The Hardin tribune-herald. [volume] (Hardin, Mont.) 1925-1973, 1935-05-10

had come home to collapse with wnat
the doctors had told him was angina
pectoris, heart disease.
70 inflict a grievous wound like that
upon a woman! He heard a sound OF
scuffling in her room and started 70
go to her. They were moving her to a
chair so they could arrange her bed.
And his coming would hurt her. He
was here only because she insisted on
his getting some rest for the banquet
to be given in his honor in Nashville
tomorrow night. Always thinking OF
him. Never of herself. Poor Rachel!
Dearest Rachel! If they had mangled
that gentle soul by their surrlious lies,
if they had killed her, by the eternal
God, he would
Andrew! o, Andrew"
At sound of her wailing, agonized
cry he was out of the room and into
hers in a single gliding movement.
Rachel was collapsed in a chair N
which they had placed her while they
made her bed. Her huge body in its
nightgown, huddled sideways over an
arm, her head with its beautiful, thick
black hair, dangling like a great dolls.
Hannah, the old slave they had bought
and brought with them when they
came to the Hermitage after their Sec
ond marriage was trying to %straighten
her, while a young Negress, panic
stricken, moved in circles.
Get the doctor, quick!" he ordered,
and took Rachel's head in his arms.
He clasped her to him for a time
less time, till the doctor and Hannah
and two women slaves we're in the
room. The doctor ordered her placed
upon a table.
put blankets around her." the gen.
eral ordered, that hard table will hurt
her when she comes to. And bleed
her, doctor. She is in a deep swoon."
AS she lay on the hard table with
four blankets under her, the doctor
bled her. No blood followed the probe
in the temple and the doctor bent
swiftly to lean with his ear against her
breast. He listened long and straight
ened slowly. Rachels sightless eyes
were staring at him. He could not look
at the gallant mar standing opposite
him, drawing himself up to meet the
blow. The doctor looked at old Han
nah instead. And Hannah, tears we'll
ing in her eyes, looked up from Rachel's
body to Andrew Jackson.
"Massa Gennul." she said softly,
Missy Rachel is daid."
Andrew Jackson, p~resident-elect of
the United States, sat in a rocking
chair in his shirt sleeves, holding vigil
over his dead. For 60 hours he sat
there and the years thudded down upon
him, concentrated in these hours of
onO1Ijch To 1nolyoj lilo n r,or Nf Tx
shrunken, haggard, lined. Inside, he
was as old as grief, older than the
slow, fierce anger against those SIAN
derers he believed had killed her.
Dusk had deepened into night and
frightened into day again. Day rose
at noon and declined to darkness. He
sat there. Unable to arous him, Han
nah wrapped his frail body in a blanket
and left him. And Andrew Jackson
thought of Rachel Donelson Richards
jackson, the wife of his bosom, lying
there now unseeing, %unhearing, and
uncaring, a piece of the earth from
which she had come. Dust to dust.
But in her portrait in the locket
which he had taken from around his
neck and stared at from time to time
she was his wife of 1911, the one who
had gently wept as she sent him away
to fight the British. And in his heart
she would always be the girl he had
married in 1871. What a calamitous
thing that first marriage was! It had
finally killed her. Sitting there, n
cased in an icy anger and staring un-
seeing at her body, he saw her again
as she had been when they had begun
to live their years together, full, bitter
sweet years come to this tragic end
through the cruelty Of others.
Andrew jackson first met Rachel
Donelson Robards in her mothers
blockhouse neal Nashville, where he,
then a young attorney, was boarding
in 1888. They were both 81 and Rachel,
who had been married five years to
Lewis Robards of Harrodsburg, KY,
a jealous husband, had fled home from
his jealousy. Robards followed her to
Nashville and shortly after a reconcile
alton became jealous of Andrew. jack
son left the boarding house after chal-
longing Robards to a duel and Rachel
went back with her husband to Ken
lucky. Two years later, in answer to
Rachel's frantic appeals to her family,
Andrew went to Kentucky as the fam
ily's emissary and brought her home
again. Richards sued for divorce, accus-
ing Rachel and Andrew of clipping, but
the next month, August, 1890, he came
again to Nashville seeking a reconcile
alton. This time Rachel fled to Match
e., in a flotilla of settlers and Andrew
joined the flotilla somewhere along the
way.
-Four months later, on Dec. 20, IL
days before Kentucky branched off
from Virginia to become a state in her
own right, Richards petitioned the Vir-
ginia legislature for permission to sue
~