Part 67

In the year 1788 Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer from North Carolina, arrived at Nashville to enter upon the practice of his profession, and went to board with Mrs. Donelson. He soon discovered that Mrs. Rachel Robards lived most unhappily with her husband, who was a man of violent temper and most jealous disposition. Young Jackson had not long resided in the family before Mr. Robards began to be jealous of him, and many violent scenes took place between them. The jealous Robards at length abandoned his wife and went off to his old home in Kentucky, leaving Jackson master of the field.

A rumor soon after reached the place that Robards Had procured a divorce from his wife in the Legislature of Virginia; soon after which Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson were married. The rumor proved to be false, and they lived together for two years before a divorce was really granted, at the end of which time they were married again. This marriage, though so inauspiciously begun, was an eminently happy one, although, out of doors, it caused the irrascible Jackson a great deal of trouble. The peculiar circumstances attending the marriage caused many calumnies to be uttered and printed respecting Mrs. Jackson, and some of the bitterest quarrels which the general ever had had their origin in them.

At home, however, he was one of the happiest of men. His wife was an excellent manager of a household and a kind mistress of slaves. She had a remarkable memory, and delighted to relate anecdotes and tales of the early settlement of the country. Daniel Boone had been one of her father's friends, and she used to recount his adventures and escapes. Her abode was a seat of hospitality, and she well knew how to make her guests feel at home. It used to be said in Tennessee that she could not write; but, "as I have had the pleasure of reading nine letters in her own handwriting," says Parton, "one of which was eight pages long, I presume I have a right to deny the imputation. It must be confessed, however, that the spelling was exceedingly bad, and that the writing was so much worse as to be nearly illegible. If she was ignorant of books, she was most learned in the lore of the forest, the dairy, the kitchen, and the farm. I remember walking about a remarkably fine spring that gushed from the earth near where her dairy stood, and hearing one of her colored servants say that there was nothing upon the estate which she valued so much as that spring." She grew to be a stout woman, Which made her appear shorter than she really was. Her husband, on the contrary, was remarkably tall and slender; so that when they danced a reel together, which they often did, with all the vigor of the olden time, the spectacle was extremely curious.

It was a great grief to both husband and wife that they had no children, and it was to supply this want in the household that they adopted one of Mrs. Donelson's nephews, and named him Andrew Jackson. This boy was the delight of them both as long as they lived.

Colonel Benton, so long in the United States Senate, himself a pioneer of the still remoter West, who knew Mrs. Jackson well and long, recorded his opinion of her in the following forcible language:

"A more exemplary woman in all the relations of life--wife, friend, neighbor, mistress of slaves--never lived, and never presented a more quiet, cheerful, and admirable management of her household. She had the general's own warm heart, frank manners, and admirable temper; and no two persons could have been better suited to each other, lived more happily together, or made a house more attractive to visitors. No bashful youth or plain old man, whose modesty sat them down at the lower end of the table, could escape her cordial attention, any more than the titled gentlemen at her right and left. Young persons were her delight, and she always had her house filled with them, all calling her affectionately 'Aunt Rachel.'"

In the homely fashion of the time, she used to join her husband and guests in smoking a pipe after dinner and in the evening. There are now living many persons who well remember seeing her smoking by her fireside a long reed pipe.

When General Jackson went forth to fight in the war of 1812, he was still living in a log house of four rooms. "And this house," says Parton, in a sketch written years ago, from which this is chiefly drawn, "is still standing on his beautiful farm ten miles from Nashville. I used to wonder, when walking about it, how it was possible for Mrs. Jackson to accommodate so many guests as we know she did. But a hospitable house, like a Third Avenue car, in never full; and in that mild climate the young men could sleep on the piazza or in the corn-crib, content if their mothers and sisters had the shelter of the house. It was not until long after the general's return from the wars that he built, or could afford to build, the large brick mansion which he named the 'Hermitage,' The visitor may still see in that commodious house the bed on which this happy pair slept and died, the furniture they used, and the pictures on which they were accustomed to look. In the hall of the second story there is still preserved the huge chest in which Mrs. Jackson used to stow away the woolen clothes of the family in the Summer, to keep them from the moths. Around the house are the remains of the fine garden of which she used to be proud, and a little beyond are the cabins of the hundred and fifty slaves, to whom she was more a mother than a mistress."

A few weeks after the battle of New Orleans, when Jackson was in the first flush of his triumph, this plain planter's wife floated down the Mississippi to New Orleans to visit her husband and accompany him home. She had never seen a city before; for Nashville, at that day, was little more than a village. The elegant ladies of New Orleans were exceedingly pleased to observe that General Jackson, though he was himself one of the most graceful and polite of gentlemen, seemed totally unconscious of the homely bearing, the country manners, and awkward dress of his wife. In all companies and on all occasions he showed her every possible mark of respect. The ladies gathered about her and presented her with all sorts of showy knick-knacks and jewelry, and one of them undertook the task of selecting suitable clothes for her. She frankly confessed that she knew nothing at all about such things, and was willing to wear any thing the ladies thought proper. Much as she enjoyed her visit, she was glad enough to return to her old home on the banks of the Cumberland, and resume her oversight of the dairy and the plantation.

Soon after the peace, a remarkable change came over the spirit of this excellent woman. Parson Blackburn, as the general always called him, was a favorite preacher in that part of Tennessee, and his sermons made so powerful an impression on Mrs. Jackson that she joined the Presbyterian Church, and was ever after devotedly religious. The general himself was almost persuaded to follow her example. He did not, however; but he testified his sympathy with his wife's feelings by building a church for her--a curious little brick edifice--on his own farm; the smallest church, perhaps, in the United States. It looks like a very small school-house; it has no steeple, no portico, and but one door; and the interior, which contains forty little pews, is unpainted, and the floor is of brick. On Sundays, the congregation consisted chiefly of the general, his family, and half a dozen neighbors, with as many negroes as the house would hold, and could see through the windows. It was just after the completion of this church that General Jackson made his famous reply to a young man who objected to the doctrine of future punishment.

"I thank God," said this youth, "I have too much good sense to believe there is such a place as hell."

"Well, sir," said General Jackson, "I thank God there is such a place."

"Why, general," asked the young man, "what do you want with such a place of torment as hell?"

To which the general replied, as quick as lightning: "To put such rascals as you are in, that oppose and vilify the Christian religion."'

The young man said no more, and soon after found it convenient to take his leave.

Mrs. Jackson did not live to see her husband President of the United States, though she lived long enough to know that he was elected to that office. When the news was brought to her of her husband's election, in December, 1828, she quietly said: "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake" (she always called him Mr. Jackson) "I am glad; for my own part, I never wished it."

The people of Nashville, proud of the success of their favorite, resolved to celebrate the event by a great banquet on the 22d of December, the anniversary of the day on which the general had first defeated the British below New Orleans; and some of the ladies of Nashville were secretly preparing a magnificent wardrobe for the future mistress of the White House. Six days before the day appointed for the celebration, Mrs. Jackson, while busied about her household affairs in the kitchen of the hermitage, suddenly shrieked, placed her hands upon her heart, sank upon a chair, and fell forward into the arms of one of her servants. She was carried to her bed, where, for the space of sixty hours, she suffered extreme agony, during the whole of which her husband never left her side for ten minutes. Then she appeared much better, and recovered the use of her tongue. This was only two days before the day of the festival, and the first use she made of her recovered speech was to implore her husband to go to another room and sleep, so as to recruit his strength for the banquet. He would not leave her, however, but lay down upon a sofa and slept a little. The evening of the 22d she appeared to be so much better that the general consented, after much persuasion, to sleep in the next room, and leave his wife in the care of the doctor and two of his most trusted servants.

At nine o'clock he bade her good-night, went to the next room, and took off his coat, preparatory to lying down. When he had been gone five minutes from her room, Mrs. Jackson, who was sitting up, suddenly gave a long, loud, inarticulate cry, which was immediately followed by the death rattle in her throat. By the time her husband had reached her side, she had breathed her last.

"Bleed her," cried the general.

But no blood flowed from her arm.

"Try the temple," doctor.

A drop or two of blood stained her cap, but no more followed. Still, it was long before he would believe her dead, and when there could no longer be any doubt, and they were preparing a table upon which to lay her out, he cried, with a choking voice:

"Spread four blankets upon it; for if she does come to she will lie so hard upon the table."

All night long he sat in the room, occasionally looking into her face, and feeling if there was any pulsation in her heart. The next morning when one of his friends arrived, just before daylight, he was nearly speechless and utterly unconsolable, looking twenty years older.

There was no banquet that day in Nashville. On the morning of the funeral, the grounds were crowded with people, who saw, with emotion, the poor old general supported to the grave between two of his old friends, scarcely able to stand. The remains were interred in the garden of the Hermitage, in a tomb which the general had recently completed. The tablet which covers her dust contains the following inscription:

"Here lie the remains of Mrs. Rachel Jackson, wife of President Jackson, who died the 22nd of December, 1828, aged 61. Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, her heart kind; she delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound but not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of husband, could but transport to the bosom of her God."

Andrew Jackson was never the same man again. During his presidency he never used the phrase, "By the Eternal," nor any other language which could be considered profane. He mourned his wife until he himself rejoined her in the tomb he had prepared for them both.

Of all the blessed things below To hint the joys above, There is not one our hearts may know So dear as mated love.