Part 19

Joining the church is not usually an intricate or difficult process, but in General Jackson's case an unexpected obstacle arose when Dr. Edgar (the minister in charge of the proceedings and, incidentally a pronounced Whig in his political views) asked the prospective church member: "Can you forgive all your enemies?" This unexpected question was a poser for a man like General Jackson, a strong personality who made staunch friends and violent enemies. We can picture his memory flashing back through the long roster of his antagonists: Dickinson and Clay and Adams and Calhoun--he had lived a long life and it was a sizable list. There must have been a painful pause before he answered the minister's question. Jackson was a sincere man at heart and undoubtedly wanted to be honest with himself and with his God. At length he replied: "My political enemies I can freely forgive; but as for those who abused me when I was serving my country in the field, and those who attacked me for serving my country--Doctor, that is a different case." Doctor Edgar, however, insisted that forgiveness of all enemies was a fundamental and indispensable condition of reception into the Christian faith. So the candidate for membership in the church gave himself over to another period of reflection and at length stated that "he thought he could forgive all who injured him," even those who had criticised him while he was in the field; and upon this rather equivocal assurance the ceremonies proceeded.

The General's conversion, in connection with the protracted meeting, served to breathe new breath into the little church at the Hermitage, which had been having a struggle for life after the death of Mrs. Jackson and the General's absence of eight years in Washington. Now the church began actively to function again, and its new and distinguished convert was promptly nominated a "ruling elder." But he declined the nomination. "My countrymen have given me high honors," he said, "but I should esteem the office of ruling elder in the church of Christ a far higher honor than any I have ever received. But I am too young in the church for such an office. The Bible says 'Be not hasty in laying on of hands.'" And then he nominated two elderly neighbors as elders.

Jackson, however, despite his unwillingness to hold office in the church, entered actively and whole-heartedly into its work. One of its pastors, reminiscing in later years, said that in the winter-time, when the ground was covered with snow, it was no unusual thing for him to arrive at the church and find no one there but the General and his man servant. Jackson would have the servant busy keeping up the fires in the two fireplaces and making preparations so that the rest of the congregation would be comfortable when they arrived. No matter how bad the weather, his attendance at services could be counted on; and he was particularly punctilious about attending on Communion Sundays, always advancing to the Communion table on the arm of his daughter-in-law.

The Hermitage church was dedicated by Dr. William Hume, one of the famous figures in the Presbyterian ministry in the South. Other distinguished divines have occupied the pulpit during the years since then; and on one occasion a "mysterious stranger" appeared and volunteered to preach and did so for three months before he disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as he came, it being discovered later that he was a convict escaped from a Northern prison. Another volunteer preacher appeared one Sunday and delivered a sermon, a conspicuous feature of his performance being that he refused to preach from the pulpit, but talked from behind a table placed in the aisle. A short while after he left Jesse James was killed in Missouri, and a tradition sprang up that the mysterious preacher was none other than the redoubtable outlaw, a color of plausibility being lent this legend by the fact that the James brothers used Nashville as a hide-out during their days of outlawry.

References to Jackson's religious views and his church affiliations may seem discordant with the familiar picture of a swearing, gambling, brawling frontiersman; but the rough, free-and-easy side of Jackson's life has been somewhat over-emphasized in popular history to the exclusion of the gentler side of his character.

General Jackson, despite popular beliefs to the contrary, had a deeply-rooted religious background and a strongly developed sense of reverence. He was taught the scripture by his mother when a boy, and was made familiar with the stern old Westminster Catechism before her death. At the time he was a judge in Tennessee, while still a young man, he was known to entertain strongly religious views. One who knew him then states that "Judge Jackson freely and frequently averred his full and unwavering confidence in the divine authority of the Bible and the truth of the gospel declaration that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour of lost men, and that we must repent of sin and obey the gospel of Christ or our souls can not be saved." A 100% Fundamentalist! Jackson himself stated, in commenting on some of the unfounded criticism of him during the 1828 campaign, that for 35 years before his election to the Presidency he never failed to read at least three chapters of the Bible every day.

This side of Jackson's character, however, it must be admitted, was not generally known; and when he joined the church it attracted attention all over the country. A prominent citizen of Missouri, writing about it at the time, said: "In my early days the palpable and notorious infidelity of Thomas Jefferson spread a desolation that was mournful over the entire face of the western country. The enemies of religion took courage and threw up their blasphemy in the face of heaven. But now here is a man, raised up by the hand of God to the possession of an influence far beyond all that Jefferson ever possessed, for Jefferson never was able to wield public opinion in this great nation as General Jackson has done; and yet this man publicly prostrates himself before the cross and calls on the crucified Redeemer as his Lord and his God. The American church should not suffer this important testimony of General Jackson to be overlooked or forgotten."

Jackson was a consistent church-goer all his life, even before he contributed so much of his influence and means to the establishment of the Hermitage church; and an amusing episode, and one typical of the times, took place in October, 1818, when the Reverend Peter Cartright, the famous backwoods preacher, was holding services in a Methodist church in Nashville, preaching on the text: "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Parson Cartright, who was a sort of pioneer Billy Sunday, had hardly more than announced his text than General Jackson entered the church and stood for a moment in the aisle looking for a seat. The resident minister seated behind the Reverend Cartright pulled at his coat-tails and said in a stage whisper: "General Jackson has come in! General Jackson has come in!" This interruption aroused the indignation of the fiery parson and so he retorted in a voice loud enough to be heard by all: "Who is General Jackson? If he don't get his soul converted, God will damn him as quick as he would a Guinea nigger!" General Jackson, so it is told, joined in the mirth aroused by this spirited retort (a near-blasphemy in those days of Jackson's transcendent popularity), and the preaching proceeded without further untoward incident. But the pastor of the church was fearful that the General might have been offended by the outspoken visiting clergyman, and he set out early the next morning to make an apology for the incident. It happened, however, that General Jackson met Mr. Cartright on the street face to face that morning and, reaching out his hand, said: "Mr. Cartright, you are a man after my own heart. I am very much surprised at Mr. Mac (the local pastor) to think he would suppose that I would be offended at you. No, sir, I told him that I highly approved of your independence; that a minister of Jesus Christ ought to love everybody and fear no mortal man. I told him that if I had a few thousand such fearless, independent officers as you were, and a well-drilled army, I could take old England."

This episode comes down to us in Parson Cartright's own memoirs, and it may be that it has gained something in the telling. It does not, however, appear out of character for either of them. Mr. Cartright was the kind of man who would not hesitate to say what he thought, in the pulpit or out; and Jackson was an admirer of spunk wherever he found it. The parson's credibility, however, is somewhat damaged by another Jackson anecdote he tells.

Mr. Cartright, according to this story, had preached one day near the Hermitage and had been invited to dine with the General. As usual the Hermitage was full of company, including a young lawyer from Nashville who was enjoying the attention he was attracting by declaring himself an infidel. The parson endeavored not to be drawn into a theological discussion with the young man, but the latter was determined to have a dispute with him and said: "Mr. Cartright, do you really believe there is any such place as hell, as a place of torment?" The parson replied in the affirmative, whereupon the lawyer said: "Well I thank God I have too much good sense to believe any such thing." Before Mr. Cartright could reply, so he relates, General Jackson interrupted to say: "Well, sir, I thank God there is such a place of torment as hell;" and when the surprised young man asked him why, he went on. "To put in it such damned rascals as you, that oppose and villify the Christian religion!" It is hard to believe that General Jackson would ever speak thus brusquely to a guest in his home; but, anyhow, it makes a good story.

Although he would not join the church while he was actively in politics, Jackson was shrewd enough to know that a man in the public eye must carefully watch his personal conduct and avoid even the appearance of evil. So, despite his known fondness for the current sports of the frontier while he was a young man, after he became a statesman he was most punctilious about his conduct. In 1824, while a candidate for President, he sat down and wrote out a specific and categorical denial of various campaign charges, in the course of which he said: "It is a positive falsehood that General Jackson has been either at a cockfight or sports of a similar nature for the last thirteen years," and then entered into a detailed disclaimer of any sympathy with or actively in the "wild" activities of the day.

He was at this time especially careful of his reputation in connection with the breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses. There was then, as now, a nice social distinction between the stock breeder and the man who operates a string of race horses on the tracks; and although Jackson in his youth was not above riding his own horse in a race in an emergency, when he became President he wanted it distinctly understood that he was primarily the owner of a stock farm and that he had no part nor parcel in their actual racing or training.

There was an amusing example of this hair-splitting distinction during his first Presidential term. His correspondence with his adopted son and with his overseer, early in 1832, indicated that the current crop of colts was very promising, and Andrew, junior, was planning to enter one of them in the sweepstakes in the East. The colts, in charge of the grooms, had actually been started on their way to the East for preliminary training when the adopted son, apparently inspired by the irrepressible young Hutchings, sent after them and had them returned to the Hermitage for training on the private track there. The old General suspected that Hutchings was also having his own colt trained there, and he wrote his son a sharp letter expressing astonishment at his "unaccountable conduct." Hutchings and Steele (the overseer), he wrote, knew very well that he was opposed to having any horses trained on the track on his plantation. "It might have been construed that I was encouraging racing," he said virtuously, pointing out that such a criticism could not justly be made of him when he was giving the colts to his son and Hutchings "and having them sent away and run elsewhere." So incensed did the General become at the possibility of having his position misunderstood (although, at this writing, it seems to have been equivocal to say the least of it) that he instructed his son to "Have the turf closed, plowed up, and permit not a horse to be galloped upon it." It appears that no such drastic action was taken; but it is plain to see that Jackson had a very exalted idea of the position he held and a keen understanding of the desirability of keeping the occupant of the President's chair entirely disassociated with the sordid business of horse racing.

This very appreciation of the political value of a reputation for piety renders all the more admirable his firm determination not to join the church during his active days in politics when it might have been suspected that he was using membership in the church for political effect. General Jackson had his faults and he had his share of the vices of the day; but he was not a hypocrite. Fundamentally he was a firm believer in the tenets of the Christian religion, but so long as he felt any question as to his ability to adhere strictly to the creed of the church without in any way drawing discredit on it or attracting suspicion to his motives, just so long did he choose to follow his religious beliefs outside the fold.

Although he had been slow about joining the church, Jackson enjoyed his association with it during his declining years and was a regular attendant at its services, joining lustily in the singing of his favorite hymns and listening attentively to the expounding of the gospel. But at last there came a day when he was no longer physically able to make even the short journey from the Hermitage to the little church down the road. The multiplied infirmities of old age at last forced him to capitulate.

It is a fact not sufficiently emphasized in most of the published biographies of Andrew Jackson that during almost his entire life he was in bad health--not merely debilitated, but actually tortured with pain. His constitution, never particularly robust, was undermined by the grueling hardships of the early campaigns against the Indians from which he returned afflicted with chronic dysentery. Throughout his life he was a victim of severe, nerve-racking headaches, of which there is passing mention in many of his letters. During his last years he fell a victim of tuberculosis which, according to one of his biographers, entirely destroyed one of his lungs; and, as though that were not sufficient bodily ailments, dropsy attacked him during the last six months of his life and caused him such agony as to make his existence a burden to him. He had been dangerously wounded with pistol balls twice--in his duel with Dickinson and his brawl with the Bentons--and from the effects of these wounds he never entirely recovered. He was confined to his room in the White House during almost the whole of his last four months of his administration, and during that time he suffered a hemorrhage of the lungs so severe that attending physicians despaired of his life. He rallied all his strength and bravely rode to the inauguration with his successor, Martin Van Buren; but he returned to the Hermitage in 1837 a broken-down and seriously ill old man. At the time he frankly expressed doubt whether he would long survive; but the return home exerted a beneficial influence on his health, and he improved to such an extent that it was eight years before the end came.

During this entire eight-year span, up almost to the very moment of his death, he never relaxed his active interest and participation in public affairs. Tennessee's gubernatorial campaign of 1838 almost immediately engaged his attention, and he worked with all that was left of his old-time energy to elect his newest political protege, James K. Polk. Following the election all the Democratic big-wigs of Tennessee, including Jackson and Felix Grundy, repaired to Tyree Springs for a vacation and celebration of Polk's victory.

Again in 1840, despite his age and the enfeebled state of his health, he left the quiet shades of the Hermitage and went on an ill-advised stump-speaking trip through West Tennessee in support of Martin Van Buren who had been re-nominated for the Presidency by the Democrats. It was a bitter blow to the old man when, in spite of his active support of his favorite, the Whigs carried Tennessee for Harrison by a majority of more than 12,000 votes; but he accepted the blow philosophically, stating that his belief in the soundness of the republic was so great that he felt that it would survive even the terrible experience of four years under Harrison's rule.

Jackson conscientiously believed that Harrison was unfitted for the Presidency--so much so that he frankly expressed the belief that Harrison's early death was a direct interposition of God to save the country from misrule. The Democratic defeat of 1840 only served to stimulate the old General to extra efforts to retrieve the loss in 1844. The selection of a standard bearer in this campaign was the subject of much intra-party deliberation and negotiation. General Jackson favored James K. Polk, and he was finally made the nominee. The General, although now 77 years old, buckled on his armor and actively engaged himself in the campaign for his young fellow Tennesseean. Too old and ill to take the stump again he resorted to a ceaseless campaign of letter writing, and the work he did from the Hermitage was largely instrumental in placing the relatively unknown Polk in the White House.

So elated was he at the success of his hand-picked candidate that he gave a stupendous garden party and barbecue at the Hermitage in celebration of Polk's election; and in the afternoon he tottered out on the upstairs portico and, leaning over the railing, harangued his several hundred guests with an old-time, fiery political speech. It was a gala occasion.

He took an intense interest in the developments of Polk's administration, particularly the annexation of Texas, and he followed this closely through correspondence with his old friend, Sam Houston, and with Andrew Jackson Donelson who was then representing the United States in the Republic of Texas. Houston visited the Hermitage during this period, and on one of these visits Jackson entertained with a big dinner at which the piece de resistance was a haunch of bear meat. Some admirer of the General's in Arkansas had sent him a live bear cub as a token of his esteem, and for a while the animal was kept on the front lawn of the Hermitage tied to one of the big holly trees. When Houston came to town Jackson decided that the bear should be a sacrifice to the distinguished visitor, and so the political leaders and neighbors were invited to come and partake of the bear-meat dinner.

These closing years of the old statesman's life were complicated by the stream of visitors at the Hermitage--office seekers and hero worshipers. The General tried to see them all, even up to the last few weeks before his death, lying propped up on a sofa in his room, with a black boy fanning him with a bush to keep the flies away. Patiently he received them: wrote his name in autograph albums, patted the heads of small boys brought to look on his countenance, heard the pleas of those seeking his support in their efforts to get political appointments. Generally he was patient; but, on at least one occasion, he blurted out: "I am dying as fast as I can and they all know it; but they will keep swarming upon me in crowds, seeking for office--intriguing for office."

One distinguished visitor of this period was G. P. A. Healy, the celebrated artist commissioned by Louis Phillipe to paint a portrait of Jackson to hang beside that of Washington in the king's gallery at Paris. The story of Healy's arrival at the Hermitage is a dramatic one. Arriving unannounced at the house, he found no one there but the desperately ill old man and the servants. Ushered into Jackson's room, where he was sitting propped up in his big chair by the window, Healy, impressed by the fame of the distinguished citizen in whose presence he stood, fell on his knee before him and exclaimed: "I have come to paint your picture." This obsequiousness did not suit the old democrat, and he sternly bade him to rise, saying: "Kneel to no one but your Maker!" Healy apparently did not succeed in making himself clear as to his purpose, and so he returned to Nashville where he found Andrew, junior, and his wife, explained his intentions to them and returned to the Hermitage with them. Then General Jackson would not consent to sit for his picture unless young Mrs. Jackson would pose also. She consented, and so Healy fell to work. He succeeded in his race with Death, completing the portrait just ten days before the old man gave up the ghost; and the portrait made under these trying circumstances (of which a duplicate made by Healy now hangs in the Hermitage) is considered a good likeness and an excellent piece of work.

The Healy portrait, however, good as it is, can hardly be considered a better likeness than one other picture made during these last days of the General's life--a daguerreotype made by a Nashville man, Dan Adams, who had lately become a practitioner of the newly discovered art. To gratify the ambition of Mr. Adams to hand down to posterity an actual likeness of General Jackson, the sick old man was carried in his chair out onto the back porch and there the exposure was made. It is a tradition in the family that the General was displeased with the likeness when it was shown to him, expressing his disapproval of it in characteristic language; but it is entirely likely that this is, in fact, the most faithful image of Andrew Jackson that now exists, even though the pain-wracked old man growled when they showed it to him: "Humph! Looks like a monkey!"

Not only was the master of the Hermitage persecuted by visitors during his last eight years, but during this time he was also bombarded with correspondence pouring in on him from friends and strangers, persons seeking political favors, inviting him to celebrations and barbecues, asking for autographs or locks of his hair, or merely expressing their admiration. A recent article in a New York paper reproduced a letter from one of the impressionable young ladies of 1842 who wanted a lock of the old hero's hair, and this letter is fairly typical of those that poured in on him. After a florid and flattering introductory paragraph the young lady says: