The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1930-12-26

ANUARY s is day for re-
H calling famous American
fight and a famous Amer
hAW lean fighter. The fight was
NBD the battle of New Orleans,
- which took place on jan
uary 8, 1915, and which is
unique in history as being battle
fought after the treaty of peace end
ing the war had been signed. The
fighter was Gen., Andrew Jackson,
frontiersman, lawyer by profession,
but natural military leader, hailed
during the war with the Creek In
dams and the war with the British
by his observation-disclosures as "Old
Hickory" in tribute to the toughness
of his fiber as man, and later tri-
umphantly elected by them to the
Presidency as the first representative
of the new American democracy to
occupy the White House, after long
reign there by Virginia and Massachu-
sets aristocrats.
Andrew Jackson is symbol Of
something so intensely American that,
in the words of q recent biOgrapher,
''The people still delight in the leg
ends of his prOweSS, Of his lurid Ian
rial temper. AS small boy
he comes Keeling into American his
tory with a saber cut on his head
and as the years gather upon him they
CLEAN with steel and blood. 1t was
roaring career, resounding to the
roars Of cheering multitudes, of mus
kerry, of artillery. He was
great duelist, great soldier and
great lover. He was fiery, quixotic,
honest and loyal. He was curiously
romantic.
The picture of red-headed Andy
Jackson, the boy, and "Old Hickory"
the man, cutting and slashing his
way to power, raucous fellow, an ex-
plosive, heavy-handed fellow, but with
al a man who had code and lived
up to it," is too familiar to Ameri-
cans to necessitate calling it up again
on the anniversary of his great vic
tory. In the light of these character
istics it is more interesting to call up
that other picture Of him, because of
the vivid contrast which it presents
the picture Of "the great lover" who
was so ''curiously romantic" For the
story of Andrew Jackson and his be-
loved Rachel, the woman he loved to
the end of his days, is one of the most
beautiful romances in American his
tory.
The story of this romance goes back
to the year 1779 when Col. John Don
elson, a well-to-do Virginia planter,
led a party of 200 emigrants ON a
2,000-mile trip by fiatboat from old
Fort Patrick Henry in East Tennessee
(near the present city of Kingsport)
to the Middle Basin of Tennessee. The
trip was made down the upper branch
of the Holston to the Tennessee river,
down its whole length to the Ohio,
up the Ohio to the Cumberland and
thence up that stream to the bluffs
where Col. James Robertson and an
earlier party of settlers had estab-
lished a frontier outpost which was to
become the city of Nashville. 1t had
taken Donelson's party four months
to complete their journey and during
that time they had known the horrors
of Indian attack, bitter winter weather
and the scourge of smallpox. Among
the party was Donelson's twelve
year-old daughter, Rachel, who, de-
spite the hardships of frontier life
or perhaps because of them-grew up
to superb womanhood. "Those who
knew Rache! Donelson never tired. in
their day. telling of her beauty, her
her sweetness and natural
charm" days John Trotwood. .2fHl