had a fine, productive farm and one hundred and fifty negroes, and poverty never stood in the way of his making the Hermitage a noted seat of hospitality, which it continued to be long after his death. After his retirement this place became almost as noted as Mount Vernon. He had gathered about it many objects of peculiar interest to visitors and travelers, and although some of these were destroyed by a fire in 1836, yet it always was rich with strange and valuable relics of his wonderful life. It is a singular fact that after he became a Christian and was tottering to the grave, he exhibited among the objects of interest to strangers at the Hermitage, his dueling pistols. Nor does it appear that the sight of them ever saddened his memory of the past. If it did he had lived it down quietly in the new life. mies was perhaps the hardest and most unreasonable requisition ever made upon Andrew Jackson. It was only through the kind sophistry that Thy ways are my ways, that Andrew Jackson began to see and feel that "My ways are not thy way." But of this again.

To forgive his ene

Politics did not lose their charm to General Jackson. He wrote many letters to President Van Buren, and did all he could to secure his re-election in 1840. He wrote a letter in favor of Mr. Van Buren at this time, which was widely published, with the hope of advancing the interests of his favorite.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE LITTLE CHURCH AT THE HERMITAGE-THE END-LAST WORDS-DEATH-THE GRAVE OF GENERAL JACKSON.

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R. Polk was strongly in favor of annexation, and the General's influence was exerted for his success. So gratified was he with the result of the election in 1844 that he gave a great out-door feast near the Hermitage in honor of it. Although the elevation of his little friend was a source of great pleasure to him, he was not at all satisfied with the course of some events, or the unceremonious manner in which some of his friends were treated. He never did understand why Mr. Blair and "The Globe" ceased immediately to be the tongue of the Polk Ad-. ministration. To Mr. Blair he wrote: "How loathsome it is to me to see an old friend laid aside, principles of justice and friendship forgotten, and all for the sake of policy, and the great Democratic party divided or endangered for policy!" The General forgot that he had introduced this loathsome laying aside of trusted officers, and that the whole country was filled with a wail of the same kind in 1829.

Blair had, indeed, been a faithful friend to him. Blair went to Washington broken in fortune, and the name and power of Jackson had turned everything he touched into gold, and when the General was hard pressed by the ruinous speculations of Andrew, Jr., in

1842, Blair and Rives came to his assistance with $10,000, and even desired to make it a gift. But to this the old man would not listen, and although he did not live to repay this money, he made provision for it in his will.

Two or three years after the expiration of his official career, General Jackson joined the Presbyterian Church. His parents and relatives in the Carolinas were Presbyterians, and he had always been a Presbyterian on general principles himself. In his most extravagant and reckless moments these principles often asserted themselves. In fact he would swear for his religion, and was as determined about that as any thing else, at all times of his life. As he considered himself perfectly competent to manage the finances of a great country, and exercised not the least degree of hesitancy on the difficult subject, so he was a theologian, and decided the most stupendous points of interest with the same autocratic irrevocability which he assumed in politics and war. On a certain occasion in his own house when a young would-be infidel sprig of the law was attempting to draw Peter Cartwright into an untimely wrangle on the future of the wicked, Jackson furiously stepped in with the declaration that he believed in a hell, and thanked God for it. Being asked in a bantering way by the young lawyer why he wanted such a place of torment, he answered: "To put such rascals as you are in, that oppose and vilify the Christian religion." The reason was valid. That, of course, settled the controversy, greatly to the amusement of Cartwright, who was not at all averse to the General's way of putting to flight his theological enemies. That lawyer never could have gotten an office under Jackson.

A young clerk belonging to the State Department was about to be selected as a secretary to a foreign mission, when the General interposed his objection. He said the young man had sat near him in a Methodist church while one of the best sermons was preached that he ever heard, and on his asking the young man when on an errand to the White House one day, how he liked the sermon, he had gone into a great tirade on its utter worthlessness and falsity, and the inability of the preacher, and although he had said and done nothing at the time, he now took the opportunity to say that a person who could not tell a good sermon when he heard one should not be attached to a foreign legation. Then, too, he thought if Mr. Van Buren had recommended the fellow to be taken from his Department while he asserted that his services were so valuable, there must be some reason to suspect that he was unfit even for the place he had. Before 1820, the General had built the little church on the Hermitage farm for his wife, who had found the better way under the guidance of the "dear Mr. Blackburn." He kept up this little church mainly at his own expense, and when at home he always attended preaching in it on Sabbath morning, by the side of "Aunt Rachel." He never had a compunction about her becoming too "religious " for him. He encouraged her at every step, nor was it possible for her to be too radical for him in the path she had chosen; thus presenting one of the most admirable pictures in his life. He even promised her that when he was free from politics, in which, of course, there was no God, he would follow her in the "strait and narrow way." When he was in Washington, the little church was neglected, but, not long after his

retirement, it was again put in order, and preaching and Sunday-school regularly held in it.

In 1839 or 1840, Mrs. Andrew Jackson, Jr., becoming actively concerned about her spiritual interests, the Hermitage became more of a resort of ministers of the Gospel, as it had been in the days of "Aunt Rachel." At a "revival" meeting held in the little church about this time, the General came to the conclusion that no political fuss could be made over the step he had long contemplated, of joining the Church. Mr. Edgar, of the Presbyterian Church at Nashville, was conducting the meeting, and observing that General Jackson was more than commonly earnest for him, turned his illustrations mainly upon the varied and successful career of the old hero in a manner too clear for the General not to see the application. The subject had been chosen for the purpose, the hand of Providence in the affairs of men. Whether from habit or a sort of extraneous faith, the General had always attributed his escapes and successes to that Hand, while he thought, or felt rather, for he was hardly a reasoning man, that Andrew Jackson was at any rate the next most important factor in the many good events connected with him and his country. Yet this feeling of personal power never conflicted with his reverence for the Omnipotent One. If it ever appeared to do so, it was one of his misfortunes of language and temper. He was always reverent in a high degree. He would have suffered the loss of his right hand or right eye before even seeming to show irreverence for the Providence that doeth all things well. Profanity never meant irreverence with Andrew Jackson, even at his worst stages.