The settlement lay on the banks of the upper Catawba, near the junction of that stream with Waxhaw Creek; and as it occupied a fertile oasis in a vast waste of pine woods, it was for decades largely cut off from touch with the outside world. The settlement was situated, too, partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina, so that in the pre-Revolutionary days many of the inhabitants hardly knew, or cared to know, in which of the two provinces they dwelt.
Upon their arrival Jackson’s friends bought land on the creek and within the bounds of the settlement. Jackson himself was too poor, however, to do this, and accordingly took up a claim six miles distant on another little stream known as Twelve-mile Creek. Here, in the fall of 1765, he built a small cabin, and during the winter he cleared five or six acres of ground. The next year he was able to raise enough corn, vegetables, and pork to keep his little household from want. The tract thus occupied cannot be positively identified, but it lay in what is now Union County, North Carolina, a few miles from Monroe, the county seat.
Then came tragedy of a sort in which frontier history abounds. In the midst of his efforts to hew out a home and a future for those who were dear to him the father sickened and died, in March, 1767, at the early age of twenty-nine, less than two years after his arrival at the settlement. Tradition says that his death was the result of a rupture suffered in attempting to move a heavy log, and that it was so sudden that the distracted wife had no opportunity to seek aid from the distant neighbors. When at last the news got abroad, sympathy and assistance were lavished in true frontier fashion. Borne in a rude farm wagon, the remains were taken to the Waxhaw burying ground and were interred in a spot which tradition, but tradition only, is able today to point out.
The widow never returned to the desolated homestead. She and her little ones were taken into the family of one of her married sisters, where she spent her few remaining years. On the 15th of March, less than two weeks after her husband’s death, she gave birth to a third son; and the child was promptly christened Andrew, in memory of the parent he would never know.
Curiously, the seventh President’s birthplace has been a matter of sharp controversy. There is a tradition that the birth occurred while the mother was visiting a neighboring family by the name of McKemy; and Parton, one of Jackson’s principal biographers, adduces a good deal of evidence in support of the story. On the other hand, Jackson always believed that he was born in the home of the aunt with whom his bereaved mother took up her residence; and several biographers, including Bassett, the most recent and the best, accept this contention. It really matters not at all, save for the circumstance that if the one view is correct Jackson was born in North Carolina, while if the other is correct he was born in South Carolina. Both States have persistently claimed the honor. In the famous proclamation which he addressed to the South Carolina nullifiers in 1832 Jackson referred to them as “fellow-citizens of my native state”; in his will he spoke of himself as a South Carolinian; and in correspondence and conversation he repeatedly declared that he was born on South Carolina soil. Jackson was far from infallible, even in matters closely touching his own career. But the preponderance of evidence on the point lies decidedly with South Carolina.
No one, at all events, can deny to the Waxhaw settlement an honored place in American history. There the father of John C. Calhoun first made his home. There the Revolutionary general, Andrew Pickens, met and married Rebecca Calhoun. There grew up the eminent North Carolinian Governor and diplomat, William R. Davie. There William H. Crawford lived as a boy. And there Jackson dwelt until early manhood.
For the times, young Andrew was well brought up. His mother was a woman of strong character, who cherished for her last-born the desire that he should become a Presbyterian clergyman. The uncle with whom he lived was a serious-minded man who by his industry had won means ample for the comfortable subsistence of his enlarged household. When he was old enough, the boy worked for his living, but no harder than the frontier boys of that day usually worked; and while his advantages were only such as a backwoods community afforded, they were at least as great as those of most boys similarly situated, and they were far superior to those of the youthful Lincoln.
Jackson’s earlier years, nevertheless, contained little promise of his future distinction. He grew up amidst a rough people whose tastes ran strongly to horse-racing, cockfighting, and heavy drinking, and whose ideal of excellence found expression in a readiness to fight upon any and all occasions in defense of what they considered to be their personal honor. In young Andrew Jackson these characteristics appeared in a superlative degree. He was mischievous, willful, daring, reckless. Hardly an escapade took place in the community in which he did not share; and his sensitiveness and quick temper led him continually into trouble. In his early teens he swore like a trooper, chewed tobacco incessantly, acquired a taste for strong drink, and set a pace for wildness which few of his associates could keep up. He was passionately fond of running foot races, leaping the bar, jumping, wrestling, and every sort of sport that partook of the character of mimic battle—and he never acknowledged defeat. “I could throw him three times out of four,” testifies an old schoolmate, “but he would never stay throwed. He was dead game even then, and never would give up.” Another early companion says that of all the boys he had known Jackson was the only bully who was not also a coward.
Of education the boy received only such as was put unavoidably in his way. It is said that his mother taught him to read before he was five years old; and he attended several terms in the little low-roofed log schoolhouse in the Waxhaw settlement. But his formal instruction never took him beyond the fundamentals of reading, writing, geography, grammar, and “casting accounts.” He was neither studious nor teachable. As a boy he preferred sport to study, and as a man he chose to rely on his own fertile ideas rather than to accept guidance from others. He never learned to write the English language correctly, although he often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. In an age of bad spellers he achieved distinction from the number of ways in which he could spell a word within the space of a single page. He could use no foreign languages; and of the great body of science, literature, history, and the arts he knew next to nothing. He never acquired a taste for books, although vanity prompted him to treasure throughout his public career all correspondence and other documentary materials that might be of use to future biographers. Indeed, he picked as a biographer first his military aide, John Reid, and later his close friend, John H. Eaton, whom he had the satisfaction in 1829 of appointing Secretary of War.
When the Revolution came, young Andrew was a boy of ten. For a time the Carolina backwoods did not greatly feel the effect of the change. But in the spring of 1780 all of the revolutionary troops in South Carolina were captured at Charleston, and the lands from the sea to the mountains were left at the mercy of Tarleton’s and Rawdon’s bands of redcoats and their Tory supporters. Twice the Waxhaw settlement was ravaged before the patriots could make a stand. Young Jackson witnessed two battles in 1780, without taking part in them, and in the following year he, a brother, and a cousin were taken prisoners in a skirmish. To the day of his death Jackson bore on his head and hand the marks of a saber blow administered by a British lieutenant whose jack boots he refused to polish. When an exchange of prisoners was made, Mrs. Jackson secured the release of her two boys, but not until after they had contracted smallpox in Camden jail. The older one died, but the younger, though reduced to a skeleton, survived. Already the third brother had given up his life in battle; and the crowning disaster came when the mother, going as a volunteer to nurse the wounded Waxhaw prisoners on the British vessels in Charleston harbor, fell ill of yellow fever and perished. Small wonder that Andrew Jackson always hated the British uniform, or that when he sat in the executive chair an anti-British feeling colored all of his dealings with foreign nations!
At the age of fourteen, the sandy-haired, pockmarked lad of the Waxhaws found himself alone in the world. The death of his relatives had made him heir to a portion of his grandfather’s estate in Carrickfergus; but the property was tied up in the hands of an administrator, and the boy was in effect both penniless and homeless. The memory of his mother and her teachings was, as he was subsequently accustomed to say, the only capital with which he started life. To a natural waywardness and quarrelsomeness had been added a heritage of bitter memories, and the