* * * *

One of history’s shadowy figures who lived at the Hermitage for the better part of two years was Major Henry Lee of Virginia, scapegrace son of General Henry (Lighthorse Harry) Lee by his first wife. As his father’s eldest son Major Lee had become the master of Stratford Hall, the seat of the Lee family in Virginia; but as the result of an amour with his wife’s sister he had been forced to leave Stratford and exile himself beyond the boundaries of his native state. Attracted by the rising star of General Jackson, under whom he had served in the War of 1812, he came to Nashville to seek a connection with him; and Jackson, despite the social stigma attached to the expatriated Virginian, gave him asylum and gave him secretarial employment.

Major Lee’s polished diction is to be seen in many of Jackson’s formal state papers of this period, notably his first inaugural; and during the campaign of 1828 he wrote copiously in behalf of the General’s candidacy. He was on Jackson’s staff at the time of Mrs. Jackson’s death; and tradition has it that he was the author of the gem-like epitaph inscribed on her tomb. When the Indian boy, Lyncoya, died in 1828 Lee wrote a tribute to him which appeared in one of the Nashville daily papers and was greatly admired at the time.

When President Jackson was inaugurated in 1829 Major Lee aspired to be the chief clerk in the Department of State, an office for which his talents and education eminently well fitted him; but the black sheep son of Lighthorse Harry (“Black Harry” he was sometimes called) by reasons of his indiscretion in Virginia had made some powerful enemies there. They went to Washington and waged a vigorous and successful fight against his being elevated to such a high place in the Federal government, and so his ambition in this direction was thwarted. Jackson then appointed him to a diplomatic post in Algiers, and Lee went there to take over the duties of this office; but his Virginia enemies were relentless and succeeded in preventing the Senate’s confirmation of this appointment. Major Lee left Algiers and went to Paris, where he died a few years later. He planned to write a biography of Jackson and actually completed a part of the manuscript; but after his death this uncompleted manuscript could never be found.

It is of passing interest to observe that Robert E. Lee, the Confederate commander, was appointed to the Military Academy at West Point by President Jackson in 1829; and it is not improbable that this appointment was the direct result of his elder half-brother’s friendship with the President.

A charming impression of the Hermitage household is recorded in the book of recollections written in 1872 by Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia who, as few people now recall, spent his honeymoon in the Jackson home. Henry Wise, a promising young barrister, in August, 1828 came to Nashville from his home in Virginia for the purpose of marrying the daughter of Dr. O. Jennings, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Nashville attended by General Jackson and his wife when they were in the city. Dr. Jennings was not only their pastor but their close personal friend; and so, with characteristic hospitality, the Jacksons insisted that the young couple must spend their honeymoon at their country home.

“We arrived at the Hermitage to dinner,” writes Governor Wise, “and were shown to a bridal chamber magnificently furnished with articles which were the rich and costly presents of the city of New Orleans to its noble defender. The first or second evening of our stay, Mr. Lee had drawn about him his usual crowd of listeners; but we were the more special guests of Mrs. Jackson. She was a descendant of Colonel Charles Stockley, of our native county, Accomack, Virginia; and we had often seen his old mansion, an old Hanoverian hip-roofed house standing on the seaside not far from Metompkin; and she had often heard her mother talk of the old Assawaman Church, not far above Colonel Stockley’s house. Thus she was not only a good Presbyterian, whose pastor’s daughter was the bride, and she a Presbyterian too, but the groom was from the county of her ancestors in Virginia and could tell her something about traditions she had heard of the family from which she sprung. With pious devotion to her mother’s family she desired to have a talk with us particularly, and formed a cosy group of quiet chat in the northeast corner room leading to the garden. This room had a north window, diagonal from the door leading to the garden. At this door her group was formed, fronting in a semi-circle the north window of the room, the garden door on our right. First, on our right, next the window, was old Judge Overton, one of General Jackson’s earliest and best friends. He was a man who had made his mark in law and politics, but was not pious and was a queer-looking little old man. Small in stature and cut into sharp angles at every salient point; a round, prominent, gourd-like, bald cranium; a peaked Roman nose; a prominent, sharp but manly chin; and he had lost his teeth and swallowed his lips. Next to him, on his left, sat General Jackson, his hair always standing straight up and out, but he in his mildest mood of social suavity. On his left the Reverend Doctor Jennings, one of the sweetest men in society, very distinguished as a lawyer first and then as a divine, with a rare sense of humor which even his religious zeal could not always repress, and yet awfully earnest and severe against all levity. On his left was Mrs. Jackson, a lady who doubtless was once a form of rotund and rubicund beauty, but now was very plethoric and obese and seemingly suffered from what was called phthisis, and talked low but quick with a short and wheezing breath, the very personification of affable kindness and of a welcome as sincere and truthful as it was simple and tender. On her left was ourself, responding to her every inquiry about things her mother had handed down concerning the Stockley family; and on our left sat Henry Baldwin, the son of Judge Baldwin of the Supreme Court of the United States, one of the groomsmen, a gentleman of fine culture, good sense and taste.”

Clearly the Jackson household was an attractive one and a pleasant one to visit. No wonder the Hermitage was always full of guests!

Henry Wise and his wife recalled with sadness that happy scene in the northeast room when they were back there from Nashville just a few months later to attend the funeral of Mrs. Jackson, held in that same room where they had all been so merry but a short time before.

The death of General Jackson’s deeply beloved wife was doubly tragic, coming as it did so closely in the wake of his triumphant campaign for the Presidency in 1828, and hastened as it unquestionably was by the heartless and slanderous attacks that were made on her character by Jackson’s political enemies in their desperate attempt to defeat his candidacy.

Her health had been increasingly bad for four or five years. She suffered from asthma and from palpitation of the heart, and the excitement and humiliation of the savage political campaign had aggravated her trouble, although she was not bedridden. Her final and fatal seizure came suddenly on December 17th while she was standing in her sitting room talking with Aunt Hannah concerning some of the household affairs. The General, who was in the fields, was hastily summoned, doctors were called, relatives and friends hurried in. For sixty hours she suffered intensely, and during all this time her adoring husband never left her bedside. At length she grew better; and her first thought was to reassure the General as to her improved condition and to urge him to get some sleep so that he would be in proper condition for the great banquet of triumph that was scheduled to be held in Nashville by his political admirers in honor of his election to the Presidency. The General at first refused to leave her side, but on the evening of the 22nd she seemed so greatly improved and she begged him so earnestly to get some rest that he reluctantly relaxed his vigil and retired to the room across the hall. Hardly had he left the sick room when the end came suddenly and without warning. With only one spasmodic cry she died in the arms of the faithful Aunt Hannah who was close by her side.

General Jackson was almost paralyzed with grief. He refused to believe her dead, and persistently urged the doctors to try every known restorative. But the doctors knew that life had left her body and ordered her laid out on a table in the old-fashioned way. “Spread four blankets on the table,” the General thoughtfully admonished the servants, tears streaming down his face. “Then if she does come to, she won’t lie so hard on it.” All through the night he sat there by her side. At intervals he would feel of her heart and pulse and look hopefully into her face for some sign of life. And all through the next day he sat there, utterly inconsolable.

The death of Mrs. Jackson, of course, put an end to the gala preparations in Nashville for the banquet of triumph. Handbills announcing her passing were hastily printed and distributed throughout the town; resolutions of regret and sympathy were adopted by the city officials, and the committee on arrangements for the banquet recommended a cessation of all business activities in Nashville in deference to the bereaved President-elect. Army officers in the city arrayed in their dress uniforms to participate in the celebration laid aside their regalia of festivity and donned the badges of mourning.

On the day of the funeral, it is recorded, every vehicle in Nashville was pressed into service in conveying the residents of the city to the Hermitage. Church bells in the city tolled steadily from 1:00 to 2:00 o’clock P.M., the hour of the services. Parton quotes an attendant at the funeral as saying: “Such a scene I never wish to witness again. The poor old gentleman was supported to the grave by General Coffee and Major Rutledge. I never pitied any person more in my life. The road to the Hermitage was almost impassable, and an immense number of persons attended the funeral. I never before saw so much affliction among servants on the death of a mistress. Some seemed completely stupefied by the event; others wrung their hands and shrieked aloud. The woman who waited on Mrs. Jackson had to be carried off the ground.” This was old Aunt Hannah who, between her sobs, said: “She was more than a mistis to us all; she was a mother.”

The day of the funeral was cold and damp and drizzly and the ground was muddy. The walkway leading from the house to the new grave in the garden was covered with cotton from the plantation gin-house to afford a firm footing to the pall-bearers and the funeral cortege. But in spite of the mud and the rain, the garden and yard were crowded with friends and neighbors. One of those at the funeral says: “More sincere homage was done to her dead than was ever done to any woman in our day and country living.”

General Jackson was heart-broken and stunned by his bereavement. Friends observed a complete change in his demeanor from that day forward. “He aged twenty years in a night,” said one observer; and all agreed that he was not only marked by a visible sadness but was from that time notably less violent in his nature and in his conversation. But, despite his feeling of desolation, the demands of the high office to which he had been elected did not permit him to sit at home and nurse his grief; and so in January, 1829, he left the Hermitage for Washington to be inaugurated President, accompanied by Andrew Jackson Donelson and Emily, Henry Lee, and Major W. B. Lewis.

After the trunks had been packed and the coach brought around to the front door, the heart-broken old General paid one last visit alone to the little mound in the corner of the garden. From a willow by the springhouse he cut four shoots and planted them at the four corners of the grave plot; then, after standing a moment with bared and bowed head, he turned and walked slowly to the waiting coach. Before stepping up into the carriage, so old Alfred used to tell, he turned for a farewell look at the Hermitage. With tears in his eyes he took off his hat and made a courtly bow of farewell to the old house, “same as if it was a lady,” said Alfred; and then he entered the coach, coachman Charles cracked his whip over the four grays, and they were off to the Hermitage landing on the river where the steamboat Fairy awaited them. A stop was made at the wharf at Nashville for other passengers, and then the Fairy swung out in the current of the Cumberland and they were started on their way to Louisville, the first leg of their journey to the capital.

A lady then resident in Nashville wrote of the departure: “When the old man finally started for Washington, a crowd of ladies were assembled on the back piazza of the City Hotel, overlooking the Cumberland River, to ‘see the conquering hero go.’ I mingled with them, and distinctly remember hearing one lady say she had a good-bye kiss from the General and she would not wash it off for a month. Oh! what a noise there was! A parrot, which had been brought up a Democrat, was crying ‘Hurrah for Jackson;’ and the clapping, shouting and waving of handkerchiefs have seldom been equaled. When the steamboat passed out of sight and they realized that he was really gone, the city seemed to subside and settle down as if the object of its being was accomplished.”

So Andrew Jackson went away to accept America’s highest honor. But no President-elect ever approached his inauguration with less enthusiasm or with a heavier heart. Without his darling Rachel by his side, it was an empty honor. Writing to John Coffee a few weeks later he said: “My days have been days of labor and my nights have been nights of sorrow; but I look forward with hope once more to return to the Hermitage and spend some days near the tomb of my dear departed wife.” And throughout the eight years he spent in the White House, eight stormy years, his memory kept stealing back to that spot in the Hermitage garden where his heart lay buried by her side.

Thus closed one distinct era in the history of the Hermitage. Without Rachel’s presence the old house was never quite the same again. When Jackson came back there to live in 1837 it was to a new Hermitage, erected on the ruins of the one he had built for Rachel in 1819; and although it was a larger and a finer house, although he still entertained lavishly and took delight in the presence in the house of his little grandchildren, he was merely paying out the numbered days of his life, waiting to be laid at rest beside that lonesome grave in the corner of the garden.

VII: GUESTS AT THE HERMITAGE

Almost from the time it was built, the Hermitage held an attraction for visitors from all over the country; and since the death of General Jackson it has been a veritable Mecca. To enumerate all of its distinguished visitors would be to build up a bulky roster of the noted men of the past century; but mention may be made in passing of some of the more prominent people who have crossed the threshold of the Hermitage, either to be greeted by its famous master during his lifetime or to honor his memory since his old home has been established as a national shrine.

Despite its relatively isolated location and its inaccessibility during the early days, no less than eight Presidents of the United States have been formally entertained there, not to mention those who have visited it as an incident of a trip to Nashville. The first Presidential guest was James Monroe, who visited Nashville in June, 1819. This was before the present brick Hermitage was built—probably just about the time it was started—and President Monroe was perhaps the last famous guest to be entertained at the old log Hermitage. Mr. Monroe’s visit marked the first time that a President of the United States had ever been entertained in Nashville, and the proceedings were correspondingly elaborate. The President had proceeded from Washington to Charleston, South Carolina, and thence to Augusta, Georgia, and it was to the latter city that General Jackson went to meet him and escort him to the Hermitage. After spending two days there the party went on to Nashville. A few miles out from the city they were met by a committee of prominent citizens, with a company of soldiers, by whom they were accompanied into town with no little flourish and fanfare of trumpets. Upon arrival in Nashville a further formal welcome was officially extended; there was a big dinner at the old Nashville Inn, with a long list of patriotic toasts to be drunk by the diners, and the next evening there was a great ball in honor of the distinguished guest.

Other Presidents who have come to visit at the Jackson shrine have been Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes, William H. Taft, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The visit of the earlier Roosevelt is particularly notable in the annals of the Hermitage, because it was he who obtained from Congress an appropriation of $5,000 to be devoted to the repair of the old house.

When Mr. Hayes visited the old home of his distinguished forerunner in the President’s chair the ladies who accompanied him were particularly careful to introduce him to old Uncle Alfred. After the introduction was over, and Alfred had shaken hands with Mr. Hayes, the ladies explained to the old servitor that the white gentleman had held the same high office as General Jackson. “Well, if you’d a been as great a man as he was,” said the candid old negro, “I’d a shuck your hand pretty near off!” President Taft on his subsequent visit to the Hermitage was told this anecdote, and the old halls reëchoed with his characteristic booming laughter.

Another man who bore the title of President and who was a close friend of Jackson and a constant visitor at his home was not, indeed, a President of the United States but the President of the Republic of Texas—Sam Houston, the distinguished and eccentric Tennesseean who mysteriously and suddenly resigned the governorship and went to live with the Indians and then ended his self-imposed exile and went to Texas to become that state’s most famous citizen.

Jackson was intensely interested in the annexation of Texas, and when that was finally accomplished and Houston was elected as the new state’s first Senator, Old Hickory looked forward with the keenest delight to the visit which Houston was planning to pay him on his way from Texas to Washington. But when the Texas hero reached Nashville he learned to his dismay that the old statesman, long in precarious health, was that day literally on his death bed; and although he hastened to the Hermitage with all speed, he was just a few minutes too late to give a farewell clasp of the hand to his old friend. Just before reaching the house he met the carriage of Doctor Esselman on his way back to Nashville, and the doctor conveyed to him the sad intelligence of the General’s death; so Houston, instead of going on to the Hermitage, stopped by at Tulip Grove, but after the funeral he stayed over at the Hermitage for a brief visit with the family. In her reminiscences Mrs. Rachel Jackson Lawrence recalls this visit and how to her childish mind the sober black clothing he then wore contrasted so strongly with the brilliant military uniform in which he was arrayed when he had visited the Hermitage a few years before, soon after his history making victory over Santa Anna at San Jacinto. Mrs. Lawrence also told of a visit Houston paid to the Hermitage in 1836, when the work of rebuilding the house had not quite been completed. At that time the flagstones of the front portico had not yet been laid, and General Houston to the great amusement of the children got down in the sand and loose dirt and played “Doodle bug, doodle bug, come out of your hole.” There was no pose of false dignity about Sam Houston—maybe that was why so many people loved him.

The earliest distinguished visitor to the Hermitage—and the one whose visit had the most far-reaching implications—was Aaron Burr, the spectacular figure of the early nineteenth century whose strange adventures almost embroiled General Jackson in serious trouble.

Burr’s first visit to the Nashville settlements, and to the Hermitage, was in May, 1805. He had just stepped down from the vice-presidency and his farewell speech to the Senate had been greatly admired. His fatal duel with Alexander Hamilton, which had stigmatized him in the East, did not detract any from his popularity on the Tennessee frontier where killing a man in a duel was not regarded as a matter involving any serious moral turpitude. Upon his arrival in Nashville he was given a reception that amounted to an ovation, culminating in a sumptuous dinner with the usual round of toasts and speeches. Jackson rode in from the Hermitage to take part in the festivities, attended by a servant leading a milk-white horse; and when the dinner was over Colonel Burr went back with him to the Hermitage as his guest. “I have been received with much hospitality and kindness, and could stay a month with pleasure,” Burr wrote his daughter, Theodosia. From Nashville Colonel Burr went to New Orleans; but on his return trip in August stopped at the Hermitage again for a visit of eight days. To Theodosia he wrote: “For a week I have been lounging at the house of General Jackson—once a lawyer, after a judge, now a planter; a man of intelligence, and one of those prompt, frank, ardent souls whom I love to meet.”

In September, 1806, Burr was back at the Hermitage, this time with his mind apparently fully made up as to his contemplated expedition to the Southwest. Theodosia he had brought along with him as far as Blennerhassett Island on the Ohio where he had left her; and in his frequent talks with the prominent citizens of Nashville during his stay there he discussed freely his plans to establish colonies “on the western waters.” There were not lacking even then suspicious persons who wanted to know more about the exact nature of the mysterious Colonel’s mysterious plans; but Jackson, at first at least, seemed to give full credence to Burr’s declarations of pacific intentions, and at the fete given in the visitor’s honor in Nashville he entered the ballroom accompanied by Jackson attired in his full uniform as a major general.

This third visit lasted only a few days, Colonel Burr hastening back to Kentucky; but in November Jackson, the merchant and boat-builder, received from him an order for the building of five large flatboats at his Clover Bottom boatyard and an accompanying order for enough provisions from his Clover Bottom store to stock them for their trip down the Mississippi. In the light of subsequent events it might have seemed significant that such a handsome piece of business was thrown in the lap of the frontier celebrity who happened to be major-general of the militia as well as a boat-builder and merchant, but if Burr counted on influencing Jackson’s judgment he reckoned without his man. Jackson, at the time he accepted the order, must have been convinced of the law-abiding nature of Burr’s intentions. There was no secrecy about their negotiations. But friends, not of so trusting a nature, were insistent in urging him to watch his step; and so he wrote a candid letter to Burr, telling him of the stories being circulated about his alleged nefarious schemes, and asking him for the truth. He also wrote to Governor Claiborne of the Orleans Territory, telling him of the rumors, and to President Jefferson offering the services of himself and his militia in the event of any trouble. Meanwhile the work on the boats went right along. Burr had paid for them in advance, and Jackson felt honor-bound to complete them despite his growing suspicions; but he gave his partner, John Coffee, strict instructions to accept no more business from Burr.

In December Burr came back to Nashville from Kentucky. There the suspicions against his expedition had crystallized into charges that led to his arrest; but Henry Clay defended him and he was acquitted in triumph.

When Burr arrived at the Hermitage, for the fourth time, the customary warm welcome was conspicuously lacking. Jackson himself was not at home and Mrs. Jackson, so it is recorded, was “cool and constrained.” Burr took lodgings at the tavern at Clover Bottom; and when Jackson got home he immediately called on the Colonel there, in company with General Overton, and frankly told him of the rising tide of suspicion and distrust. Burr glibly protested the innocence of his intentions; but it is significant that he continued to lodge at the tavern and was not invited to stay at the Hermitage. When General Jackson permitted a friend to stay at a public house instead of insisting that he go home with him, it is a strong indication that the General was beginning to smell a mouse.

On December 22, 1806, Colonel Burr and a handful of adventurous young men recruited in the neighborhood embarked in the boats and pushed off from Clover Bottom. The denouement came swiftly. Burr had hardly left Nashville before President Jefferson’s proclamation denouncing him and his expedition reached town; and the populace which a few weeks before had been entertaining him with balls and banquets now burnt him in effigy. Jackson, as commander of the troops in this section, was commanded by the Secretary of War to hold his forces in readiness to march; and he entered fully into the spirit of his instructions with a prompt display of energy and zeal. The militia was assembled, warnings were sent down the river against “all men engaged in any enterprise contrary to the laws or orders of our government;” but, upon receipt of news from the government forts down the river that the Burr flotilla had no warlike appearance, the near-panic subsided.

Despite his alacrity in carrying out the orders of the President and the Secretary of War, General Jackson clearly gave evidence that he did not understand clearly what was going on. He was obviously reluctant to suspect Burr of ulterior designs, and he felt strongly that there was something sinister behind all the furor. In the end, he himself was brought under suspicion and was summoned as a witness in the trial in Richmond when Burr was at length arrested and arraigned. Jackson never was put on the witness stand; but he did take occasion, while he was waiting in Richmond, to mount the courthouse steps and make a stump speech in favor of Burr who, he had finally come to believe, was being persecuted by Jefferson.

When he sat down and thought the matter over, Jackson doubtless regretted deeply the day that the hospitality of the Hermitage had been extended to the fascinating Burr.

A guest at the Hermitage whose visit demonstrated not only Jackson’s open-armed hospitality but also his winning way with children was a young boy whose name later filled a large place in history—Jefferson Davis.

In 1815 young Davis, then only seven years old, was sent from his home in southwestern Mississippi to the St. Thomas School in Washington County, Kentucky. This was at that time necessarily an overland trip, there being no steamboats, and the way lay through that part of Mississippi known as “The wilderness” before the civilized part of Tennessee was reached. Travelers through this Choctaw and Chickasaw country followed the Natchez Trace and generally went in parties for safety and companionship. Young Jefferson Davis accompanied a party headed by his father’s friend, Major Hinds who had participated in the Battle of New Orleans, and Major Hinds’s son, Howell, was also a member of the party. The two boys were about the same age and, mounted on their ponies, greatly enjoyed the long overland trip up the romantic and dangerous Natchez Trace.

When the little cavalcade reached Nashville, the first thought of Major Hinds was to visit his old commander, General Jackson, under whom he had seen such stirring service just a few months before. Accordingly, the whole party went trooping out to the Hermitage, and there they were so cordially received that instead of staying for a few days they remained several weeks.

“General Jackson’s house at that time,” wrote Mr. Davis in later years, “was a roomy log house. In front of it was a grove of fine forest trees, and behind it were his cotton and grain fields. I have never forgotten the unaffected and well-bred courtesy which caused him to be remarked by court-trained diplomats when President of the United States, by reason of his very impressive bearing and manner.

“Notwithstanding the many reports that have been made of his profanity, I remember that he always said grace at his table, and I never heard him utter an oath. In this connection although he encouraged his adopted son, Howell Hinds and myself in all contests of activity, pony-riding included, he would not allow us to wrestle; for, he said, to allow hands to be put on one another might lead to a fight. He was always very gentle and considerate.

“Mrs. Jackson’s education, like that of many excellent women of her day, was deficient; but in all the hospitable and womanly functions of wife and hostess she certainly was excelled by none. A child is a keen observer of the characteristics of those under whom he is placed, and I found Mrs. Jackson amiable, unselfish and affectionate to her family and guests and just and mild toward her servants.

“Our stay with General Jackson was enlivened by the visits of his neighbors, and we left the Hermitage with great regret and pursued our journey. In me he inspired reverence and affection that has remained with me through my whole life.”

This account of his memorable visit to the Hermitage was dictated by Mr. Davis 75 years later, during the last year of his life; and the fact that his visit as a child left on his mind such a vivid impression is an eloquent tribute to the glowing personality of Jackson and the kindly manner of his wife.

It was at the old log Hermitage that Jackson received the first visit of Thomas H. Benton, the man who later became his close friend and then his enemy and then his friend again. Young Benton had been admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1804 and was practicing in Franklin, a few miles from Nashville. In 1805 he had a land title case in which were involved some legal points upon which Andrew Jackson had ruled while he was sitting on the Superior Court. These rulings had not been published, however, and so Benton saddled his horse and rode to the Hermitage to ask the ex-justice for an official report of the cases. Upon learning his errand, Jackson courteously offered to write out the opinions for him; so, with Jackson dictating and Benton transcribing, the opinion of the Superior Court was thus tardily reduced to written form. It was typical of the hospitality of the Hermitage that Benton, who had made an instantaneously good impression on Jackson, was prevailed upon to prolong his formal call to a two-days’ visit; and there was the beginning of a friendship which had a lasting and far-reaching effect upon the careers of both of them. For many years Benton was a frequenter of the Hermitage to such an extent as almost to be regarded as a member of the family; and, despite an intervening period of enmity growing out of a bloody, knock-down-and-drag-out fight, Benton’s eulogy of Jackson when he died showed the depth of his affection for the older man.

A visitor of world-wide distinction who was a guest at the Hermitage was the celebrated Marquis de Lafayette. General Jackson had long been an admirer of the patriotic Marquis. Mrs. Jackson herself is authority for the statement that Jackson first saw him at Charleston “on the battlefield” when he was a boy of twelve and the Marquis was at the zenith of his great Revolutionary popularity. When Jackson was in Washington in the latter part of 1824 as a Senator he met Lafayette, in fact lived at the same tavern with him while he was there, and it was probably at that time that the Marquis was invited to visit Nashville and the Hermitage. He had previously written Jackson, soon after his arrival in this country, saying “I will not leave the United States before I have seeked and found the opportunity to express in person my high regard and sincere friendship.”

The Marquis and his party steamed up to the wharf in Nashville on May 4, 1825, and were there greeted tumultuously by the Nashville populace, General Jackson foremost among them. The enthusiastic Nashvillians had prepared a rather elaborate entertainment for the celebrated French nobleman, including a big parade and a formal call on Governor Carroll. The next morning the Marquis reviewed the Tennessee militia (which had been encamped at Nashville a week patiently awaiting his belated arrival) and after the review the party boarded the steamboat again and proceeded up the river to the Hermitage to have dinner with General Jackson. Dinner in those days was a big meal served at about three o’clock in the afternoon.

Fortunately, a record of this visit is preserved in a book written by M. LeVasseur, Lafayette’s secretary, who, after telling of the entertainment in Nashville, says: “At one o’clock we embarked, with a numerous company, to proceed to dine with General Jackson, whose residence is a few miles up the river. We there found numbers of ladies and farmers from the neighborhood whom Mrs. Jackson had invited to partake of the entertainment she had prepared for General Lafayette. The first thing that struck me on arriving at the General’s was the extreme simplicity of his house. Still somewhat influenced by my European habits, I asked myself if this could really be the dwelling of the most popular man in the United States, of him whom the country proclaimed one of her most illustrious defenders; of him, finally, who by the will of the people was on the point of becoming her Chief Magistrate. One of our fellow-passengers, a citizen of Nashville, witnessing my astonishment, asked me whether in France our public men, that is to say the servants of the people, lived very differently from other citizens. ‘Certainly,’ said I, ‘thus, for example, the majority of our generals, all our ministers, and even the greater part of our subaltern administrators, would think themselves dishonored and would not dare to receive anyone at their houses if they possessed such a residence as this of Jackson’s; and the modest dwellings of your illustrious chiefs of the Revolution—Washington, John Adams, Jefferson—would only inspire them with contempt and disgust.’”

Having thus tactfully ingratiated himself with the party, M. LeVasseur accompanied the other guests on a visit of inspection to the farm and garden, and then:

“On returning to the house, some friends of General Jackson who probably had not seen him for some time, begged him to show them the arms presented to him in honor of his achievements during the last war; he acceded to their request with great politeness and placed on a table a sword, a saber and a pair of pistols. The sword was presented to him by Congress; the saber, I believe, by the army which fought under his command at New Orleans. These two weapons, of American manufacture, were remarkable for their finish and still more so for the honorable inscriptions with which they were covered. But it was to the pistols that General Jackson wished more particularly to call our attention. He handed them to General Lafayette and asked him if he recognized them. The latter, after examining them attentively for a few minutes, replied that he fully recollected them to be a pair he had presented in 1778 to his paternal friend, Washington, and that he experienced a real satisfaction in finding them in the hands of one so worthy of possessing them. At these words the face of ‘Old Hickory’ was covered with a modest blush, and his eye sparkled as in a day of victory. ‘Yes, I believe myself worthy of them,’ exclaimed he, in pressing the pistols on Lafayette’s hands to his breast, ‘if not from what I have done, at least for what I wished to do for my country.’ All of the bystanders applauded this noble confidence of the patriot hero, and were convinced that the weapons of Washington could not be in better hands than those of Jackson.” (These pistols, it should be here interpolated, were presented to General Jackson by General George Washington’s nephew, Bushrod Washington; and were a part of the valued collection of trophies in the Hermitage until they were lost in the fire in 1834.)

Lafayette’s stay at the Hermitage was short. In the late afternoon his steamboat returned to Nashville where a grand banquet was given in his honor that evening, with General Jackson presiding. The Marquis left the next morning by steamboat for Louisville, and had a narrow escape from death when the boat struck a snag in the Ohio and sank within a few minutes. Fortunately, however, he escaped without injury.

Another distinguished visitor from France in the early days was the elder Michaux, the great naturalist, who tells in his journal how he “spent the night twelve miles from Nashville at the home of a Mr. Jackson.” Michaux, however, with his naturalist’s heart, was much less impressed by the reputation, then hardly more than local, of General Jackson than he was by the beauty of the yellow-wood trees he found “on land belonging to a Mr. Overton south of Nashville” in greater abundance than he had ever noticed the trees elsewhere. He sent home some seeds from these trees found on Judge Overton’s hills, and in two of the parks of Paris today may be seen specimens of this rather rare tree grown from the seeds sent from Nashville by this early visitor.

Still another celebrated Frenchman visited the Hermitage in 1843 and paid his respects to the old hero—Marshall Bertrand, one of Napoleon’s famous marshals, who came to Nashville in the course of his travels in America and, as a matter of course, was entertained at dinner by Jackson, despite his debilitated health.

Perhaps the greatest strain ever placed upon the hospitality of the old house was when it was visited in August, 1830, by Major John H. Eaton and his bride, the erstwhile Peggy O’Neal, the storm center of the early days of the Jackson administration. This was a visit that required no little stage managing and window dressing; for the vivid Mrs. Eaton had not only disrupted the President’s Cabinet, she had brought discord into his own family; and it was in the midst of the strained relations existing between Jackson and the Donelsons that the Eatons made their visit to Tennessee.

Jackson was spending the summer of 1830 at home, and he was determined that the Eatons should be formally entertained at the Hermitage and that his connections, as he called Major Donelson and his wife, should assist in the reception. Here was a situation that called for all the keenest diplomacy of the most astute members of the Kitchen Cabinet; but the old reliable John Coffee, himself one of the “connections,” exercised his powers of persuasion on the Donelsons and at length it was arranged that they would help Old Hickory entertain his celebrated but slightly tarnished guests. Gleefully Jackson wrote to Eaton in August when Coffee had finished with his wire-pulling:

Private and for your own eye.

My dear Major: I send my son to meet you at Judge Overton’s and to conduct you and your lady with our other friends to the Hermitage, where you will receive that heartfelt welcome that you were ever wont to receive when my dear departed wife was living. Her absence makes everything here wear to me a gloomy and melancholy aspect, but the presence of her old and sincere friend will cheer me amidst the melancholy gloom with which I am surrounded.

My neighbors and connections will receive you and your lady with that good feeling that is due to you, and I request you and your lady will meet them with your usual courtesy, which is so well calculated to gain universal applause even from enemies and the united approbation of all friends. Our enemies calculate much upon injuring me by raising the cry that I forced Mr. A. J. Donelson from me and compelled him to retire because he would not yield to my views, which they call improper. I mean to be able to shew that I only claimed to rule my household, that it should extend justice and common politeness to all and no more, and thus put my enemies in the wrong; and if any friends desert me, then it is theirs not my fault.

General Coffee has, since here, produced a visible and sensible change in my connections and they will all be here to receive you and your lady who I trust will receive them with her usual courtesy and if a perfect reconciliation can not take place that harmony may prevail and a link broken in the Nashville conspiracy. I trust you are aware that I will never abandon you or separate from you so long as you continue to practice those virtues that have always accompanied you, nor would I ask you or your friend to pursue a course to compromise or be degrading to themselves or feelings; but I am anxious that we pursue such a course as will break down the Nashville combination, which I view as the sprouts of the Washington conspiracy.

Under these more or less auspicious circumstances the Eatons came to the Hermitage, where nothing was left undone to make them feel that they were just as welcome as any other guest that ever crossed the threshold of the old house. The Donelsons were there, taking part in the reception of the guests, Mrs. Donelson the very essence of punctilious and cordial hospitality—although she probably had her enthusiasm well under control. Pretty Peggy Eaton was no fool; she must have known of the cajoling it had required to prepare the way for her reception at the Hermitage; and, although she was spiteful enough to relish the concealed discomfiture of the Donelsons, it was probably a relief to her and to everybody else (except perhaps Old Hickory himself) when the party was over and the Eatons had to go.

Mrs. Eaton in her old age sat down and wrote a rambling sort of autobiography, in the course of which she told of this visit to the Hermitage—although nowhere in her reminiscences does she mention the Donelsons, whom she so cordially hated. The dinner at the Hermitage in her honor, she relates, was a splendid occasion, with the General doing the honors with great gusto and making jokes with the guests over the carving of a barbecued pig which was one of the features of the dinner. The General also distinguished himself as a host by passing the bread himself, which was his way of making everybody feel at home. After dinner, however, the master of the Hermitage disappeared; and then it was that Mrs. Eaton, sent by her husband to look for him, found him kneeling by Rachel’s grave in the garden with the tears streaming down his face. Recalling to him his duties as a host she persuaded him to return to the house, where he again donned his mask of gaiety and entered into the hilarity of the guests assembled there.

Writing of the Presidential campaign of 1824, Parton says: “The Hermitage was more like a hotel than a home during the summer, so numerous were the guests whom curiosity, friendship or political business brought to it.” And an old lady in Nashville told Parton that she had often been at the Hermitage in those simple old times when there was in each of the four available rooms not merely a guest but a family, while the young men and solitary travelers who chanced to drop in disposed of themselves on the piazza or any other half-shelter about the house.

“Never was the Hermitage without a guest,” says Buell in his Jackson biography, “and most of the time it was crowded. Jackson and his wife carried the old-fashioned Southern hospitality to an extreme. They did not wish their guests to be simply visitors, but made them temporary members of the family.”

It seems to be the unanimous and unchallenged opinion that a visitor at the Hermitage was always made to feel at home and led to believe that his visit conferred an especial pleasure on his hosts. All comers were welcome.

But Andrew Jackson did not wait for guests to come to the Hermitage. Nor were its broad doors open only to the distinguished and prosperous. A characteristic incident is told by one of his early acquaintances relative to the son of the famous Daniel Boone: “The young man had come to Nashville on his father’s business, to be detained some weeks, and had his lodgings at a small tavern towards the lower part of town. General Jackson heard of it; sought him out; found him; took him home to remain as long as his business detained him in the country, saying: ‘Your father’s dog should not stay in a tavern while I have a house.’”

The hospitality of the Hermitage not only knew no limitation on the grounds of a visitor’s prosperity or prominence, it was extended alike to friend and foe.

A son of the notorious William G. (Parson) Brownlow, a rabid Whig and bitter anti-Jackson man, relates that on one occasion in 1845 a party of East Tennessee Whigs who had been attending a convention in Nashville and were on their way home decided to stop at the Hermitage and pay their respects to the ex-President. Parson Brownlow was one of the party, and when they reached the gate he expressed some doubt as to the propriety of his entering the home of the man whom he had so vigorously and consistently denounced, but he was prevailed upon to go along with his friends. He insisted, however, that when they got inside the house he would remain in the background so as to avoid the necessity of having his name called in the general introductions. But Jackson always knew what was going on about him, and he immediately noticed that there was one of the party who had not been introduced, whereupon Brownlow was presented. “I have heard of you before,” the old General said with dry wit; but he shook his hand cordially and treated him with particular courtesy during the remainder of the call, never giving any sign that one of his guests was a man who had waged bitter warfare on him during his days of political activity.

Another similar example was afforded by the visit of Mr. Leslie Combs, a former member of Congress from Kentucky, who came to the Hermitage as a messenger from one of the sons of General Isaac Shelby, bearing a letter relating to a controversy that had sprung up between the Shelbys and Jackson. Mr. Combs arrived at the Hermitage just before dinner time, was received with the greatest courtesy, invited into the dining room to join the family at dinner, and urged to stay at the house as a guest. When he left Old Hickory himself put some apples in his saddle-bags—but, at the same time, he made an appointment with him to meet him at a certain hotel in Nashville, the next day, and when the appointment was kept General Jackson proceeded to denounce Mr. Combs for acting as his enemies’ messenger, and wound up by indulging himself in his favorite pastime of denouncing Henry Clay. As long as Mr. Combs was a guest at the Hermitage, Old Hickory’s code demanded that he be treated with punctilious politeness; but, on neutral ground, he wanted Mr. Combs to know exactly how he felt.

Stephen A. Douglas is now remembered in history principally on account of the series of political debates preceding his victorious contest with Abraham Lincoln for a seat in the United States Senate; but he also is recalled by Jacksonian students as the man who delivered the leading speech in the House of Representatives in 1834 on the resolution to refund the fine paid by General Jackson under the order of Judge Hall in New Orleans following his declaration of martial law there after his victory over Pakenham. Some time after the passage of this resolution there was a political convention in Nashville and the delegates visited the Hermitage to pay their respects to the venerable ex-President. When Judge Douglas was presented to Jackson, according to an account of the episode in Harper’s Weekly in 1857, the old General exclaimed:

“Are you the Mr. Douglas who delivered a speech in Congress showing that I did not violate the Constitution at New Orleans?”

“I did deliver a speech on that subject,” modestly replied Mr. Douglas.

“Then sit down here beside me,” said General Jackson with enthusiasm, “I desire to return you my thanks for that speech. You are the first man I know who has done me justice. You have relieved my mind from a weight that has lain upon it for thirty years. Let me thank you, sir.”

The account concludes: “Senator Douglas’s heart was too full to speak. He pressed the veteran’s hand, and withdrew from the room to conceal his emotions.”