full of encouragement to every true lover of liberty, or of wellearned praise.

His origin was bumble; and the poorest may learn from his career, that poverty is no insuperable bar to the soarings and triumphs of the free spirit. Nay! Let us rather say, as we remember how the soil of poverty has sent up its harvest of great men-our Franklin, our Adams, our Henry, and our Jackson ; let us rather say, that, as in the kingdom of geology the everlasting granite, the underlying basis of all other formations, is found in the deepest gulf, yet ever bursting upward from the abyss, towering aloit into highest hills, and crowning the very pinnacles of the world; so in the kingdom of man, the primitive rock, the granite formatiou, is poverty ; found deepest in the abyss, borne down, buried thousand-tathom deep, overlaid, crushed to the very centre, yet everywhere forcing its way upward, towering aloft and claiming kindred with the sky!

The parents of General Jackson were natives of Ireland, though of Scottish descent. Weary of that English misrule under which Ireland has so long groaned and bled, and which has driven so many, with hearts panting for freedom, to American shores, they emigrated to this country and settled in South Carolina in 1765, ten years before our new-born freedom was baptized in blood at Concord and Bunker Hill. Two sons came with them. Andrew was born in March, 1767, two years after their arrival. His father died about that time, and bequeathed his name to that youngest, sorrowborn child. His widowed mother pressed this nursling legacy to her breast with the same strange mixture of joy and sorrow that agitates our hearts to-night. On, could she have foreseen to what bright destiny this child of her mourning should attain, how would her saddened heart have leaped for joy! Let every mother throughout our land, from what quarter soever of the wide world of tyranny she may have fled to our shores, as she “ clips her baby to her bosom,” remember that it may be her happy fortune in him to furnish another patriot general, or president, to the country that she loves!

Andrew Jackson was nine years old when the continental Congress proclaimed to an admiring world that “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states !" At the age of but thirteen he set the seal of his own blood to his personal efforts in vindicating for his country the freedom thus manfully declared. His mother would have educated him for the special service of God as a preacher. But when the storm of war swept over Carolina, and reached their quiet village of Waxhaw, in 1779, young Jackson was driven from his Latin and Greek, to behold the horrors of warfare in the mangled bodies of his neighbours murdered in cold blood by Tarleton's ferocious dragoons, and collected as in a hospital, in that very village church from whose pulpit his mother had hoped to hear him proclaiming the gospel of peace. That memorable year beheld this same Irish widow, with American heart, surrendering, with cheerful spirit, her oldest son, to fight the battles of her adopted land! The son thus dedicated to his adopted country perished, that very year, on the field of battle. A few years later, and another of her boys was added to the number of those brave Irish hearts, whose blood has fertilized our soil, and whose dying breath has swelled the breeze of freedom.

From 1779 to the close of the Revolution, South Carolina endured all the horrors of both foreign and domestic war; the ordinary evils of invasion being unspeakably aggravated by those fierce party strifes which rent asunder the ties of friendship and family, converting love into hatred, and hardening into ferocity the tenderest affections of the heart. It was within this dreadful region of peril and treachery, of fire and sword, of fraud and force, of rapine and robbery, of midnight burnings and murders, that the Jackson family,—the widow and her boys,endeavoured to defend, as they might, the humble hearth which they called their home. In those days, and in that vicinity, childhood was deprived of its sweet immunities, and every boy who was large enough to lift a musket, like Robert and Andrew Jackson, was taught to ride and fire-was furnished with horse and gun, and took his part in the midnight watch and the midday fight.

Such was the active training to war of the future hero of New Orleans; and at this early age he displayed the same vehement energy, the same unyielding firmness, the same clearness of thought and prompt decision in action, that in after life marked him out as the great captain and commander.

The insolence of British officers, and the horrors of captivity, were alike unable to bend or to break his inflexible resolution. He was taken captive by a party of marauders, whose officer ordered him to perform some menial service. The indignant boy refused, and claimed to be treated as a prisoner of war. Enraged by his answer, the cowardly officer aimed a sabre-cut at his head—jackson received the blow upon his left arm, and the scar of it remained through life, to remind him of his obligations to England.

Ransomed from a horrible imprisonment by the efforts of his noble mother, he returned home, smitten with the small-pox, to witness the death of his only brother, and to hear that she who had rescued him from captivity, had died by the way-side, among strangers, in bearing her generous aid to others in confinement. The burial-place of the mother of Jackson is unknown; not a stone has ever marked the spot of her final repose. But her memory is green in every American heart,--her monument is the life of her heroic son.

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Young Jackson is now an orphan-alone in the world at the

age of fifteen-cast out upon the wilderness of life, with little besides his own free spirit and the good providence of God to sustain him. Who will dare prophesy that this solitary child shall one day become the foremost man in all the land?

What a school of trial and of suffering had he been through! Can we not discern, in this rough discipline, the creative cause of that hardy energy, that unfailing self-reliance, that passionate love of liberty, that undying hatred of English tyranny, which marked his after life? How ought we, then, to reverence that fruitful nursery of great and good men-of great discoverers, of great commanders, of heroic minds, of true heroism—the school of poverty, of trial, of suffering! The leaders of the world have graduated in that stern seminary, as the conquerors of imperial Rome were trained amidst the rigours of the frozen north!

In the history of young Jackson from 1782 to 1784, we find additional instruction. It was his period, and his only period, of levity, of idleness, of pleasure, and of dissipation. But it was exceedingly brief-he parted from it like Hercules from the distaff of Omphale. By his own voluntary act, impelled by his own unaided, masculine good sense, he casts off his idle habits, abandons his gay associates, removes to North Carolina, and with all the ardour of his character devotes himself to the study of the law. His zeal, his talent, his extraordinary qualities, attract attention, secure him numerous and influential friends, and force open the doors of reluctant fortune. After two years' study he is admitted to the bar, and at the age of twenty-one the governor of North Carolina appoints him solicitor of that portion of the state which included the territory of Tennessee.

We comfortable travellers upon the iron roads of the north can have very little notion of the experience of a prosecuting officer whose district spread from one settlement to another across a wilderness of more than two hundred miles—the mountain fastnesses of the Alleghanies-- where bloodthirsty savages, and white men almost as lawless, were still fighting for the mastery. Two-andtwenty times did Andrew Jackson, the young lawyer, cross this wild route, in western style, on horseback—a loaded rifle on his shoulder, a blanket for his bed, a bundle of law-papers in one pocket, his ammunition in the other-kindling his own fire from a tinder-box, roasting his bacon or his venison on a forked stick-a buffalo trace for his road, or a trackless forest crossed by torrents whose wild waters no bridge ever spanned—every thicket likely to harbour a scalp-hunting Creek or Chickasaw, every cabin likely to conceal some desperado to whom the officer of the law was an object more hateful than Indian warriors or wild beasts.

But these inevitable dangers and labours were not enough to fill

the measure of his enterprise. Not a party of emigrants can approach this western region, but young Jackson is the foremost volunteer to protect them and their families along their perilous track, and teach them to repeat his name with eternal gratitude. Not an Indian party is known to be abroad, but Andrew Jackson is upon their trail-fleet of foot, keen of scent and sight, crafty in counsel, sharp and terrible in action. The red man learns the terror of his wrath, and in the simple dialect of the tribe describes him as “the sharp knife,” and “the pointed arrow,” as his soldiers in later times, admiring his power of endurance, loved to call him “ Old Hickory.”

The professional activity and fidelity of Jackson create him enemies as well as friends. The Cumberland settlements are crowded with delinquent debtors. In all that region there is but a single lawyer, and he has been secured to their interest. There is no legal aid for anxious creditors until the arrival of Andrew Jackson. On his arrival the creditors swarm about him; on that day he issues seventy writs at Nashville. The debtors are alarmed and enraged; they resolve to frighten or destroy him. But he will not consent to be intimidated or assassinated." He laughs at their threats; he repels their violence with a courage that crushes alike their hopes and their endeavours. His spirit is aroused. He did not purpose to remain at Nashville, but now he will not go; henceforth he remains in their midst; Nashville shall be his home ; the laws shall be enforced! Thus does the fiery furnace reveal the genuine gold, and harden the genuine steel. Thus is Jackson established at Nashville; and the spot of his early trials and triumphs, consecrated by a long life of glory, and a happy death, has now become another Mount Vernon, towards which, in all after time, shall be turned the footsteps of the lovers of freedom.

Meantime, Jackson, in the niidst of his perils and his labours, his arguing and fighting, becomes a married man, under circumstances romantic to the highest degree, but honourable in every way to his purity of principle and tenderness of heart. Both he and his wife have been slandered by his political foes; but time and truth have refuted the calumny, and silenced the calumniators, and the name of Rachel Jackson, cherished through a long life in the inner sanctuary of her husband's noble heart, shall be remembered and loved by all his countrymen.

A married man, a successful lawyer, the owner of a valuable plantation, Andrew Jackson, in 1795, is elected by his townsfolk to represent them in the convention which has been summoned to create a constitution for Tennessee. In looking at that instrument, we cannot help fancying that certain of its provisions are the offspring of his mind, and contain the germs of his subsequent political creed and conduct.

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That constitution declares that “perpetuities and monopolies are contrary to the genius of a free government, and shall not be allowed.” Was not this his first declaration of war with that mammoth monopoly and would-be perpetuity, the “monster” Bank of the United States ?

Another article declares that “an equal participation of the free navigation of the Mississippi is one of the inherent rights of the citizens of this state; it cannot, therefore, be conceded to any prince, potentate, power, person or persons whatever.”

In this declaration, we behold the dawning of that grand idea which led to the purchase and occupation of Louisiana, and to the battle of New Orleans. How well it harmonizes with that spirited appeal which he made to the Tennessee volunteers in 1812! the people of the western country,” said he, “is peculiarly committed, by nature herself, the defence of the lower Mississippi and the city of New Orleans. At the approach of an enemy in that quarter, the whole western world should pour forth its sons to meet the invader and drive him back to the sea.” Two years after this prophetic appeal, how literally and how gloriously, under his direction, were the approaching enemy met by the living torrent of the West, and driven, with appalling carnage, into the waters of the gulf!

Tennessee has now a constitution. The act of Congress of June 1, 1796, admits her to the growing family of the Union. She is entitled to a single representative in Congress. Andrew Jackson is not a candidate ; but he is elected as by acclamation. The following year, at the earliest moment allowed by our organic law, at the age of thirty, he is elevated to the Senate of the United States.

Were but his widowed mother now alive! He remains in the Senate but a single session, and resigns. Political malice has asserted that his resignation was a confession of incompetency. The people of Tennessee do not so regard it. They hasten to offer him additional honours. Scarcely has he vacated his seat in the Senate, ere he is appointed one of the judges in law and equity, of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. In this eminent and trying position he remains for a period of about six years, often desirous of resigning, for his health is infirm, and his labours are exhausting, but always compelled to forego his wishes by the remonstrances of the best and ablest men in the state, who exhort him to remain upon the bench, “that our common country may derive additional benefits from those powers of thought, and independence of mind, which nature never designed should be lost in retirement.” He yields to their solicitations, and passes through a judicial career, the relation of which would cause to tingle the ears of our city-bred and delicately, nurtured judges.

At his first court, the supremacy of the law is made dependent

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