Old Hickory
A key event in my historical novel, The Lafayette Circle, is General Lafayette’s visit to The Hermitage plantation home of the War of 1812 and Seminole War leader Andrew Jackson. On 25 May 1825, Jackson meets Lafayette and his entourage at their steamer and escorts them on a tour of his home. While there, Jackson brings out an exquisite pair of matched pistols.
“Do you recognize these, sir?”
“Indeed, sir.” Lafayette choked up and warmly embraced his host.
Lafayette had given the two “saddle pistols” to Washington in 1778—during the middle of the American War for Independence.
When Washington died in 1799, his nephew inherited them and later gifted them to William Robinson, who further gifted them to the Indian Wars and War of 1812 hero—Old Hickory.
A poignant moment for the two veterans of the American Revolutionary War—although Old Hickory was more of a young acorn during the eight-year struggle. In fact, he was just a teen when the war exploded across the Carolinas.
Young Hickory
Andrew Jackson and his two older brothers grew up on a hard-scrabble piece of land in the Waxhaws region, nestled along the border of the two Carolinas. The family was of the flinty Scots-Irish stock who provided many of the early settlers carving out a living in the New World—stubborn, resourceful, resilient, fearless, and defiant. Sadly, Jackson’s father, Andrew Senior, was killed while felling a tree just three weeks before Andrew’s birth—his mother and two older siblings raised him.
Southern Strategy
War prodded the Carolinas at first—attempts at naval invasion by the British were thwarted until Savannah fell, opening a southern land and sea approach to Charleston. Militias and Continental troops under American General Benjamin Lincoln resisted a prodding by forces under British General John Maitland in the summer of 1779. And it was during the British rear-guard action at Stono Ferry on 20 June that Andrews’s older brother Hugh, gravely wounded, succumbed to the oppressive heat and died of exhaustion.
However, within a year, a massive British Army led by Sir Henry Clinton had taken Charleston, and Clinton unleashed General Charles Cornwallis and notorious Colonel Banastre Tarleton to subdue the rest of the state. War was coming to the Waxhaws.
Rebel Teens
Defiant, the two younger Jacksons joined Colonel William Richardson Davie's regiment, and they served as couriers. As such, they took part in the short but bloody clash against a British outpost at Hanging Rock on the Catawba River on 6 August 1780. Davie made a diversionary attack there, supporting General Thomas Sumter’s larger attack on Rocky Mount, just to the west Davie’s initial assault failed, but Sumter shifted his efforts and launched a more significant attack with several regiments.
But a year later, 14-year-old Andy and his 15-year-old brother, Robert, were on the run after their unit was surprised and scattered by Tory war parties who joined with the British to stamp out any vestige of resistance. Over a third of their comrades were caught up in the net, but the Jacksons aimed to avoid that fate.
However, hunger dictated otherwise. After hiding their horses and weapons in the woods, the boys approached a friendly farmstead, the home of patriot Lieutenant Crawford. Local Tories spotted the horses and warned the British. While supper was on the stove, a party of British soldiers surrounded the Crawford farm and rushed the house.
They searched the house with a fury only imaginable of a violent civil war. Clothes torn from dressers are torn to shreds, furniture is chopped up, and pots and dishes are smashed. Oaths and threats filled the air.
British commander stomped across the room and accosted younger Jackson. He pointed to his mud-spattered riding boots. “Boy! Clean my boots!”
Andrew straightened and lifted his chin in defiance. “Sir, I am a prisoner of war and should be so treated.”
Enraged, the dragoon officer drew his sword and struck a slashing blow that cut the young teenager’s upraised wrist to the bone and slid off the bone, striking his forehead. It would leave a scar that he carried for life. It left an even deeper scar on Andrew’s mind, an indelible hatred of everything British, which was to become one of the leading motivations of his life.
The officer turned on Robert. “Then you clean my boots!"
When he defiantly refused to obey, the blade came down, striking him on the head and sending streams of blood down his face.
The boys, badly wounded and bleeding, were force-marched in oppressive heat to a prison camp at Camden, where they joined some 250 other captured rebels. They were left untreated, given little food, and suffered cramped quarters. Then, disease struck as it usually did in filthy prisons. Andre had to listen to the heart-wrenching moans of men suffering from smallpox. Eventually, the affliction struck Robert. Andy, too, was lying in bed, suffering malnutrition that was sapping his life from him.
Mother’s Love
During a prisoner exchange, the boys’ mother, Elizabeth, arrived in Camden. She argued for the release of the two sons. As the two appeared near death, her request was granted. With Robert struggling on the one horse, Andrew suffered the forty-five-mile trek home to Waxhaws.
Back home, Elizabeth struggled to get her boys healthy again, but Robert died within days. Despondent, she worked hard to nurture Andy, and he slowly recovered. His combatant days were over—in this war. Elizabeth and other women began nursing other prisoners and traveled to Charleston to treat those afflicted on prison ships in the harbor. Surrounded by disease, she caught cholera and died just before Charles Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown.
Badge of Honor
Andy’s wound healed, leaving him a scar across his brow. The cut across his forehead left an even deeper scar on Andrew’s mind, his hatred for all things British. It was also a living memorial to his family, who gave so much to the cause, as well as to the soldiers who suffered and died.
The feisty teen Andy Jackson would grow into Andrew Jackson—a man of action who would lead American soldiers to victory over the Creek Indians, the Spanish, and, of course, the British. He would secure large swathes of Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi and smash lines of hated redcoats in the Battle of New Orleans, a victory that marked the United States as a nation that could not be ignored.
