Part 14

This third visit lasted only a few days, Colonel Burr hastening back to Kentucky; but in November Jackson, the merchant and boat-builder, received from him an order for the building of five large flatboats at his Clover Bottom boatyard and an accompanying order for enough provisions from his Clover Bottom store to stock them for their trip down the Mississippi. In the light of subsequent events it might have seemed significant that such a handsome piece of business was thrown in the lap of the frontier celebrity who happened to be major-general of the militia as well as a boat-builder and merchant, but if Burr counted on influencing Jackson's judgment he reckoned without his man. Jackson, at the time he accepted the order, must have been convinced of the law-abiding nature of Burr's intentions. There was no secrecy about their negotiations. But friends, not of so trusting a nature, were insistent in urging him to watch his step; and so he wrote a candid letter to Burr, telling him of the stories being circulated about his alleged nefarious schemes, and asking him for the truth. He also wrote to Governor Claiborne of the Orleans Territory, telling him of the rumors, and to President Jefferson offering the services of himself and his militia in the event of any trouble. Meanwhile the work on the boats went right along. Burr had paid for them in advance, and Jackson felt honor-bound to complete them despite his growing suspicions; but he gave his partner, John Coffee, strict instructions to accept no more business from Burr.

In December Burr came back to Nashville from Kentucky. There the suspicions against his expedition had crystallized into charges that led to his arrest; but Henry Clay defended him and he was acquitted in triumph.

When Burr arrived at the Hermitage, for the fourth time, the customary warm welcome was conspicuously lacking. Jackson himself was not at home and Mrs. Jackson, so it is recorded, was "cool and constrained." Burr took lodgings at the tavern at Clover Bottom; and when Jackson got home he immediately called on the Colonel there, in company with General Overton, and frankly told him of the rising tide of suspicion and distrust. Burr glibly protested the innocence of his intentions; but it is significant that he continued to lodge at the tavern and was not invited to stay at the Hermitage. When General Jackson permitted a friend to stay at a public house instead of insisting that he go home with him, it is a strong indication that the General was beginning to smell a mouse.

On December 22, 1806, Colonel Burr and a handful of adventurous young men recruited in the neighborhood embarked in the boats and pushed off from Clover Bottom. The denouement came swiftly. Burr had hardly left Nashville before President Jefferson's proclamation denouncing him and his expedition reached town; and the populace which a few weeks before had been entertaining him with balls and banquets now burnt him in effigy. Jackson, as commander of the troops in this section, was commanded by the Secretary of War to hold his forces in readiness to march; and he entered fully into the spirit of his instructions with a prompt display of energy and zeal. The militia was assembled, warnings were sent down the river against "all men engaged in any enterprise contrary to the laws or orders of our government;" but, upon receipt of news from the government forts down the river that the Burr flotilla had no warlike appearance, the near-panic subsided.

Despite his alacrity in carrying out the orders of the President and the Secretary of War, General Jackson clearly gave evidence that he did not understand clearly what was going on. He was obviously reluctant to suspect Burr of ulterior designs, and he felt strongly that there was something sinister behind all the furor. In the end, he himself was brought under suspicion and was summoned as a witness in the trial in Richmond when Burr was at length arrested and arraigned. Jackson never was put on the witness stand; but he did take occasion, while he was waiting in Richmond, to mount the courthouse steps and make a stump speech in favor of Burr who, he had finally come to believe, was being persecuted by Jefferson.

When he sat down and thought the matter over, Jackson doubtless regretted deeply the day that the hospitality of the Hermitage had been extended to the fascinating Burr.

A guest at the Hermitage whose visit demonstrated not only Jackson's open-armed hospitality but also his winning way with children was a young boy whose name later filled a large place in history--Jefferson Davis.

In 1815 young Davis, then only seven years old, was sent from his home in southwestern Mississippi to the St. Thomas School in Washington County, Kentucky. This was at that time necessarily an overland trip, there being no steamboats, and the way lay through that part of Mississippi known as "The wilderness" before the civilized part of Tennessee was reached. Travelers through this Choctaw and Chickasaw country followed the Natchez Trace and generally went in parties for safety and companionship. Young Jefferson Davis accompanied a party headed by his father's friend, Major Hinds who had participated in the Battle of New Orleans, and Major Hinds's son, Howell, was also a member of the party. The two boys were about the same age and, mounted on their ponies, greatly enjoyed the long overland trip up the romantic and dangerous Natchez Trace.

When the little cavalcade reached Nashville, the first thought of Major Hinds was to visit his old commander, General Jackson, under whom he had seen such stirring service just a few months before. Accordingly, the whole party went trooping out to the Hermitage, and there they were so cordially received that instead of staying for a few days they remained several weeks.

"General Jackson's house at that time," wrote Mr. Davis in later years, "was a roomy log house. In front of it was a grove of fine forest trees, and behind it were his cotton and grain fields. I have never forgotten the unaffected and well-bred courtesy which caused him to be remarked by court-trained diplomats when President of the United States, by reason of his very impressive bearing and manner.

"Notwithstanding the many reports that have been made of his profanity, I remember that he always said grace at his table, and I never heard him utter an oath. In this connection although he encouraged his adopted son, Howell Hinds and myself in all contests of activity, pony-riding included, he would not allow us to wrestle; for, he said, to allow hands to be put on one another might lead to a fight. He was always very gentle and considerate.

"Mrs. Jackson's education, like that of many excellent women of her day, was deficient; but in all the hospitable and womanly functions of wife and hostess she certainly was excelled by none. A child is a keen observer of the characteristics of those under whom he is placed, and I found Mrs. Jackson amiable, unselfish and affectionate to her family and guests and just and mild toward her servants.

"Our stay with General Jackson was enlivened by the visits of his neighbors, and we left the Hermitage with great regret and pursued our journey. In me he inspired reverence and affection that has remained with me through my whole life."

This account of his memorable visit to the Hermitage was dictated by Mr. Davis 75 years later, during the last year of his life; and the fact that his visit as a child left on his mind such a vivid impression is an eloquent tribute to the glowing personality of Jackson and the kindly manner of his wife.

It was at the old log Hermitage that Jackson received the first visit of Thomas H. Benton, the man who later became his close friend and then his enemy and then his friend again. Young Benton had been admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1804 and was practicing in Franklin, a few miles from Nashville. In 1805 he had a land title case in which were involved some legal points upon which Andrew Jackson had ruled while he was sitting on the Superior Court. These rulings had not been published, however, and so Benton saddled his horse and rode to the Hermitage to ask the ex-justice for an official report of the cases. Upon learning his errand, Jackson courteously offered to write out the opinions for him; so, with Jackson dictating and Benton transcribing, the opinion of the Superior Court was thus tardily reduced to written form. It was typical of the hospitality of the Hermitage that Benton, who had made an instantaneously good impression on Jackson, was prevailed upon to prolong his formal call to a two-days' visit; and there was the beginning of a friendship which had a lasting and far-reaching effect upon the careers of both of them. For many years Benton was a frequenter of the Hermitage to such an extent as almost to be regarded as a member of the family; and, despite an intervening period of enmity growing out of a bloody, knock-down-and-drag-out fight, Benton's eulogy of Jackson when he died showed the depth of his affection for the older man.

A visitor of world-wide distinction who was a guest at the Hermitage was the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette. General Jackson had long been an admirer of the patriotic Marquis. Mrs. Jackson herself is authority for the statement that Jackson first saw him at Charleston "on the battlefield" when he was a boy of twelve and the Marquis was at the zenith of his great Revolutionary popularity. When Jackson was in Washington in the latter part of 1824 as a Senator he met Lafayette, in fact lived at the same tavern with him while he was there, and it was probably at that time that the Marquis was invited to visit Nashville and the Hermitage. He had previously written Jackson, soon after his arrival in this country, saying "I will not leave the United States before I have seeked and found the opportunity to express in person my high regard and sincere friendship."

The Marquis and his party steamed up to the wharf in Nashville on May 4, 1825, and were there greeted tumultuously by the Nashville populace, General Jackson foremost among them. The enthusiastic Nashvillians had prepared a rather elaborate entertainment for the celebrated French nobleman, including a big parade and a formal call on Governor Carroll. The next morning the Marquis reviewed the Tennessee militia (which had been encamped at Nashville a week patiently awaiting his belated arrival) and after the review the party boarded the steamboat again and proceeded up the river to the Hermitage to have dinner with General Jackson. Dinner in those days was a big meal served at about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Fortunately, a record of this visit is preserved in a book written by M. LeVasseur, Lafayette's secretary, who, after telling of the entertainment in Nashville, says: "At one o'clock we embarked, with a numerous company, to proceed to dine with General Jackson, whose residence is a few miles up the river. We there found numbers of ladies and farmers from the neighborhood whom Mrs. Jackson had invited to partake of the entertainment she had prepared for General Lafayette. The first thing that struck me on arriving at the General's was the extreme simplicity of his house. Still somewhat influenced by my European habits, I asked myself if this could really be the dwelling of the most popular man in the United States, of him whom the country proclaimed one of her most illustrious defenders; of him, finally, who by the will of the people was on the point of becoming her Chief Magistrate. One of our fellow-passengers, a citizen of Nashville, witnessing my astonishment, asked me whether in France our public men, that is to say the servants of the people, lived very differently from other citizens. 'Certainly,' said I, 'thus, for example, the majority of our generals, all our ministers, and even the greater part of our subaltern administrators, would think themselves dishonored and would not dare to receive anyone at their houses if they possessed such a residence as this of Jackson's; and the modest dwellings of your illustrious chiefs of the Revolution--Washington, John Adams, Jefferson--would only inspire them with contempt and disgust.'"

Having thus tactfully ingratiated himself with the party, M. LeVasseur accompanied the other guests on a visit of inspection to the farm and garden, and then:

"On returning to the house, some friends of General Jackson who probably had not seen him for some time, begged him to show them the arms presented to him in honor of his achievements during the last war; he acceded to their request with great politeness and placed on a table a sword, a saber and a pair of pistols. The sword was presented to him by Congress; the saber, I believe, by the army which fought under his command at New Orleans. These two weapons, of American manufacture, were remarkable for their finish and still more so for the honorable inscriptions with which they were covered. But it was to the pistols that General Jackson wished more particularly to call our attention. He handed them to General Lafayette and asked him if he recognized them. The latter, after examining them attentively for a few minutes, replied that he fully recollected them to be a pair he had presented in 1778 to his paternal friend, Washington, and that he experienced a real satisfaction in finding them in the hands of one so worthy of possessing them. At these words the face of 'Old Hickory' was covered with a modest blush, and his eye sparkled as in a day of victory. 'Yes, I believe myself worthy of them,' exclaimed he, in pressing the pistols on Lafayette's hands to his breast, 'if not from what I have done, at least for what I wished to do for my country.' All of the bystanders applauded this noble confidence of the patriot hero, and were convinced that the weapons of Washington could not be in better hands than those of Jackson." (These pistols, it should be here interpolated, were presented to General Jackson by General George Washington's nephew, Bushrod Washington; and were a part of the valued collection of trophies in the Hermitage until they were lost in the fire in 1834.)

Lafayette's stay at the Hermitage was short. In the late afternoon his steamboat returned to Nashville where a grand banquet was given in his honor that evening, with General Jackson presiding. The Marquis left the next morning by steamboat for Louisville, and had a narrow escape from death when the boat struck a snag in the Ohio and sank within a few minutes. Fortunately, however, he escaped without injury.

Another distinguished visitor from France in the early days was the elder Michaux, the great naturalist, who tells in his journal how he "spent the night twelve miles from Nashville at the home of a Mr. Jackson." Michaux, however, with his naturalist's heart, was much less impressed by the reputation, then hardly more than local, of General Jackson than he was by the beauty of the yellow-wood trees he found "on land belonging to a Mr. Overton south of Nashville" in greater abundance than he had ever noticed the trees elsewhere. He sent home some seeds from these trees found on Judge Overton's hills, and in two of the parks of Paris today may be seen specimens of this rather rare tree grown from the seeds sent from Nashville by this early visitor.

Still another celebrated Frenchman visited the Hermitage in 1843 and paid his respects to the old hero--Marshall Bertrand, one of Napoleon's famous marshals, who came to Nashville in the course of his travels in America and, as a matter of course, was entertained at dinner by Jackson, despite his debilitated health.

Perhaps the greatest strain ever placed upon the hospitality of the old house was when it was visited in August, 1830, by Major John H. Eaton and his bride, the erstwhile Peggy O'Neal, the storm center of the early days of the Jackson administration. This was a visit that required no little stage managing and window dressing; for the vivid Mrs. Eaton had not only disrupted the President's Cabinet, she had brought discord into his own family; and it was in the midst of the strained relations existing between Jackson and the Donelsons that the Eatons made their visit to Tennessee.

Jackson was spending the summer of 1830 at home, and he was determined that the Eatons should be formally entertained at the Hermitage and that his connections, as he called Major Donelson and his wife, should assist in the reception. Here was a situation that called for all the keenest diplomacy of the most astute members of the Kitchen Cabinet; but the old reliable John Coffee, himself one of the "connections," exercised his powers of persuasion on the Donelsons and at length it was arranged that they would help Old Hickory entertain his celebrated but slightly tarnished guests. Gleefully Jackson wrote to Eaton in August when Coffee had finished with his wire-pulling:

Private and for your own eye.

My dear Major: I send my son to meet you at Judge Overton's and to conduct you and your lady with our other friends to the Hermitage, where you will receive that heartfelt welcome that you were ever wont to receive when my dear departed wife was living. Her absence makes everything here wear to me a gloomy and melancholy aspect, but the presence of her old and sincere friend will cheer me amidst the melancholy gloom with which I am surrounded.

My neighbors and connections will receive you and your lady with that good feeling that is due to you, and I request you and your lady will meet them with your usual courtesy, which is so well calculated to gain universal applause even from enemies and the united approbation of all friends. Our enemies calculate much upon injuring me by raising the cry that I forced Mr. A. J. Donelson from me and compelled him to retire because he would not yield to my views, which they call improper. I mean to be able to shew that I only claimed to rule my household, that it should extend justice and common politeness to all and no more, and thus put my enemies in the wrong; and if any friends desert me, then it is theirs not my fault.

General Coffee has, since here, produced a visible and sensible change in my connections and they will all be here to receive you and your lady who I trust will receive them with her usual courtesy and if a perfect reconciliation can not take place that harmony may prevail and a link broken in the Nashville conspiracy. I trust you are aware that I will never abandon you or separate from you so long as you continue to practice those virtues that have always accompanied you, nor would I ask you or your friend to pursue a course to compromise or be degrading to themselves or feelings; but I am anxious that we pursue such a course as will break down the Nashville combination, which I view as the sprouts of the Washington conspiracy.

Under these more or less auspicious circumstances the Eatons came to the Hermitage, where nothing was left undone to make them feel that they were just as welcome as any other guest that ever crossed the threshold of the old house. The Donelsons were there, taking part in the reception of the guests, Mrs. Donelson the very essence of punctilious and cordial hospitality--although she probably had her enthusiasm well under control. Pretty Peggy Eaton was no fool; she must have known of the cajoling it had required to prepare the way for her reception at the Hermitage; and, although she was spiteful enough to relish the concealed discomfiture of the Donelsons, it was probably a relief to her and to everybody else (except perhaps Old Hickory himself) when the party was over and the Eatons had to go.

Mrs. Eaton in her old age sat down and wrote a rambling sort of autobiography, in the course of which she told of this visit to the Hermitage--although nowhere in her reminiscences does she mention the Donelsons, whom she so cordially hated. The dinner at the Hermitage in her honor, she relates, was a splendid occasion, with the General doing the honors with great gusto and making jokes with the guests over the carving of a barbecued pig which was one of the features of the dinner. The General also distinguished himself as a host by passing the bread himself, which was his way of making everybody feel at home. After dinner, however, the master of the Hermitage disappeared; and then it was that Mrs. Eaton, sent by her husband to look for him, found him kneeling by Rachel's grave in the garden with the tears streaming down his face. Recalling to him his duties as a host she persuaded him to return to the house, where he again donned his mask of gaiety and entered into the hilarity of the guests assembled there.

Writing of the Presidential campaign of 1824, Parton says: "The Hermitage was more like a hotel than a home during the summer, so numerous were the guests whom curiosity, friendship or political business brought to it." And an old lady in Nashville told Parton that she had often been at the Hermitage in those simple old times when there was in each of the four available rooms not merely a guest but a family, while the young men and solitary travelers who chanced to drop in disposed of themselves on the piazza or any other half-shelter about the house.

"Never was the Hermitage without a guest," says Buell in his Jackson biography, "and most of the time it was crowded. Jackson and his wife carried the old-fashioned Southern hospitality to an extreme. They did not wish their guests to be simply visitors, but made them temporary members of the family."

It seems to be the unanimous and unchallenged opinion that a visitor at the Hermitage was always made to feel at home and led to believe that his visit conferred an especial pleasure on his hosts. All comers were welcome.

But Andrew Jackson did not wait for guests to come to the Hermitage. Nor were its broad doors open only to the distinguished and prosperous. A characteristic incident is told by one of his early acquaintances relative to the son of the famous Daniel Boone: "The young man had come to Nashville on his father's business, to be detained some weeks, and had his lodgings at a small tavern towards the lower part of town. General Jackson heard of it; sought him out; found him; took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying: 'Your father's dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.'"

The hospitality of the Hermitage not only knew no limitation on the grounds of a visitor's prosperity or prominence, it was extended alike to friend and foe.