A man’s character is formed at an early age. By the time Andrew Jackson was elected 7th President of the United States he was widely known as “The Hero” but the character and the deeds that entitled him to that label were obvious long before he became famous. His father died shortly before Andrew’s birth and the struggle to survive on the frontier took on new hardship for his mother and two brothers. The War for Independence brought even more difficulty and danger to the mountains of the Carolinas. The Jacksons were already independent in the extreme and English attempts to change that status introduced the redcoats to the Scotch-Irish ways of war.

Combat in the Carolinas in 1779 constantly engulfed the frontier families in armed confrontations with British war parties. At the battle of Stone Ferry, a patriot army drove the British back into Georgia; one of the Americans killed was Hugh Jackson, oldest of the three Jackson brothers. Whigs and Tories fought a fierce civil war, egged on by the British. A Whig army was surprised near Waxhaw and the American prisoners were massacred by the British and Tory troops. Within a short time the other two Jackson brothers, red-headed, freckle-faced Andrew, age 13 and Robert, 16, enlisted in Colonel Williams R. Davie’s Backwoods Cavalry, defending their homes and skirmishing with the British invasion forces till 1781.

In April of that year, the Jackson boys were captured by a band of British dragoons. The commander of the enemy force demanded that young Andy clean his boots, a task the young soldier refused to do, defying British authority. The arrogant officer drew his sabre and slashed down on Jackson, slicing his head and arm; Robert received similar treatment and was also badly wounded by the blow. The Tory troops plundered and burned the house then marched the prisoners to Camden, South Carolina where their wounds remained untreated and smallpox swept the camp.

Mrs. Jackson, in true Presbyterian, Scotch-Irish frontier woman style, rode into the camp and persuaded Lord Rawdon, the commandant, to release five of the Waxhaw boys. They walked and rode the thirty miles to their home, where Robert succumbed to disease. Andrew barely survived. The redcoats, however, had not seen the last of Andy Jackson.

Just as childhood experiences shape a man’s future thought and action, so too did Andrew Jackson’s experience remain in his consciousness throughout his life. The humiliation and pain of that sword blow never left Jackson’s memory. The thirteen year old boy would become an army general and the seventh President of the United States in 1828, and he would continue opposing and disposing of the British.

In 1812, the United States went to war with Great Britain again and the boy who was 13 in the previous war was now in his early 40s and a general in command of an American army in the Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi theatre. In 1814, General Andrew Jackson led his forces to New Orleans to thwart the British invasion of the Mississippi Valley. Once again, an arrogant enemy, scornful of Jackson and his forces attacked the Anglophobic Scotch-Irish frontiersman and were mowed down before the long rifles poised behind cotton bales. How could Jackson not remember the confrontation of his youth and exact a heavy price on his sworn enemies? The renown from this victory made Andrew Jackson a national hero.

In 1817, Jackson’s army invaded Spanish Florida chasing after a “motley crew of brigands” incited to war by British agents. In the bold sweep onto this foreign soil, Jackson netted several British subjects including a Scottish merchant and an army Lieutenant. He hanged them as inciters of revolution against the United States, creating an international incident which did nothing but make Jackson a greater hero and eventually brought Florida into the Union. Once more, the sword blow by a thoughtless dragoon, conjured up death-dealing blows to British honor and prestige.

In a few short years Andrew Jackson would become President of the United States with the reins of foreign policy firmly in his grip. Which European nation do you suppose was to be at the receiving end of the chief executive’s animus?

Would that our own young men would respond to an attack on their freedom and family by dropping their video-game controls long enough to take up real swords and pistols.

William Potter
Circa History Guild
Roswell, Georgia