EULOGY

DELIVERED AT NEW YORK CITY, JUNE 24, 1845,

BY

B. F. BUTLER,

LATE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES.

MOURNFUL but pleasant, friends and fellow-citizens, is the service in which we are engaged. Andrew Jackson, upon whose bed of sickness and suffering have been so intently fixed the filial and solicitous regards of the millions of America, is no more.

His great soul has ascended to its Author; his venerable form has sunk into the grave. To that grave, with swelling hearts and tearful eyes, and sad funeral rites, a nation is repairing. We have come to it to-day. While we linger within its sacred precincts, the praises of the hero we reverence, the magistrate we honoured, and the man we loved, rise instinctively to our lips. To their free utterance, affection prompts, duty enjoins, nature compels us. It is fitting, it is right, that such tributes should be paid to those who, in council or in camp, have advanced the glory of their country and the welfare of their kind. The homage thus bestowed is at least disinterested. For the dead who are its objects, insensible alike to praise and to blame, can make no return to the living who proffer it. It exerts a humanizing influence on the universal heart; it promotes the formation of a true national character; it softens the asperities of party; it incites to a virtuous emulation. Next, in purity and meetness, to the thanksgiving which we owe the God who gave, and guided, and sustained them, is the feeling of grateful reverence we should ever cherish towards those who are the instruments of His goodness. To the claims of our great men, of every age and time, of every sect and party, let us, then, be faithful. Let history transmit to other generations the story of their lives; let the canvass and the marble perpetuate the image of their forms ; let poetry and music breathe forth their names in hymns and harmonies ; let the united voice of their countrymen echo their praises to the remotest shores so that, wherever an American footstep shall tread, or the lover of American liberty be found, there, too, the memory of their greatness shall abide—a beauty and an excel. lence—the joy of all the earth! The facts and incidents which belong to the romantic and eventful life of Andrew Jackson, are too numerous to allow me, on the present occasion, to attempt any extended biographical sketch. After a brief notice of his early life, I shall, therefore, confine myself to a general view of such portions of his more active career as seem to me best calculated to illustrate the prominent features of his character, and his more important services to his country. He was the son of respectable parents, belonging to the most hardy, virtuous, and useful of all orders of society—the great middle class. His parents, as is well known, were natives of Ireland, though some of their ancestors were originally from Scotland. They emigrated to South Carolina in 1765. He was born at the Waxhaw settlement, in that state, on the 15th of March, 1767. He died on Sunday, the 8th day of the present month, having been spared to the good old age of more than seventy-eight years; retaining to the last, in a remarkable degree, his extraordinary intellectual powers, his ardent affections, and his deep interest in the happiness of his friends and the welfare of his country. The peculiarities of his character are in harmony with his extraction. The martyr blood of Scotland blended with that of the Emerald Isle, and modified by the residence of his ancestors in her genial clime, coursed in his veins; and no man, prohably, ever lived, who united, in a higher degree, the firmness and perseverance of the one race with the quick and ardent temperament of the other. Deprived, soon after his birth, of his father, his eldest brother slain during the war of the Revolution, by British troops, himself compelled, by the approach of the enemy, to abandon, at the age of fourteen, the academy at which he had been placed; freely offering himself

, with his sole surviving brother, to the military service of his country; both soon after captured by the enemy; both assaulted and wounded, because scorning to submit to personal indignity; the other of the two brothers dying of the wound thus received; his mother soon after pressed by fatigue and grief into an untimely grave; was ever an ardent and susceptible youth placed in circumstances more likely to make a deep and lasting impression on his character ? “ The child,” to use the words of a great poet of our own times, “ the child is father of the

And when we consider the baptism of blood by which Andrew Jackson, in the spring-time of his youth, was dedicated to the service of his country, can we wonder at the undying faithfulness, or the burning zeal, with which, from youth to age, he presented himself a living sacrifice at her altar? Passing over the intermediate space, we find him, at the age

gion of restless activity, of stirring interest, of wild adventure. The scanty population, thinly scattered over an extensive territory, was constantly exposed to the inroads of powerful tribes of Indians, still the occupants of its primeval forests. They had been subjugated, during the war of the Revolution, by the American arms, but were ever ready, when occasion tempted, to surprise the incautious traveller, and to cut off the unprotected family. In the border conflicts which grew out of this condition of the territory, Jackson renewed the instructions in the drill and muster which he received in boyhood, and added to them lessons in the warfare of the Indians, both destined to be afterwards employed on a wider theatre and for infinitely greater ends. Intestine feuds also distracted the inhabitants; many of their number were rude in manners, and some of them reckless in character; the collection of debts, by force of law, was a task of difficulty and of danger, and the lawyer who undertook it needed activity of body as well as of intellect, firmness of nerve as well as of purpose, vigour of arm as well as of understanding

Jackson, bringing with him an unsullied reputation, was immediately employed in cases of this sort; and he entered on the discharge of his professional duties with the same promptitude and energy, so often displayed by him in matters of higher and more extended interest. In these, and other professional efforts of the like nature, he is beset by opposition, and embroiled in collisions, which might have proved fatal to one less honest and courageous; but his manly bearing and his inflexible pursuit of justice, in despite of every impediment, establish his reputation; and professional success is the necessary consequence. Another result is, that he becomes universally known as one of the first citizens, in point of character and influence, of the young community, now rapidly increasing in numbers, and about to be organized, with the consent and by the cession of North Carolina, as a territory of the United States. This event takes place in 1790, and Andrew Jackson receives from George Washington, then president of the United States, his first appointment to office—that of attorney of the United States for the new territory. In the short space of six

the territorial government is superseded by the admission into the Union of the state of Tennessee. Jackson is a member of the convention which forms the constitution, and he takes an active part in the preparation of that instrument. It contains some peculiar provisions which deserve a moment's notice. The members of the legislature are chosen for two years, and meet only biennially, except when called together on extraordinary occasions. This arrangement is founded on the idea, that while annual meetings of the legislative body are indispensable in countries having a hereditary executive, the like necessity does not exist where the executive is chosen by, and responsible to, the people ; and that the people themselves are the best conservators of their rights. The bill of rights in this constitution is one of the most liberal and comprehensive adopted by any of our states. It asserts, in the strongest terms, the inherent and uncontrollable sovereignty of the people, and their right to instruct, as well as to petition, their representatives; it denounces perpetuities and monopolies as contrary to the genius of a free state; and it forbids the grant of any hereditary emoluments, privileges, or honours. From the subsequent life of Jackson, it is easy to see that he must have assented, with a warm heart, to all these provisions.

Immediately on the admission of the new state into the Union, Jackson is chosen one of her delegates in the House of Representatives; and the next year he is appointed one of her senators in Congress. He serves in this distinguished body, over which Thomas Jefferson was then the presiding officer, until 1799, and thus enjoys opportunities of forming a personal friendship with a statesman and political philosopher, with whose sentiments his own entirely concur, and for whose genius he cherishes the highest admiration. In 1799, he retires by voluntary resignation from the honourable post Most unexpectedly to himself, he is immediately appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of his state, a station which he accepts with reluctance, and from which he withdraws at an early day. He does so with the design, which he then supposes he may be permitted to accomplish, of spending the residue of his days in the quiet retreat of a country life. Little does he dream of the brilliant destiny that awaits him. In the mean time, as another preparation for that destiny, the field officers of one of the divisions of the Tennessee militia, no strangers to his lofty patriotism, or his martial spirit, had chosen him without consultation with, or notice to him, their major-general. This commission he retained until 1814, when he received the like appointment in the army of the United States.

We are now to contemplate Andrew Jackson in the new and conspicuous theatre in which he attracted the regards not only of America, but of the world. Rallying to his standard at the first moment when the action of the government enabled him to do so, the gallant spirits of his division, he dedicates their persons and his own to the service of the nation. From November, 1812, to the cessation of hostilities, he is constantly employed in creating and leading the armies, fighting the battles, and vanquishing the enemies of his country. It is not my purpose to enter into the details of his military exploits. Of all and of each it may be said, that in each and in all he acquitted himself as no other man but Andrew Jackson could have done. With his first touch of the marshal's truncheon, the hand of one born to command

at will the energies of his troops, to infuse into them his own daring spirit, and successfully to cope in any and every field with the most skilful and courageous of his enemies, is evidently seen. Throughout his whole military career he exhibits in felicitous combination all the great qualities of a great commander-comprehensiveness and accuracy of view, genius to devise, skill and courage to execute, coolness and self-possession in every emergency, perfect command of his resources, sagacity to discover and ability to defeat the plans of his opponent. In his campaign against the Creeks, so formidable by their numbers, their obstinate bravery, and their proficiency in all the arts of savage warfare, he adds to the hardihood, the patience, and the self-denial of a Hannibal—the vigour, the celerity, the success of a Cæsar. When he plants, upon his own responsibility, the American eagle on the forts of Pensacola, state men see that the instincts of a heart and will devoted to the public weal, can anticipate the rules of public law; and the nation recognise and honour the clearness of his judgment not less than the promptitude and energy of his conduct.

In his command at New Orleans, from his arrival at the beleaguered city until his departure from it, we seem to follow some heaven-appointed and heaven-assisted warrior of the ancient dispensation, rather than a chieftain of modern times. Such superhuman activity-such assumption and exercise of power-such chivalrous daring and consummate address in striking the first blow in the unequal conflict-such cautious preparations for the final struggle—such perfect success in its triumphant issue—such frightful havoc in the troops of the enemy, and such almost miraculous preservation of his own—who, in these things, does not see the hand of God, the agency of an instrument ordained, prepared, and guided by Himself? I must content myself with the briefest possible reference to the war with the Seminoles, in 1817–18. If the exploits of Jackson in this campaign had constituted his whole title to military renown, they would have been amply sufficient to place him high on the roll of fame. How does it enhance the estimate of his former achievements, when it is considered that the Seminole war is scarcely thought of in the comparison ; and that Jackson is seldom named in connexion with it, except by those who refer to it for the purpose of denouncing him for the execution of Ambrister and Arbuthnot! Having named this incident, I feel it right to state my entire conviction, that in this, as in every other act of his public life, he proceeded under a deep sense of what he believed to be the injunction of duty; and duty was ever to him as the voice of heaven. “My God would not have smiled on me” i was his characteristic remark, when speaking of this affair to him who addresses you), “had I punished only the poor, ignorant savages, and spared the white men who set them on."