennessee legislature. With untiring industry and great political shrewdness, Lewis, Eaton, Benton, Livingston, and others of his friends set to work to get him elected. ”

“ Jackson returned to Tennessee to find himself 37 the most popular man in the State. Nashville gave him the first of what was destined to be a long series of tumultuous receptions; and within a month the news came that William Henry Harrison had resigned his commission and that Jackson had been appointed a major general in the army of the United States, with command in the southwestern district, including Mobile and New Orleans. “Thus did the frontier soldier, who eighteen months earlier had not commanded an expedition or a detachment, come to occupy the highest rank in the army of his country. ”

“ In the present juncture he worked on two main lines: first, to arouse Jackson’s own State to a feverish enthusiasm for the candidacy of its “favorite son,” and, second, to start apparently spontaneous Jackson movements in various sections of the country, in such a manner that their cumulative effect would be to create an impression of a nation-wide and irresistible demand for the victor of New Orleans as a candidate.
Tennessee was easily stirred. That the General 75 merited the highest honor within the gift of the people required no argument among his fellow citizens. ”

“ 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 183harm, and by his industry and business ability became a successful lawyer and in time a wealthy landowner. ”

“ Jackson was afterward a judge of the Superior Court of Law and Equity, but so were both McNairy and Roane—and this, too, before Jackson reached the bench, they having been elected at the first session of the first general assembly of Tennessee, in April, 1796, before the state had been formally admitted into the Union by act of Congress. ”

“ For the third time in the Tennessee Capital a public banquet was given to the hero by whom the people expected to be led against the enemy. Soon afterward Jackson issued his proclamation to the Tennessee militia calling them to arms against the hated Spaniards, and volunteered his services to the National Government. Jefferson answered in a letter provoking in its vagueness. [852]
At Lexington, Kentucky, Burr and Blennerhassett now purchased from Colonel Charles Lynch, the owner of the Bastrop grant, several hundred thousand acres on the Washita River in Northern Louisiana. ”

“ The Americans' loss was eight killed and thirteen wounded.
This battle was a most fortunate thing for Jackson for the reputation this gained for him added to that already gained in deciding forever the white man's supremacy in America, undoubtedly made him President of the United States. He became Governor of Florida when that Territory was ceded to the United States by Spain in 1821, but he held the position only a few months. In 1828 the Tennessee Legislature made him a Senator, and later he was nominated for the Presidency. ”

“ Jackson was not a native of Tennessee, and after she got the ball started to rolling she took but little active part in the promotion work following an initial brush with a group of the Tennessee legislators whom she sharply charged with a lack of veneration for Old Hickory’s memory. They promptly retorted with mumbled but fervent invective against damned Yankees impeding a movement for a Confederate veteran’s home ”

“ Governor Roane gave his vote for Jackson, and Jackson thus became Major General of militia in Tennessee, which led him up to the victory he gained over the British at New Orleans, and this victory eventually made him President of the United States. ”

“ Why, he was the man who as a young officer had fought so bravely in the battle of Horseshoe Bend, in March, 1814, when General Andrew Jackson had saved Alabama and her sister states from the ravages of the fierce Creek Indians. He was the same man who when a boy had been adopted by the Cherokee Indians, in Georgia, and had lived with them; and he had been lieutenant in the regular army, and United States congressman from Tennessee, and had risen to be governor of Tennessee, and only a couple of years ago had quit everything and run away, back to the Cherokees again, in the Indian Country. ”

“ Shall we seek to picture to our readers a scene in the streets of Nashville, Tennessee, less than a century ago, though it seems to belong to the days of barbarism? Two groups of men, made up of the most respectable citizens of the place, stood furiously shooting at each other with pistols and guns, as if this was their idea of after-dinner recreation. Their leaders were Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterward famous in the United States Senate, and General Andrew Jackson, famous in a dozen ways. ”

“ Out of this frontier democratic society where the freedom and abundance of land in the great Valley opened a refuge to the oppressed in all regions, came the Jacksonian democracy which governed the nation after the downfall of the party of John Quincy Adams. Its center rested in Tennessee, the region from which so large a portion of the Mississippi Valley was settled by descendants of the men of the Upland South. ”

“ Good Government. New York, 1892, etc. — Organ of the National Civil Service Reform League.
Jackson Gazette. Jackson, Tennessee, 1824-1830. — Valuable between 1825 and 1830.
Lancaster Journal. Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1794-1839. — Strongly Federalist; used about 1800.
Lexington Reporter. Lexington, Kentucky, 1807-1873. — Supported Adams in 1828.
Louisiana Advertiser. New Orleans, 1825, etc. — Supported Jackson.
Madisonian. Washington, 1842, etc. — Published and edited by Thomas Allen. Violently partisan, and supported the spoils system ”

“ To the confusion of all their arrangements the great Western State of Tennessee nominated as her candidate for the Presidency General Andrew Jackson, the deliverer of New Orleans.
Jackson was a frontiersman and a soldier. Because he was a frontiersman he tended to be at once democratic in temper and despotic in action. In the rough and tumble of life in the back blocks a man must often act without careful inquiry into constitutional privileges, but he must always treat men as men and equals. ”

“ From Georgia came William H. Crawford, a practiced politician; from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, the subtlest of reasoners; from Kentucky, Henry Clay, the orator; from Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, the best trained of public servants. Only Tennessee offered a soldier.
It was twenty-six years from the end of [Pg 103] Jackson's first service in Congress to his second appearance in the Senate. Again he showed himself unfit to shine as a legislator, but in spite of that he was now clearly the most marked figure in the upper house. None of his rivals were Senators. ”

“ Then, with Greer and ten of the escort some little distance in front of the carriage, and ninety in the rear, the journey was resumed. It was understood throughout the country that Jackson would arrive in Jonesboro that afternoon, and also that he would spend the next day in the old town. This had brought thousands of people to Jonesboro; men, women and children came, on foot, on horseback and in every kind of vehicle. There was no way to house and feed the multitude that had arrived and filled the town when Jackson reached it late in the afternoon. ”

“ At any rate, fortunately for Tennessee and for the country, Jackson remained at the Hermitage and was soon thereafter relieved of his melancholic frame of mind by the declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812. From then on until 1821 he found plenty of “amusement and business” in fighting the Indians and the British and the Spaniards in Florida; and for eight years he had no further cause for complaint on the score of indolence and inaction. He returned to the Hermitage the nation’s idol, and all thoughts of moving to Mississippi or anywhere else were permanently dismissed. ”

“ Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee that the governor of the state be empowered and it is hereby made his duty to purchase for the State of Tennessee 500 acres of the late residence of 40 Andrew Jackson, deceased, including the mansion, tomb and other improvements, known as “The Hermitage.” ”