I will give a little history of the presidential election of 1828, when Andrew Jackson ran against John Quincy Adams. At that time I was about twelve years old, and very distinctly remember the election held in Lewistown, Illinois. It was probably the most exciting election, and probably more bitter feeling indulged in, than at any election that has ever taken place in this country. For several months before the election almost every occupation was dropped and the men occupied their time electioneering. Almost every day long lines of men could be seen marching after the fife and drum and led by some officer that had served in the war of 1812. The Jackson party would erect their hickory poles and the Adams party their tall maple poles, and the best speakers in the country would be brought out, and each party would have a barbecue of a roast ox or half-a-dozen sheep about every week. At that time a good many who belonged to their respective parties had been soldiers in the war of 1812, and on their march would wear their soldier’s uniform which they wore in the army. My father had served as major under Gen. Brown, of New York. I can remember very well how he looked, dressed in his military suit, with his sword bucked on and hanging by his side, wearing his soldier hat decorated with a large cockade on one side of his hat and with two feather plumes extending eight or ten inches
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above the crown of his hat, decked off with the red, white and blue—all showing the rank he held in the army. He rode a large white horse, with a pistol holster swung across the pommel of his saddle, in which were two large horse-pistols with their flint-locks. So in marching in parade after the fife and drum he made a pretty fair military appearance.
The election in Lewistown at that time was held at the log court house. They had no such thing in that part of the county at that time as saloons; but the candidates and their friends had a different method of treating their friends and voters if they wished to have something to drink. A platform was erected some thirty feet long in front of the court house, upon which was placed barrels, kegs, demijohns and jugs, and the names of the candidates written on their respective vessels. I remember that the first vessel that was placed upon the platform was a thirty-gallon barrel of whisky, with the name of "Andrew Jackson" written upon it; and in a short time another barrel of the same size was placed by its side, with the name of "John Quincy Adams" written upon it in large letters. The came the ten and five-gallon kegs; then the demijohns and jugs, with the names of the candidates who had bought the liquor, and everybody was welcome to all they wished to drink. At that time whisky was selling at thirty-five cents a gallon by the barrel, or fifty cents a gallon at retail; and it was a marvelous fact that after the election was over scarcely any person had been intoxicated during the day. At that time ballots were not used as at the present time, but each voter, after his name was registered, would call out the names of the candidates, one at a time that he wished to vote for. There were no national issues at that time to divide the two parties, but each man ran on his own personal popularity. The campaign was carried on with a great deal of severity and bitterness. Adams was accused of corruption and extravagance in his former administration, and of being proud and selfish, and of being no friend of the poor and of the laboring man. On the other side Jackson was accused of every crime and offense and impropriety that ever a man was known to be guilty of. The most was made of his many duels, and handbills were issued
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and sent broadcast over the country telling of his cruelty and bad character. An account was given of the six men he had ordered to be shot in the army for mutiny and desertion, and their coffins were pictured out on the handbills. But the most cruel and malicious stories that were told about him were that he and his wife had lived together in open adultery before they were married. This story aroused more anger and bitter feeling against the Adams party than any other thing that had been told, for it was a falsehood and his friends sternly resented that slander. Many a hard fist-fight took place between the friends of the two parties in consequence of that story.
I was told at the time when I traveled through Tennessee, in 1843, and by persons who had known Mrs. Rachel Jackson from the time that she was fifteen years old up to the time of her death, that there had never lived in the state of Tennessee a lady that stood higher or was more respected than Mrs. Jackson; that she was a pure and kind-hearted Christian lady. Those infamous falsehoods published about Gen. Jackson and his wife did more to arouse the indignation of the whole state of Tennessee against Adams and in support of Jackson than anything else. When the election came off there was less than 3,000 votes cast for Mr. Adams in that state. Some of the towns cast their entire vote for Jackson. I was told a story of how a stranger had come into one of the towns about election time and put up at the hotel and took a walk through the town. He found a great many women on the streets, but scarcely a man could be seen. He came back to the hotel and enquired of the landlord why it was that so many women were seen on the streets and no men; and the landlord told him that the men had gone out of town to hunt a couple of criminals, and when the stranger wanted to know what great crime these two men had committed that the whole town had gone in pursuit of them, the landlord told him they had voted for Mr. Adams! The people had been anxious to carry the place unanimously for Jackson, as many of the other towns had done, and the two rascals had spoiled the record, and they people were so indignant that they were hunting them so that they could tar and feather them, and the women were waiting on the streets
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anxious to see it done. But the men escaped to the woods and could not be found.
It was a fact that Mrs. Rachel Jackson was married three times—once to Lewis Roberts and twice to Gen. Jackson. The peculiar circumstances of her marriage to Gen. Jackson caused a good deal of gossip. But when the circumstances were understood there was nothing wrong about it, as I can show as I proceed with the narrative.
I can remember the men who took an active part in the politics of Fulton county in the election of 1828, and will give the names of a few of the leaders. On the side of Mr. Adams there were Stephen Phelps and his sons Alexis, Myron, Sumner and William; also Wm. Proctor, Joel Wright, Stephen Dewey, Peter Wood, Ossian M. Ross and his brothers, Joseph, Thomas and John; Hugh R. Coulter, John McNeil and David W. Barnes. On the Jackson side were William Walters (the hero of Rev. Wm. J. Rutledge’s letters) and his brothers Daniel, Thomas and John, and an uncle, Abner Walters; the Waughtels, John and William Totten, and John Barker. The Adams men were generally from the East and the Jackson men from the Southern states. There are only four of the men and boys I knew at that time who are now living, viz: Mason Eveland and Henry Warren, of Iowa, Henry Andrews, of Canton, and my brother, Leonard F. Ross, of Lewistown.
In continuing my narrative of the trip I took through Tennessee at the time I visited Gen. Jackson I may allude to incidents that will not greatly interest the general reader. But it will be remembered that I am writing these sketches chiefly for the benefit of my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, so the reader will pardon these departures from the main theme of these sketches.
So I will take up our line of travel from the time we bade Gen. Jackson goodby at the Hermitage and turned our horses’ heads towards Knoxville. The first place we stopped at was Lebanon. I have read somewhere in divine history something about the cedars of Lebanon, and when we drove into town we began to
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think we had found that place. Lebanon contained about 1,000 inhabitants, and was built in the middle of a large cedar grove. Part of the houses were built of logs and part were frame. The logs were all cedar and the frame houses were all built of cedar; the roofs were covered with cedar shingles and the fences and gates were all of cedar. So we concluded that Lebanon was a very appropriate name for the town.
We stopped over night at a hotel on the top of the Cumberland mountains. I went out to the barn after supper to see how our horses had been cared for. This was my custom, as we had a long journey to make and a good deal depended upon the condition of our team. I asked the negro hostler how much corn he had fed the horses. He said he had given them six ears apiece. I told him that the should have fed them twice that amount, but he answered, "Massa, they are great big ears." I asked how large the ears were. He said that they were almost as long as his arm and as big around as his leg. Then I said I wanted to see some of that corn; so he took me to the crib and I saw that the negro was not far out of the way, for they were the most wonderful ears of corn in size that I had ever seen. There was about as much feed in one ear as in two ears of common corn. I asked the landlord how it was that such large corn would grown on top of the Cumberland mountains. He said that there was a dark sandy loam on the mountains—just the kind of soil to produce large corn. So I went to the crib and selected one of the largest ears I could find, and shelled it, and packed it away in my satchel, intending to bring it home and try it on our Illinois soil, as I was at that time carrying on a large farm a half mile east of Havana in Mason county. I planted the corn by itself so that it would not get mixed with the other corn, and from that planting I raised several bushels. The next year I planted part of it and distributed the balance among some of my neighbor farmers, as I wanted to have it introduced all over the county. They gave it the name of the "Tennessee Mammoth Corn." I am sure that after I commenced raising that corn that the yield to the acre was at least a third more than it had been with common corn.
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Afterwards many Fulton county farmers came over to Mason county to get their seed corn.
We finally arrived at Col. Churchwell’s with everything in good trim. Our horses had stood the trip excellently. Col. Churchwell and wife and about half a dozen negro servants were ready to meet us as they had heard that we were coming. We still had on hand some of the apples that Gen. Jackson had given us and we distributed them among the colonel’s family and the servants, as they all wanted to taste the apples because they had come from Gen. Jackson’s orchard. We delivered the messages the general had sent to Col. Churchwell and wife, and that led them both to tell us some marvelous stories about the general, for they had known him most all their lives. The colonel told us of a time that he was attending court in a neighboring town and Gen. Jackson was the presiding judge. A certain man had committed a crime, and a warrant had been placed in the hands of the sheriff, and he had summoned a half dozen men to assist him in making the arrest, for the man was a desperate character and was armed with several pistols and a bowie knife. The sheriff came into court and reported to the judge that the man could not be taken—that he and his men could not afford to risk their lives with such a character. The judge then said to him, "Summons Andrew Jackson to assist in taking that man." The sheriff did so, and Jackson took his hat and walked out of the court house and across the street to where the man was surrounded by many friends. Judge Jackson walked up to him, put his hand on his shoulder, and said to him, "You are my prisoner; you must go with me to the court house." The man made no resistance but walked deliberately to the court house where the judge took the pistols and knife from him and handed them to the sheriff. The man was asked afterwards why he did not resist Gen. Jackson as he had done the other men. He said he could see fight in the eyes of the judge, but could not see it in the eyes of the other men.
Col. Churchwell’s wife could also tell us of many circumstances connected with the life of the general. She told us about what a time the minister had had with him to get him to agree to forgive his enemies when he was about to join the
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church. He told the minister that he was willing to forgive all his political enemies, but his enemies that had been guilty of defaming his private character and his wife, and of lying about his mother, he did not think he could forgive. But the minister told him that if he expected to have his sins forgiven he would have to forgive his enemies, and pointed him to many passages of scripture that treated on that subject. So the general finally agreed to forgive his enemies and was received as a member of the Presbyterian church. It took place at the little brick church near the Hermitage that he had built for his wife soon after they were married. I was told that Jackson and his wife were regular attendants at church while she was living, and that he was always a friend to all religious institutions, and that all his ancestors, including his mother, were Presbyterians. I will quote a few sentences from the biography of Peter Cartwright to show what the old pioneer Methodist preacher had to say about him, as follows:
"Gen. Jackson was certainly a very extraordinary man. He was no doubt in his prime of life a very wicked man, but he always showed a great respect for the Christian religion and the feelings of religious people, especially ministers of the gospel. I will here relate a little incident that shows his respect for religion. I had preached one Sabbath near the Hermitage, and in company with several gentlemen and ladies went by special invitation to dine with the general. Among the company there was a young sprig of a lawyer from Nashville, of very ordinary intellect, and was trying very hard to make an infidel of himself. As I was the only preacher present the young lawyer kept pushing his conversation on me in order to get into an argument. I tried to evade an argument, in the first place considering it a breach of good manners to interrupt the social conversation of the company, and in the second place, I plainly saw that his head was much softer than his heart, and that there were no laurels to be won by vanquishing or demolishing such a combatant; I persisted in evading an argument. This seemed to inspire the young man with more confidence in himself, for my evasiveness
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he construed into fear. I saw Gen. Jackson’s eyes strike fire as he sat by and heard the thrusts made at the Christian religion. At length the young lawyer asked me this question:
"’Mr. Cartwright, do you believe there is any such place as hell?’
"’Yes, sir; I do.’
"To which he responded:
"’Well, I thank God I have too much good sense to believe any such thing.’
"I was pondering in my mind whether I would answer him or not when Gen. Jackson for the first time broke into the conversation, and, directing his words to the young man, said with great earnestness:
"’Well, sir, I thank God that there is such a place of torment as hell.’
"This sudden answer, made with great earnestness, seemed to astonish the youngster, and he exclaimed:
"’Why, Gen. Jackson, what do you want of such a place of torment as hell?’
"To which the general replied, as quick as lightning:
"’To put such a rascal a you in that opposes and vilifies the Christian religion!’"
After a cordial welcome to myself and my two young comrades we had a delightful time going with Col. Churchwell over his splendid farm of 500 acres, located two miles north of Knoxville, Tennessee. His Negroes cultivated about 300 acres, and the balance was in timber and seeded down to blue grass. He was engaged in raising fine-blooded stock. He had a fine dwelling house and ten or twelve frame houses on his place that his slave families occupied. He had fine barns and stables, and all his buildings and improvements were very good. He had about forty slaves of both sexes and of all ages. He was good and humane to his slaves and would never permit any of them to be sold to go to the southern plantations. His nephew was his overseer, and he told me that he very seldom had to punish a slave. Col. Churchwell was a member of the Methodist church,
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and his wife was a Presbyterian. It was his habit to hold family prayers morning and evening and he asked a blessing at his table. He and his wife were regular attendants at church. Sometimes both would go to the Methodist church and then to the Presbyterian church. Many of the slaves were church members, some belonging to one church and some to the other. Both Col. Churchwell and his wife believed that slavery was a divine institution, and that there was no harm in owning slaves, and the only harm there was about it was the abuse sometimes shown them by their masters. There was a very radical difference of opinion among my wife’s relatives in regard to slavery, for on her father’s side I have never known any of them to buy or sell a slave, although many of them were able to do so; but on her mother’s (Churchwell’s) side I never knew any of them who would not buy slaves if they had the money to do so.
The colonel and his good wife, "Aunt Moody," as we called her, did everything in their power to make us have a good and happy time. Their southern hospitality was manifested in many ways.
As stated in my first letter, the colonel and his wife were in the habit of visiting relatives in Illinois every two or three years; and I think the last time they came was in 1856, when they visited my family at Vermont, Fulton county. Mrs. Churchwell was one of the kindest, best women I have ever known. She became very much attached to our oldest boy, Frank, who was then about half grown. She wanted Frank to promise her that when he was grown that he would go to Tennessee and visit his old Aunt Moody. She promised him that she would have the negroes dance for him, as she did when his father and uncles visited her, and would make him have a grand and good time.
Well, as time rolled away the boy did go and visit his old aunt, but he did not go in just the way she expected him to come, and he took more company with him than his old aunt was in the habit of entertaining, and he did not wait until he was grown, as his aunt had told him to do.
When the civil war came on and an appeal was made for volunteers, the boy caught the war fever and had it very badly.
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Because he was so young we did all in our power to persuade him from becoming a soldier; but at last his parents gave their consent and he was enrolled as a member of the old 84th regiment Illinois volunteers, which was made up from men from Fulton and McDonough counties under Col. Waters of Macomb. The regiment was at once ordered to go to east Tennessee, and singular as it may seem took up their headquarters right on Col. Churchwell’s fine farm. They certainly could not have found a better locality for a military post if they had searched the state over, for the place was well watered with springs and creeks, with plenty of timber, and with an abundance of houses, barns and stables, and everything that a regiment of men could desire for their comfort and convenience. Col. Waters took possession of their fine old mansion for headquarters of himself and staff, though he was generous enough to let Mrs. Churchwell retain a few of the rooms. Col. Churchwell had died about the commencement of the war, and his only son, William, was an officer in the confederate army, and was killed before the war closed. Mrs. C. with her nephew as overseer, and her negroes, were running her farm when the regiment came down upon them like a cloud of Kansas locusts would upon a fertile field, and with almost as great destruction. It was a terrible ordeal for the old lady to see her beautiful place desecrated, her fine house occupied by soldiers and the soldiers’ tents spread over the field, and her fine carriage horses taken for cavalry horses, and her large Norman horses, which her negroes needed so badly to work the farm, taken to haul some old cannon around over the country; and when she would remonstrate against such treatment the officers would tell her that it was a military necessity. And when her corn and hay would be taken from her barns, and her rails burned, and her dairy and chicken house looted, and her cows milked by the "Yankee bluecoats," then she would lay her grievances before Col. Waters, and he would try to appease her wrath and indignation by telling her that it was a military necessity. These indignities caused her at last to express her mind quite freely as to what she thought of them; so they gave
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her the name of "old rebel," for she was very bitter against the whole union army.
One day the old lady asked Col. Waters where those fellows came from that had settled down upon her premises, and he told her they were from Illinois. She then told him she had relatives in Illinois by the names of Kirkpatrick and Ross, and wanted to know of the colonel if he had any soldiers by either name. The colonel told her there was a young lad in the regiment whose name was Frank Ross. She said she would like to see him; so the colonel sent one of his offices to hunt Frank up, and after a considerable search he was found in one of the camps frying chickens. He was told there was an old rebel woman up at headquarters who wanted to see him. Frank knew nothing about whose farm it was they were camping on; so he went to the house without any idea as to whom he would meet. But when he came face to face with the "old rebel woman," lo and behold, it was his old Aunt Moody Churchwell—the good old aunt that had invited him to come and visit her, and had promised that when he came she would have the negroes dance and sing for him! But here he was, with a lot of companions, desecrating and wrecking her fine farm and frying her chickens!
But when she saw that he was really Frank, the kind and noble impulses of her heart came to her as in times past, and she showed him the utmost kindness, and told Col. Waters that if the boy should be wounded or get sick to send him to her house and that she would see that he was well taken care of.
Now I must go back and give a sketch of our visit at Col. Churchwell’s, where we remained two weeks, visiting him and my wife’s relatives in Tennessee. Before starting home the colonel wanted us to have a good time, so he gave us two grand diversions. The first was a negro corn-shucking and the other was a negro dance, or, as they called it, a "negro shindig." If any Northern man ever traveled in the South in slave days and missed a negro corn-shucking or a negro dance, he missed a good deal. The pile of corn was forty feet long, eight feet wide and four or
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five feet high. They divided it off into two piles and drove a stake in the middle, then chose sides and went at it with a rush.
The side that came out last in shucking its pile had to furnish the egg-nogg to treat the whole company. As soon as the negroes commenced shucking the corn, working like beavers, they also commenced singing their plantation songs, and they sang with so much force and power that they could be heard about a mile. While the negroes were thus engaged their wives were preparing for them a bountiful supper. I do not think I ever saw a happier set of people than they were. The colonel had on his negro quarters one house with a large room in it that he said his negroes used to hold meetings in on Sundays, when some white or black preacher would come out from Knoxville and preach for them, and they used the same room to hold their dances in. His rule was to let them have a dance the last Saturday night in each month. He said it encouraged them and made them better servants. So one evening before we came away he gathered the negroes together, men, women, boys and girls, to show us how they could dance. He had one old negro, Ned, who played the violin for them. He told us that he was seventy years old, and had played on "de fiddle" since he was a boy, and seemed to be very proud of his skill. The music and the dancing were both grand, and we looked on with a great deal of delight.
But the time had come for our departure homeward. I had sold the horses and carriage that we had taken with us, and we rode home some of the horses I bought of Col. Churchwell. We bought fourteen head—horses, mares, jacks and jennies. We traveled the first day thirty miles and stopped over night at Arthur Kirkpatrick’s, a brother of my wife’s father. He was keeping a country store and running a farm. He had some negroes hired to work on the farm, but told us that he would never buy or sell a slave. He had known Gen. Jackson for several years and told us many stories about him; in fact, we could hardly meet an old settler in that state but who could tell us more or less about him.
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We came home a different route from the one we went out on. It was nearer, but not so good a road. We came back through Kentucky and through the grand prairies of eastern Illinois.
Sometimes we found it twenty miles between the houses. We struck the road we had gone out on at Springfield.
On our way home we passed Major Newton Walker and Hugh Lamaster, who had been to Kentucky and bought a herd of Durham cattle. I think they were the first blooded cattle ever brought into Fulton county. When we reached home I found my wife and little boy, Ossian, anxiously awaiting our arrival, for we had been gone six weeks, and it was a time of joy and rejoicing when we got home, for I had never been away from home before to exceed a day since he was born. And when I opened my satchel and took out the six large apples that Gen. Jackson had given me to take home to my wife and boy (as mentioned in my second letter), our little boy hardly knew whether they were to eat or play with, for he had never seen an apple before. At that time there was not a bearing orchard in Mason county. A few orchards had been planted out, but none of them had commenced to bear. But he soon found that they were good to eat, and his little teeth went for them with a vengeance. I told him that the apples came from Gen. Jackson’s orchard—that Jackson had sent them to Ossian and his mother. He had just commenced to learn to talk, and he learned to pronounce the words "Jackson" and "apples" a little before any other words, and after the apples were gone he would often climb up in my lap and put his little arms around my neck and say, "Papa, go to Jackson and get more apples for Ossian." But the apples that came from the orchard of the old hero were the first and the last that he ever had the opportunity to put his little teeth into, for in six weeks after my return he was taken from us by that cruel disease, the croup. He was eighteen months old when he died. He was unusually smart and bright for one of his age, and his death was a terrible bereavement to us, for our very hearts and lives were wrapped up in our little boy. He was our first child, and no tongue could express the grief and sorrow that filled our hearts when he was taken away. Another incident about the child: On the first visit
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of Col. Churchwell and wife to us in 1842, the little fellow was about six months old. Mrs. Churchwell had a bright, new half-dollar bearing the date "1842." So she got a hole drilled through the rim of it, put a ribbon through it, and hung it around little Ossian’s neck, saying it would be a keepsake from her and would show the year the boy was born and the year of their first visit to us. After the lad died his mother laid the coin away, intending to keep it as a sacred memorial as long as she lived, and did keep it for almost forty years. But it was stolen by a servant. His mother would have rather lost a $20 gold piece than that sacred coin.
After we got back from our trip I called on Father Kirkpatrick to give him a few tales of our trip and to tell him about his brother and sister, and the great number of nephews and nieces we had met out there, and how anxious they were for him and his wife to go out and make a visit, and of the kind invitation Gen. Jackson had sent, that if he came to Tennessee again to come and see him. This produced a desire in the old gentleman’s heart that he would like to go back to his native state where he had spent his boyhood. So a year after he secured a fine, large horse and carriage and he and his wife made the trip from Canton, Ill., to Knoxville, Tenn., and back without any mishap or accident. He went by the Hermitage, but learned before he got there that the old General had died a few weeks before. But he stopped at the grave with reverence for the old hero with whom he had fought many battles against the Indians; and we may be sure that he paid to his friend and leader the tribute of his tears.
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