CHAPTER XVII.

VISIT TO THE HOME OF ANDREW JACKSON.

Next to the scene of the battle of Franklin, the one place in the neighborhood of Nashville which I desired to see, was the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson. When I was a boy, I can just remember his election as the President of the United States. During the two terms of his administration, and for years after, he was the greatest political power in the country: indeed it is doubtful if any man from the time of Washington to the opening of the Civil War, filled a larger space in the public eye. He is a very picturesque figure in American history. He was not of the ordinary run of politicians-smooth-tongued and "all things to all men"; but a man original and unique, a product of nature rather than of education. A child of poverty, he came up in the backwoods, like some prodigious growth of the forest. Without the polish of society, he had a natural courage and force of will that put him at the head of the rough communities of the border, from which the force of circumstances pushed him on till he reached the highest position in national affairs. A man who has acted such a part in his generation, is a subject of interest to the student of history, and hence the

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desire which I felt to see the place where he lived and died.

The visit was made easy for me by the courtesy of ExGovernor Marks, who offered to be my guide, and to whose company was added the attraction of that of his wife, and of Mr. Jno. W. Childress, a nephew of Mrs. Polk. Thus I was shut up in a carriage with three Confederates, and I do protest that I might have been in a worse place. Indeed I could not have been with more delightful companions. The very fact that their experience had been so entirely different from mine, put it in their power to tell me much which I could not know before, but was eager to hear. As a full-blooded Northerner, I like to tell of all the things done by the brave men, and brave women too, of the North. One of my heroes is General Bartlett of Massachusetts, that young student fresh from Harvard, so fair and delicate that it seemed as if he could hardly march in the ranks, but who proved a soldier "without fear and without reproach"; who at the siege of Port Hudson, being unable to walk, insisted on mounting a horse that he might take part in the battle, which exposed him the more to the fire of the enemy, who were so struck with his courage, that it is said the officers gave orders not to aim at him, which however did not save him, as he was shot in two places, and had in spite of his protests to be carried to the rear. He could not learn prudence by repeated wounds, but continued to expose himself till he was "shot all to pieces," when, like the brave soldier he was, he wrote to one who had pledged him her love, releasing her from her engagement to such a wreck as he felt himself to be, to which she replied, like the brave woman she was, that "she would marry him as long as there was body enough to contain his heroic soul"! As I told this story, I observed a flush in the lady

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at my side, which indicated that she had a similar story to tell; and to my inquiring look she answered that just before the war she had been engaged to one who was called to the field, whom she, with anxious and trembling heart, watched as he marched away to an uncertain fate. Then came the great battle of Murfreesboro. She heard that he was wounded: and for a few days was in an agony of suspense, an agony that grew more intense as night came on, and she sat alone in the moonlight, and imagined him i lying on the cold ground! At length the storm of battle swept farther away, and the wounded were in reach of warm hearts and gentle hands, and she was able to take her place by the couch of the brave soldier whose name she was to bear, and soon after to enter on the life of perfect happiness that has continued to this day.

Mr. Childress, though much younger, was not too young to take part in the war at its close, and was in the battle of Franklin which I have described; and had the most vivid memory of that night march, when Schofield's army passed in full view of the camp fires of the enemy: and of the terrible scenes of the following day.

While thus engaged in conversation, we had been riding over a succession of hills, till we were ten miles from the city. The country around Nashville is not picturesque; there are no mountains on the horizon; but the land rises and falls gently, turning up a thousand slopes to the sun and rain, which bring forth abundantly so that the whole region is a garden of fertility.

At the top of one of these slopes, a gateway opens into a long avenue of trees, at the end of which stands a large house, built in the old Southern style, with a row of pillars in front, the chief architectural decoration of a planter's house in the old slavery days, as it stood in the centre of a great plantation-a sort of Feudal Castle around which

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THE HERMITAGE.

gathered the mixed population that owed allegiance to the Lord of the Manor. This was the Hermitage, the home of Andrew Jackson.

The

On this spot he settled in the early part of the century, though not in the great house which we now see. pioneers in the valley of the Cumberland, as in other parts of the West, lived in log cabins. Jackson's first home was not much better. It stood in the rear of the present Hermitage: you may still see the old chimney, up which huge fires flamed and roared long ago, round which sat the mighty hunters of that day (for it was not long after the time of Daniel Boone, whose exploits were the tradition of the border), and talked by the firelight of their contests with wild beasts and savage men. In this humble dwelling Jackson lived long after he became a famous man in the State of Tennessee; it was from under that roof that he went forth to fight his battles, and (as the servant told us) "done all his big things"! But in the course of years, as his military achievements gave him wide distinction, the cabin had to give place to something more stately, that was fit to be the abode of so much greatness. It was at the steps of this mansion we now drew up.

Ringing at the door, a figure appeared that was in keeping with the general aspect of the place, venerable indeed, but a good deal worn by the ravages of time. This was an old servant, over eighty years of age, who had been born on the place, and lived here all his life. He was now gray and grizzled, and his thin garments looked as if they had fluttered in the wind for many a year, making him altogether fit to be the keeper of an old baronial hall, that had long since seen its best days, and was now going to decay. Indeed he seemed like the very ghost of the olden time, but a gentle and kindly ghost, who was himself a part of the place, through which he moved like a shadow,

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and who (instead of rattling off a string of commonplaces, like a professional guide,) talked simply and naturally of his old master, the beloved dead. He now led the way into the interior of the house, which is divided by a broad hall, after the old fashion. On the left, as you enter, is the parlor, where the faded hangings and worn-out chairs and sofas are the fit mementoes of departed glory. Here is a collection of souvenirs of the old soldier: the chair in which he sat, and the couch on which he reclined; the sword that he wore in battle, and the pipe that he smoked in peace.

Some of the relics tell of the rough times in which he lived in the early days of Tennessee. Here is a bullet that he carried for years in his body, where it was planted, not by a foe on the field of battle, but in a bar-room fight in Nashville, in which he was shot by a man who was one day to fight on his side as fiercely as he now fought against him-Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, who, when Jackson was President, was his chief supporter and defender in the Senate of the United States. Some may think it a wrong to Jackson's memory to recall these personal encounters. On the contrary, I think it but just to paint him exactly as he was, and not to soften his features as if he were a saint. Let us tell the truth. He lived in rough times, in which he was a rough fighter. We need not hide this feature of the man, since we can go on to tell how, in his later career, his undauntel courage was devoted to the service of his country.

As the border was in those days, as in ours, the resort of many desperate characters, the quality most prized and most honored was personal courage. A coward could not live in such a community. A man must be ready to defend himself at all times and in all places. Nor was this courage needed only in personal combats, but in