Hero Tales from History — Andrew Jackson, America's Most Popular Hero

So Thomas Jefferson not only wrote the Declaration of Independence but he was the means of doubling the size and wealth of the country, making it extend from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

ANDREW JACKSON, AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR HERO

About ten years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, two Irish linen weavers, Andrew and Elizabeth Jackson, came across the Atlantic to a backwoods settlement in North Carolina.

There the young settlers built a cabin, but before they had lived long in their rude little home, Andrew Jackson died, leaving his wife with two small sons, Hugh and Robert.

The young widow went to live with a sick sister a few miles away, and when the third baby boy was born to her here, she named him Andrew for his dead father.

The house in which little Andrew Jackson was born was so near the boundary line between North and South Carolina that years afterwards both states claimed him as their son.

Elizabeth Jackson had to keep house for her sister to support herself and her three little boys.

Andrew was in his tenth year when the War for Independence broke out in the north.

Three years later the British came to fight near the Jacksons’ home in the south.

Hugh, the oldest, now a lad of seventeen, fought in the battle of Stono, and died, soon after, of heat and exhaustion.

Then the British troops came nearer, and Widow Jackson, with Robert and Andrew, was driven from her poor home.

These terrible experiences developed in the tall, red-haired, freckled, thirteen-year-old Scotch-Irish lad a deep hatred of the “red-coats,” as the British soldiers were called.

As if Andrew had not already reasons enough for hating his enemies, a squad of dragoons surprised him with his brother Robert and a cousin, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, at the home of the Crawfords, where they had brought Tom, wounded and ill, for his mother’s care.

After capturing the young American “soldiers three,” the British cavalrymen broke the Crawfords’ dishes, tore their clothing, ripped open feather beds, insulted the frightened mother and abused the little children.

Then, as if for a crowning insult, the British officer ordered Andy to clean his boots.

The young Irish soldier drew himself up and said proudly, “Sir, I am not a servant, but a prisoner of war, and I claim to be treated as such.

” The angry dragoon struck at the youth’s head with his saber.

Andy threw up his hand and saved his own life by breaking the force of the stroke, but received deep cuts on his forehead and hand.

He wore the two scars to his dying day.

Andrew’s brother Robert was commanded to perform the same low service and refused with the same proud spirit; he also received a sword-cut on his head which nearly killed him.

The two Jackson youths were then taken away to a prison pen at Camden, South Carolina, where American soldiers were treated like beasts and where many were already dying of smallpox.

While the Jackson brothers were in this prison, a battle was fought near by.

Young Andrew whittled a hole through a board with an old razor, so that he could watch the battle that was raging around them.

When the poor mother heard that her wounded sons were confined in a filthy prison where they were exposed to smallpox, she walked forty miles to Camden and managed to have them exchanged for some British soldiers the Americans had captured.

Begging the use of two horses, she placed Robert on one of them, as he was very ill with smallpox.

She rode the other horse to hold her son in his saddle; and young Andrew, “weak and wounded, sick and sore,” staggered along behind them on foot.

Robert died two days after reaching home, but Andrew recovered after a long and severe illness.

After nursing her only remaining son back to health, that brave, unselfish mother heard that many American soldiers were sick and dying in the British prison ship in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

She walked more than one hundred and fifty miles to nurse and help them as she had nursed her own sons.

She took the ship fever and died, giving her devoted life for freedom and for country.

So Andrew Jackson, now a tall, thin youth of fourteen with a “shock of sandy hair,” was without father, mother, brothers, money, or near friends--but with a bitter grudge against Britain as the cause of all his troubles and sorrows.

His life was made better by his deep love of his brave, noble mother’s memory.

When he grew up and became the most popular man in the United States, Andrew Jackson often said with a smile of pride: “_That_ I learned from my good old mother!

” Andrew Jackson had but few chances to go to school, and then only a few weeks at a time.

He learned the saddler’s trade and studied when he could take the time from hard work.

Little as he learned from books, he knew more than most of his neighbors.

He taught school sometimes to add to what he earned at his trade, so that he could study law.

Even North Carolina, wild as that new country was, became too “civilized” for Andrew Jackson, and he crossed the mountains into Tennessee and settled at Nashville, where he began to practise law.

In that rough country he soon became a leader.

In the midst of the wild life in which the chief “sports” were horse-racing, Indian shooting, fighting duels, and the like, young “Judge” Jackson was “hail-fellow, well met!

” He soon was elected to Congress, but he found life at the capital entirely too “genteel” for him.

When the southern Indians went on the warpath and massacred white settlers, General Jackson and his troops from Tennessee drove them from place to place and killed nearly all the savage murderers.

He was called the Hero of the War of 1812, because he won the Battle of New Orleans, the greatest land victory in that war.

The people loved General Jackson because he was a bluff, warm-hearted man, and because, whether he fought with the Indians or the British, “he thrashed ’em every time!

” He was named “Old Hickory” because he was about as tough in fiber and as rough on the outside as the hickory tree.

He was probably the most popular hero that ever lived in America, for more boys were named Andrew Jackson than even George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

January eighth, the date of Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, is still celebrated as Jackson Day.

Jackson was called “the Man of the People,” including the “rough and ready” people of the great, new west; Jefferson represented the more educated classes; while Washington was the man of the upper class of people.

Still, Jackson stood for the white people only.

It was Abraham Lincoln who came thirty years later and stood for all the people, black and white.

General Jackson was elected and carried to the White House by a great wave of popularity.

The people were so pleased to have him for their President that they crowded into the White House and stood on the new satin covered furniture in their muddy boots.

They broke the china and glassware and spilled punch on the velvet carpets.

In their [Illustration: GENERAL JACKSON AT THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS.

_From the painting by D. M.

Carter_] frantic efforts to shake hands with their hero-president they nearly crushed him to death.

President Jackson treated his political enemies as he did the Indians and the English.

He turned thousands of men out of office and appointed his friends in their places.

“To the victors belong the spoils,” he said, but most people to-day believe the warlike President had the wrong idea in treating public service as “spoils of war.

” After serving his country as President, Andrew Jackson lived at the Hermitage, a beautiful mansion he had built near Nashville, Tennessee.

When the aged ex-President knew he was dying, he called his friends and slaves around his bed and told them he wanted them all to meet him in heaven.

When the simple but grand old hero died, they found his dead wife’s miniature close to his heart where he had worn it for many years.

Then they remembered that, rough and violent as he often had been with men, he had never spoken a cross or cruel word to his wife or any of his own household.

“The bravest are the tenderest.

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