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The Hermitage, Nashville, Tennessee: Jackson

For fifteen years Mr. and Mrs. Jackson lived in a log cabin. But they maintained a large establishment. They had their slaves, and they drove in a carriage drawn by four horses. And they entertained royally.

Jackson's biographer, James Parton, tells of a Nashville lady who said that she had often been at the Hermitage "when there were in each of the four available rooms not a guest merely, but a family, while the young men and solitary travellers who chanced to drop in disposed themselves on the piazza, or any other shelter about the house."

The log house was still the plantation-house when General Jackson's neighbors gathered to welcome him home as the victor of New Orleans. In the response he gave to their greeting he made a prophecy: "Years will continue to develop our inherent qualities, until, from being the youngest and the weakest, we shall become the most powerful nation in the universe." General Jackson was popular with all in the neighborhood of the plantation. To his slaves he was a hero. To his wife he was devoted. Parton says that he always treated her as if she was his pride and glory. And words can faintly describe her devotion to him. She also was popular among the servants; her treatment of them was courteous in the extreme. A visitor to the Hermitage told of being present at the hour of evening devotions. Just before these began the wife of the overseer came into the room. Mrs. Jackson rose and made room for her on the sofa. One of the guests expressed her surprise to a lady sitting next her. "That is the way here," the lady whispered, " and if she had not done it, the General would."