The Arkansas banner., 1845-07-30
GEO. BANCROFT'S GRAFTON, ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF
 ANDREW JACKSON.

The men of the American Revolution are no more, That age ol creative power has passed away. The last surviving signer of the Declaration of independence has long since left the earth. Washington lies near his own Potomac, surrounded by his family and his servants. Adams, the colossus of independence, reposes in the modest grave yard of his native region. Jefferson sleeps on the heights of his own Monticello, whence his eye overlooked his beloved Virginia Madison, the last survivor of the men who made our constitution, lives only in our hearts. Bat who shall say that the heroes, m whom tbe. ina @ of God shone most i brightly, do not live foreveri They were filled with the vast conceptions which called America into being; they lived for those conceptions; and their deeds praise them.
 We are met to commemorate the virtues Of one who shed his blood for our indepen- dence, took part in winning the territory and forming the carly institutions of the West and was imbued with all the great ideas which constitute hemoral force of our coun- try On the spot where he gave his solemn lealty to the people-here, where he pledged 1 himself before the world to freedom, to the constitution, and to the laws-we meet to ] pay our tribute to the memory of the last great name, which gathers round itself all i the associations that form the glory of Amer l ica.
 South Carolina gave birthplace to An- drew Jackson. On lts remote frontier, far up on the forest-clad banks Of the Catawba, in region where the settlers were jus. be- ginning to cluster, his eye first saw the light. There his infancy sported in the ancient for ests, and his mind was nHrsed to freedom by their influence. He was the youngest son oi an Irish emigrant, of Scottish origin, who, two years after the great war of Frederic off Prussia, fled to America for relief from ndi- gence and oppression. His birth was in l167, at time when tie people of our land were but body of dependent eoonists, scarcely more than two millions in number scattered along an immense coast, with na. army, or navy, or union; and exposed S'' the attempts of England to control Amerief by the aid of military force. His boyhood l grew up in the midst of the contest with great Britain. The first great political truth that reached his heart, was that all men are free and equal; the first great fact that beamed on his understanding, was his country's in- dependence.
 The strife, as it increased, came near the shades of his own upland residence As n boy ol thirteen, he witnessed the scenes off horror that accompany civil war; and when but a year older, with an elder brother, he Shouldered his musket, and went forth to strike a blow for his country.
 Joyous era for America and for humanity BHt fer him, the orphan boy, the events were full of agony and grief. His father was no more. His oldest brother fell a victim to the war of the revolution; another (his com Panlon Tn arms) died of wounds received in their Jont captivity; his mother went down ] to the grave victim to grief and efforts to rescue her sons; and when peace came, he was alone in the world, with no kindred to cherish him, and little inheritance but his own uniried powers.
 The nation which emantipated itself from British rule organizes itself: the eonfedera- ton gives way to the constitution: the per lecilng oi that constlutlon-that grand event of the thousand years of modern history IS accomplished America exists as q peo- i pie, gains unity as government, and takes l Its place as nation among the powers ol the earth
 The next great office to be performed by America, is the taking possession of the wll- 1 derneSs. The magnificent western valley cried out to the civilization of popular pow CT, that it must be occupied by cultivated man.
 Behold, then, our orphan hero, sternly earnest, consecrated to humanity from child hood by sorrow, having neither father nor mother, nor sister, nor surviving brother, so young and yet so solitary, and therefore bound the more closely to collective man- behold him elect for his lot to go forth and assist in laying the foundations of society in the great valley of the Mississippi.
 Al the very time when Washington was pledging his own and future generations to the support of the popular institutions which were to be the light of the human race-ai the time when the institutions of the Old World were rocking to their centre, and the mighty fabric that had come down from the middle ages were falling in--the adventurous Jackson, in the radiant glory and boundless hope and confdentintrepidity of twenty-one, plunged into the wilderness, crossed the great mountain-barrer that divides the wes- tern waters from the Atlantic, followed the i paths of the early hunters and lugtlves, and, not content with the nearer neighborhood 10 his parent State, went still further and further to the west, till he found his home ill the most beautiful region on the Cumberand- l There, from the first, he was recognised as the great pioneer: under his courage, the coming emigrauts were sure to find a shield
 The lovers of adventure began to pour themselves into the territory, whose delicious climate and fertile soil invited the presence of social man. The hunter with his rife and his axe, attended by his wife and ehil- dren; the herdsman driving the few cattle that were to multiply as they browsed; the cultyator of the sol-all came to the invi- ting region. Wherever the bending noun tains opened pass-whereve the Butfaloes and beasts of the forest had made a trace, these sons of nature, children of humanity, in the highest sentiment of personal freedom, come to occupy the beautiful wilderness whose prairies bIossemed everywhere pro lusely with wild howers-whose woods in spring put to shame, by their magnfcence, the cultivated gardens of man.
 And now that these mleilered fugitiyes,