Part 11

Andrew and Sarah were back in the East early in 1833 to visit Jackson in the White House and Sarah's family in Philadelphia. In July they accompanied the President and his party to the Rip Raps in Hampton Roads for a summer vacation of six weeks, and then after another visit in Philadelphia they were back at the Hermitage in October. While in Philadelphia Andrew had instructed one of his friends there to order a chest of tools for use on the farm; and when the bill was presented to the President in November he paid it and wrote Andrew the following revelatory letter, one of the very few of his family letters in which the sardonic note intrudes:

My son: Inclosed you will find Mr. Toland's receipt to Mr. Brown for the chest and tools laid in for you by your friend Mr. Hart, and Mr. Brown's receipt for a check for $62.03 drew by me in his favor, being in full for that bill. You will find the chest (from the price charged, a nice piece of furniture for the parlour) not well suited to a negro's workshop; and the tools very fine, such I suppose as cabinet-makers use. Be this as it may, bought wit is the best--when not bought too dear; and I could not permit either your feelings or character to suffer for the amount of the bill; but I think that it will henceforth admonish you to purchase your own tools for the farm and not entrust it to an agent. Remember my advice, my son: Never purchase any useless article. Those that are needed for your comfort or that of your dear little family purchase always as far as you have the means; and be always certain, if you wish to die independent, to keep your wants within your means; always, when you have the money, paying for them when bought. I have said before and now repeat: The world is not to be trusted. Many think you rich, and many you will find under false pretensions of friendship would involve you if they can, strip you of your last shilling and afterwards laugh at your folly and distress.

In the ensuing years there must have been many times when Andrew Jackson, junior, looked back on the sage advice embraced in that letter and wished that he had indeed learned a lesson from the injudicious purchase of the tool-chest suited for a parlor and the tools such as cabinet makers use. He had plenty of "bought wit" in the years to come; and most of it was, indeed, "bought too dear."

Andrew also caused the old man considerable worry at this time by having purchased a slave in Maryland before returning to the Hermitage, paying only a part of the purchase price in cash and leaving a balance due. He neglected to say anything to Jackson about the unpaid balance, and he learned of it only when the Maryland slavetrader dunned him for the money. This annoyed and embarrassed Jackson, but his chief concern was evidently not the money involved; he was worried about Andrew's careless business habits. "Why will you not, my dear Andrew," he wrote him, "attend to my admonition about money matters?" And, further, "My son, at all times and on all occasions state to your father things just as they are."

Inattentive to these admonitions, however, Andrew gave further cause for annoyance during that summer when he repurchased the old Hunter's Hill property adjoining the Hermitage. Jackson had consented that Andrew make the purchase if he thought it advisable, encouraging the young man to take the initiative and make the decision for himself; but he was particular to impress on Andrew that he wanted him to have the terms of the sale reduced to writing and a copy of the agreement forwarded to him. Nevertheless, his first knowledge of the purchase was a draft drawn on him for the first payment on the purchase price; and then began a long succession of letters from father to son unsuccessfully seeking to learn the exact details of the trade. Similarly, he was unable to get from Andrew information as to the number of pounds of cotton baled and shipped to New Orleans. "My son," he wrote in May, "surely it is a duty that you would owe to an entire stranger, surely more imperious to me, to acknowledge the receipt of such business letters as these." And again, despairingly, in June: "My son, why will you not learn to transact your affairs like a man of business?"

Andrew, apparently, was incorrigibly negligent about answering letters; for in October, when Jackson had returned to Washington after spending the summer at the Hermitage, he wrote him: "Thirty-one days have elapsed since we left the Hermitage, Sarah on a sick bed. I had your promise that you would write me how they were; and I am now, even now, without one line from you."

To add to the old General's worries at this stage of young Andrew's career, there is strong evidence that he had reason to be fearful of his son's falling into intemperate habits. Perhaps the young wife conveyed the idea to the old man. At any rate, Sarah went on a visit to Philadelphia early in April, 1835, leaving Andrew at home, supposedly looking after the work of rebuilding the burned Hermitage; and on April 14,1835, Jackson wrote him a long and pointed fatherly letter concerning the evils of intemperance, in the course of which he said: "When I reflect on the fate of your cousin Savern, brought on him by intemperance, from being an honor to his friends reduced to the contempt of all by his brutal intemperance, I shudder when I see any appearance of it in any other branch of our connection. Your conduct, standing as my representative, the son of the President, draws upon you the eyes of the world, and the least deviation from the rules of strict decorum and propriety are observed and commented upon by all our enemies and those who envy you of your situation. Added to this, your charming little wife and sweet little ones' respectability in society depends on your upright course in your walks of life. This, my son, ought always to be before your eyes, and I am sure must be; and your pledge to me on the point of intemperance assures me that you never will permit spirits to enter your lips again."

A few weeks later, taking as his text the experience of a Washington friend who had been humiliated by public drunkenness, Jackson wrote Andrew another letter of warning against "intoxication, which reduces the human being below that of the brute," concluding his letter with: "Oh, my son, if you were to be found in such condition it would destroy me."

These letters apparently had the desired effect, for Major Lewis after visiting the Hermitage in May, 1835, wrote Jackson that he was much gratified at the fine and healthy appearance of the young man, that he looked like a different person; and, he concluded: "I have no doubt he has faithfully complied with his promise to you to the letter." Jackson, upon receipt of Major Lewis's letter, wrote at once to Andrew telling him how delighted he was at the favorable report of his good conduct and healthful appearance and his good standing with everybody. "This, my son," he said, "is more grateful to your dear father than all the wealth of Peru, and I have now the greatest confidence in your good conduct through life"--which confidence, the future revealed, was well placed.

Early in the summer of 1835 Andrew joined Sarah and the children at the White House and they went with the President for another vacation at the Rip Raps in July and August. They went on a visit to Philadelphia in September, and late in that month Andrew went back to the Hermitage, leaving Sarah to return to Tennessee later. They were there at the Hermitage in the summer of 1836 when Jackson came to look at his rebuilt home, but they went to Philadelphia again in October and then for a final visit to the White House. They left there with the worn-out ex-President in March, 1837, and all returned to the Hermitage together.

At this time the son's little family consisted of his wife, Sarah, and a little son and daughter: Andrew, III, born April 4, 1834; and Rachel, born in 1832. Both the children were born at the Hermitage, and they were a never-failing source of pleasure and comfort to the old General in his declining years. Little Rachel was his especial pet from the time she was born, and she was one of those who stood by his bedside when he died.

Like every doting grandfather, he was inordinately proud of her cunning little ways; and he chuckled as he related to his friends how the little girl, upon her arrival at the White House with her mother following the burning of the Hermitage, greeted him with: "Grandpa, the great fire burned my bonnet; and a big owl tried to kill Poll, but Papa killed the owl." Needless to say, Grandpa dropped all the affairs of State long enough to see that little Rachel was supplied with a new bonnet without delay. And he probably joined her in rejoicing over the narrow escape of old Poll from the owl, for the old Hermitage parrot was a great pet of the General's. In his letters home he inquired about her, and William Donelson in writing to him in December, 1829, said: "Poor Poll is doing well. She is as fat and saucy as ever. From her continued good health I think she will live to be an old bird. Elizabeth desires to be remembered affectionately to you, and says that she will insure Polly's life till you return." As a matter of fact, the old bird outlived the General himself; and she distinguished herself by introducing an element of the grotesque into the solemnity of the funeral services when she suddenly startled the assembled mourners by bursting into a loud torrent of profanity which made it necessary to suspend proceedings until her perch could be removed from the upper front portico to a more remote vantage point.

Second only to his adopted son in General Jackson's affections was Andrew Jackson Donelson, son of Samuel Donelson, one of Mrs. Jackson's brothers. Samuel had been Jackson's law partner in his early days and he it was whose elopement Jackson had aided back in 1797 when Samuel romantically stole his bride, Polly Smith from the window of the "Rock Castle" home of her father, General Daniel Smith--the same Daniel Smith who helped survey the much disputed extension of the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. The eloping couple had fled to Jackson's near-by home at Hunter's Hill to have the wedding ceremony performed; and, strangely enough, it was at the Hermitage that Samuel died in 1802, death overtaking him there suddenly one evening when he had stopped by to pay a fraternal visit. He left three young sons--Andrew Jackson, Daniel and John--and General Jackson was made the guardian of the eldest of the three, his namesake. At first all three boys continued to live with their mother at the home of her father, General Smith; but one day when Jackson paid a visit to them, little Andrew returned to the Hermitage with him, riding behind the General on his horse. He came to spend a few days; but so firm a hold did he gain on Jackson's affections that he was never sent home. From then on the Hermitage was his home, and he was reared there with all the love and care that could be shown one's own son.

Young Donelson was educated at Cumberland College (University of Nashville), Transylvania University at Lexington, and at West Point. Throughout his college life he was an outstanding student, and at the Military Academy he distinguished himself by finishing the four-year course in three years and graduating second in his class. Upon his graduation he was appointed an aide-de-camp to General Jackson, at the latter's special request, and served with him in the Florida wars. After his return to Nashville he practiced law for a short while, but soon abandoned this and began to take an active and useful part in General Jackson's political activities.

Jackson had a genuinely high regard for young Donelson. "I have reared and educated him as my son," he wrote a friend on one occasion; and that the old General had the most unlimited ambitions for him is shown by a letter he wrote to him while he was at Transylvania College encouraging him to seek his associates and friends among the better class of students and concluding: "I look forward, if you live, to the time when you will be selected to preside over the destinies of America." Donelson did not climb that high on the political ladder, but he did achieve distinction in his own right in public affairs; and there were many of his friends who thought that his star might have shone with greater brilliance had it not been dimmed by the too-close effulgence of his famous guardian and friend.

By the time Jackson was elected President in 1828 the young man had reached such a place in his confidence and affection that he was his spontaneous choice as private secretary, and he went with him to Washington in this capacity. The Jackson administration, however, had not been afloat very long before it ran on the rocks of the Peggy Eaton embroglio, that tempest in a teapot that threatened for a while to upset the government; and Major Donelson and his wife became the storm centers of this furious affair. Mrs. Donelson was a niece of Mrs. Jackson's, the major having married his own first cousin, Emily, daughter of Captain John Donelson; and Jackson felt for her a very real avuncular affection when he installed her as mistress of the White House. Red-headed Miss Emily, however, was a spunky individual with a spirit of her own; and, although she reluctantly consented to receive Peggy Eaton coldly but courteously as an official guest at the White House, she flatly refused to visit Mrs. Eaton or to have any other social contacts with her. This brought about strained relations in the White House family, but the affair was temporarily kept from coming to a head; and the President and the Donelsons returned in amity together to Tennessee to spend the summer of 1830. There had almost been a flare-up before leaving Washington. The Eatons had been invited to dine at the White House, and the petulant Peggy had refused to enter the house while the Donelsons were there, claiming that Emily had publicly snubbed her a short while previously. This naturally riled the General and he raised considerable of a rumpus. In his flurry of anger he threatened to take the Donelsons home and leave them there, and this threat got under the Donelsons' skin. Accordingly, when they all got back to Tennessee in June, the Donelsons did not go to the Hermitage to stay but went to the home of Mrs. Donelson's mother, then a widow. The Eatons made a rather showy and carefully pre-arranged visit to Tennessee during this summer, a feature of the trip being their entertainment at the Hermitage; and Major Donelson later explained that he and his wife went to Mrs. Donelson's to stay because they did not want to put themselves in the way of the honors General Jackson intended to pay to the Eatons at the Hermitage. But the President's feelings were hurt. "When I expected you and Emily to go to my house and remain with me as part of my family, it was declined," he wrote in a letter to Major Donelson that fall when the two of them were back in Washington carrying on that childish interchange of formal letters within the walls of the White House which almost precipitated a crisis at that time.

Jackson smelt trouble brewing as early as July, when he mentioned in a letter to Major Lewis from the Hermitage: "It may so happen that I shall return to the city in company with my son alone," and asked the Major to be looking about for some eligible man to serve as his secretary. "My connections have acted very strangely here," he wrote; adding, with characteristic fire: "but I know I can live as well without them as they can without me, and I will govern my own household or I will have none." When the time came to return to Washington in October, Mrs. Donelson announced that she would spend the winter in Tennessee with her widowed mother; and it is not recorded that General Jackson interposed any violent objection to this program. Major Donelson, however, went along with him.

Hardly had they got back to Washington before General Jackson wrote back to Emily's sister, Mary Eastin, saying that "Major Donelson has informed me that the house appears lonesome; and on his account it would give me great pleasure if you and Emily and the sweet little ones were here." He went on to say, however: "Provided you will pursue my advice and assume that dignified course that ought to have been at first adopted, of treating every one with attention and extending the same comity and attention to all the heads of Departments and their families." He told Miss Eastin to convey this qualified invitation to Emily and he himself told Major Donelson what he had written. Then ensued that absurd and pathetic intramural correspondence between these two strong-willed men who lived in the same house, worked together daily in the close and confidential relations of a President and his private secretary--but who fought out their private quarrel by means of long, formal letters.

Jackson had a deep and sincere affection for Major Donelson, but he felt that his honor was at stake; worse than that, he had tortured the shabby controversy into a "conspiracy" to strike at him through Eaton and through him at his departed Rachel. Donelson, on the other hand, while his letters breathed love and respect for his uncle, felt that his and his wife's dignity and self-respect would not permit of any dictation as to their social contacts.

So matters rocked along, and in December Jackson wrote General Coffee that Donelson's "demeanor toward Major Eaton is more free." He kept up a friendly correspondence with Emily back in Tennessee, and wrote Coffee that he expected her to come on to Washington in March or April. Major Donelson wrote his wife in January, 1831, that he had had "a very satisfactory conversation with Uncle in relation to our social difficulty" and that "He has left to my own discretion the period of your return, without alluding to the influence which produced your stay in Tennessee." The Major expressed great gratification at the prospect of getting things patched up, and on March 8th left Washington for Nashville to get his little family and take them back to the White House with him.

Late in March, however, the Eaton affair boiled over in Washington again, and some new developments there made the President furious. On March 24th he wrote a long letter to Major Donelson, couched in words of genuine affection but reflecting plainly his agitation. The partially healed sore was reopened and he candidly said: "As much as I desire you and your dear little family with me, unless you and yours can harmonize with Major Eaton and his family, I do not wish you here."

This new crisis in the Eaton affair resulted in the resignations of Van Buren and Eaton from the Cabinet, and Jackson hastily wrote Donelson on April 19th telling him of these resignations and predicting that "you will find an entire new Cabinet when you arrive."

But now the Donelsons were offended. Upset by the strong words of Jackson's letter of March 24th they, as General Coffee expressed it, "fear that you require more than they can consistently comply with." In reply to this letter Donelson wrote a reply which Jackson styled "a vindictive phillippic," the general tenor of which was that he could not return with his wife under the terms set forth in Jackson's communication. Jackson's reply was firm, though tempered with expressions of his affection, and showed clearly the extent to which the controversy had upset him. His letter concluded: "I am laboured almost to death, and have been a good deal afflicted; but will try amongst strangers to get a man who will aid me and who will think it no disgrace to associate with me and my friends." This must have cut Donelson to the quick, but it did not alter his determination to sever his official relations with his godfather, the President. He went back to Washington--alone--to wind up his personal affairs there; and before leaving finally, on June 18th, he wrote an affectionate note to Jackson giving "assurance of my readiness to resume the relation which I have maintained near you for so many years, whenever you think that my services can be of any avail." In a letter written home to his wife he told of a long conversation he had had with Jackson, and dropped the strange comment that "After what has now passed, while our duty remains the same, I am almost as well satisfied that the view which Uncle takes is correct." Nevertheless, he went on home; and Jackson engaged as his private secretary Mr. Nicholas P. Trist (whose wife was a granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson), and he served until the reconciliation with the Donelsons.

The reconciliation, as might have been expected where there was so much mutual love and esteem, was not long in coming. Jackson kept up a friendly correspondence with Andrew and Emily as though nothing had happened, and in July two Nashville friends, John C. McLemore and John Bell, took it upon themselves to act to bring Jackson and Donelson back together. They talked to the Major, read all the letters the President had written to him, and then gave him the sensible advice to pack up his family and return to the White House "without further correspondence." They wrote Jackson that they had given Donelson this advice and stated further that "we think there is no necessity for the specification of terms on one side or the other." That this effort of the peacemakers was at length successful is shown by a single reference in one of Jackson's letters to Coffee on September 6th: "Major Donelson and his little family reached here yesterday."

Thus ended the spat between General Jackson and the Donelsons; and in all their future relations there was never anything to suggest that there had ever been the slightest asperity between them. Mischief-making Peggy Eaton drove them apart; but even she, with her genius for creating dissention, could not keep them apart.

In 1818 Major Donelson had inherited from his father a handsome plantation called Tulip Grove which lies directly across the Lebanon Road from the Hermitage; and in 1834 General Jackson, perhaps to seal the reconciliation, engaged Messrs. Reiff and Hume to build on it the handsome residence which still stands there. Emily, the innocent stormy petrel, died December, 1836, of tuberculosis. The disease wasted her strength rapidly and she died before her husband could get back from Washington where he had gone to help wind up the affairs of the Jackson administration under the impression that she was not dangerously ill. Major Donelson later married another of his cousins, herself the widow of Lewis Randolph of Virginia, who was a grandson of Thomas Jefferson.

Major Donelson, after Jackson's administration closed went back to Tulip Grove and lived the life of a farmer for a few years, keeping in touch with Uncle Jackson across the road and helping him sometimes with his flood of correspondence. By President Tyler he was appointed charge de affairs to the Republic of Texas, and he played an active and able part in promoting the annexation of the Lone Star State. When James K. Polk was elected President he was made minister to Prussia, an office which he filled with ability and distinction. Following this service he became editor of the _Washington Union_; and in 1856 took his last fling at politics when he was a candidate for Vice President on the ticket with Millard Fillmore. He died on June 26, 1871.