Andrew Jackson And His Mother
by
It is a most singular, or at least curious fact, connected with the histories of most all eminent men, that they were denied–by the decrees of stern poverty, or an all-wise Providence–those facilities and indulgences supposed to be so essentially necessary for the future success and prosperous career of young men, but acted as “whetstones” to sharpen and develop their true temper! The fact is very vivid in the early history of Andrew Jackson–a name that, like that of the great, godlike Washington, must survive the wreck of matter, the crush of worlds, and, passing down the vista of each successive age, brighter and more glorious, unto those generations yet to come, when time shall have obliterated the asperities of partisan feeling, and learned to deal most gently with the human frailties of the illustrious dead.
Andrew Jackson, senior, emigrated from Ireland in 1765, with his wife and two boys–Hugh and Robert, both very young; they landed at Charleston, S. C, where Jackson found employment as a laborer, and continued to work thus for several years, until, possessed of a few dollars, he went to the interior of the state and bought a small place near Waxhaw. About this time, 1767, Andrew Jackson, Jr., was born, and during the next year–by the time the infant could lisp the name of his parent–the father fell sick of fever and died. Mrs. Jackson, left with three small children, in an almost wild country, where nothing but toil of a severe and arduous kind could provide a subsistence, was indeed in a most grievous situation. But she appears to have been a woman of no ordinary temperament, courage, and perseverance, for she continued cheerfully the work left her–rearing her boys, and preparing them for the situations in life they might be destined to fill. Mrs. Jackson was a woman of some information, and a strong advocate for the rights and liberties of men; as, it is said, she not only gave her boys their first rudiments of an English education, but often indulged in glowing lectures to them of the importance of instilling in their hearts and principles an unrelenting war against pomp, power, and circumstance of monarchical governments and institutions! She led them to know that they were born free and equal with the best of earth, and that that position was to be their heritage–maintained even at the peril of life and property! and how well he learned these chivalric lessons, the countrymen of Andrew Jackson need not now be told, as it was exemplified in every page of his whole history.
Hugh, Robert, and Andrew, were now the widow’s hope and treasures; Hugh and Robert were her main dependence in working their little farm, and Andrew, never a very robust person, was early sent to the best schools in the neighborhood, and much care taken by his mother to have him at least educated for a profession–the ministry. This resolve was more perhaps decided upon from the naturally stern, contemplative, and fixed principles of young Jackson; as at the early age of fifteen, he was by nature well prepared for the scenes being enacted around him, and in which, even those young as himself, were called upon to take an active part. This was in the days of the revolution, when the weak in numbers of this continent were about to try the experiment of living free and independent, and establish the fact that royalty was an imposition and a humbug, only maintained by arrogance and pomp at the point of the bayonet.
The British had begun the war–already had the echoes of “Bunker Hill,” and the smell of “villainous saltpetre,” invaded and aroused the quiet dwellers in the woods and wilds of South Carolina, and the chivalric spirit that has ever characterized the men of the Palmetto state, at once responded to the tocsin of liberty. It was with no slight degree of sorrow and aching of the mother’s heart, that she saw her two sons, Hugh and Robert, shoulder their muskets and join the Spartan band that assembled at Waxhaw Court-house. But she blessed her children and gave up her holy claim of a mother’s love, for the common cause of the infant nation.