habituated to self-reliance. Always es-
caping, he learned to confide implicitly
in his star; believing that no harm could
befall if Andrew Jackson was near. To
the last hour of his life this was his
habitual feeling.

This kind of life may make men tender
and amiable at home, because they are
always protecting its beloved inmates;
but abroad, in their intercourse with
men, they become direct, fierce, clannish.
Their feelings are primitive and intense.
They use "the English language." If a
man varies from the truth, they call him
a liar without more ado, and the man
who is called a liar can only clear his
character by fighting. A word and a
blow becomes the law of the wilderness.
And in a country where fighting is one
of the necessities of every man's lot, the
man readiest to fight and ablest in fight,
is necessarily the first man.

How prompt Mr. Solicitor Jackson was
with vituperative word and rectifying
pistol, we all know. While yet a boy he
notifies Commissary Galbraith to pre-
pare for another world before attempt-
ing to execute his threat of chastisement.
Offended in the court-room at Jonesbor-
ough by Mr. Avery's harmless satire, he
tears a blank leaf from a law book and
dashes off a challenge, which he himself
delivers; and, before the sun sets, the
duel has been fought, and the antagonists
are friends again. The affair with Dick-
inson was of a very different nature. So
far as the written testimony enables us to
judge, Jackson was wholly, grossly,
abominably in the wrong. But the tradi-
tion in the circle of Jackson's nearest
friends is clear and strong, that Dickin-
son had reviled Mrs. Jackson in his
cups. . . .

Jackson had passed his forty-fifth year
without having achieved any thing very
remarkable. Public life he had tried,
but had not shone in it, and nothing
became him in his public life so much as
his leaving it. He had tried merchan-
dising, but not successfully. He tried
speculation in land, and nearly lost all
his estate by his ignorance of law, but
saved it, at the last moment, by one of
his characteristic spurts of energy. Noth-
ing really prospered with him but his
farm and his horses, both of which he
loved, and, therefore, understood. Upon
the whole, however, he had shown him-
self a leader of the people, helping them,
at each turn of his career, to what they
wanted most: first, law; then, merchan-
dise; next, horses; lastly, defense.

The massacre at Fort Mims [ Ala-
bama] ^* gave him, at length, a piece of
work which he was better fitted to do
than any other man in the world. Only
such energy, such swiftness, such resolu-
tion, such tenacity of purpose, such dis-
regard of forms and precedents, such
audacity, and such prudence as his, could
have defended the Southwest in 1814 and
1815. When a man successfully defends
his invaded country, we must not too
closely scrutinize the acts which dim the
luster of his great achievement. The
captain who saves his imperiled ship we
honor, though, in the critical hour, he
may have sworn like a trooper, and
knocked down a man or two with the
speaking trumpet. The slaying of the
six militiamen, and the maintaining of
martial law in New Orleans two months
too long, we may condemn, and, I think,
should condemn; yet most of the citizens
of the United States will concur in the
wish, that when next a European army
lands upon American soil, there may be
a Jackson to meet them at the landing-
place. After making all proper deduc-

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