“Old Hickory” down Rachel’s Lane
I have had the opportunity to visit Andrew Jackson's estate, the Hermitage, just east of Nashville, Tennessee, on three separate occasions in three separate years, and I have always come away with an appreciation of the extent to which this locale presents both the complexity and the worth of this great man. I also suspect that this first sentence may have already enraged some of my readers. "Complexity?" I can hear a voice repeat bitterly. "Jackson was the least complex, most stubbornly direct man who ever darkened the door of the White House." "Worth?" I can hear another scoff. "Tell that to the Supreme Court!" "Great? Only if you consider 'greatness' to be a tyrannical insistence on having one's own way regardless of the consequences to the nation."
So you see I am not unmindful of the controversies that still surround the legacy of our seventh President. But here at the Hermitage, one feels invited at almost every turn to contemplate the man more deeply, to appreciate more thoroughly both the world he inhabited and the world he envisioned, and to understand more completely why the political age he initiated still bears his name.
That such is the case is due, in no small part, to the continuing efforts of the Ladies' Hermitage Association, an organization that has curated and overseen the preservation of the Hermitage since 1889, rendering it, in the words of one guide to presidential homes, “…the most accurately restored early presidential home in the country" (Schaefer 41).
Nowhere is the complexity of Andrew Jackson more blatantly on display here at the Hermitage than in the fact that this site boasts two “Hermitage" structures: the original log cabin (or, at least, the second floor thereof) in which Andrew and Rachel Jackson lived for seventeen years, and the later “Hermitage," the more familiar Mansion House, that was finally completed in 1821. The question worth asking, of course, is why did the President keep this first roughhewn reminder of the Jacksons' humble beginnings so near to the later and more impressive Mansion House? The pat answer that is frequently forwarded to this question is that Jackson's frugality had come to the fore and that he had simply used the upper story of what had been his home to accommodate slaves on his burgeoning plantation. While true in the most literal sense—the remaining structure did become a living space for some of the slave population of the Hermitage plantation—it doesn't explain why Jackson would have gone to the trouble of preserving it. To understand this decision, one needs to know the man more intimately.
Like the hickory wood to which he was so often compared, Andrew Jackson was tough, hard, and unbending. And, most significantly, he was a man who never pretended to be anything more or less than what he was—even when “what he was" might be unpolished or unadmirable. Jackson was proud of his frontier roots. Like the common people he so openly championed and worked to include more broadly in the democratic process, his rustic origin was simply the truth about his beginnings. Why hide such a heritage? Why regret it?
After all, the crucible of the frontier had been the backdrop of the rags to riches story of an orphaned son determined to get ahead. The harsh and brutal realities of the “far west" had made Jackson a fierce and tenacious Indian fighter and, all the same, had led him to the later chapters in his life: a successful law practice, political ascendancy, and, ultimately the supreme office of Chief Executive. Jackson never forgot, never wanted to forget, the origin from which he had sprung. But his sights were also set considerably higher than merely achieving personal comfort and affluence, and these aspirations serve to add complexity to the simple picture already considered of a homespun frontiersman who had made good. Jackson was a visionary as well as a fighter, and his expansive visionary dream is visible everywhere here at the Hermitage.
In an important sense, his beliefs about the potential of each man—and of the United States as a whole—were closely connected to the love of his life: Rachel Donelson. Much has been written about Andrew Jackson's romance with Rachel: his attraction to this unhappily married woman; his chivalry in rescuing her from her abusive husband in Kentucky; his gallantry in leading her to a safe haven in Mississippi, only to learn of her divorce; their hasty marriage and their need to remarry after it was discovered that the divorce had not yet been granted at the time of their wedding. But much of this oft-told tale misses the essence of what Rachel meant to Andrew Jackson. To fully comprehend the Hermitage requires an appreciation of that essence.
In the garden east of the Mansion House Hermitage is a lovely Greco-Roman grave site, the final resting place of both General Jackson and Rachel. President Jackson's stone is marked simply with the words “General Andrew Jackson" followed by the dates of his birth and death. Rachel's stone, next to the President's, was carved much earlier (she having died on the eve of her husband's Presidency) and includes President Jackson's assessment of his wife:
Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, and her heart kind. She was delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow creatures, and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods; to the poor she was a benefactor; to the rich an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament; her piety went hand in hand with her benevolence, and she thanked her Creator for being permitted to do good. A being so gentle and yet so virtuous, slander might wound but could not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transport her to the bosom of her God.
This eulogy to the woman he loved is indicative of a side of Andrew Jackson that even his admirers tend to miss or discount. Certainly it illustrates the deep devotion of a grieving husband at the time of losing his best friend on earth, ironically at the very moment of his greatest personal triumph. But these words also relate to another of Andrew Jackson's great loves: the nation over which he had just been elected steward. Like Rachel, the United States possessed a limitless potential, a potential Jackson had seen embodied in his wife but which also encapsulated his vision of the possibilities of this new nation. Like Rachel, the United States was physically “fair" and “pleasing" with its endless forests and breathtaking vistas. Like Rachel, this new country could—and, Jackson believed, should—become a “benefactor" to the poor, an “example" to the rich, and a “comforter" to the wretched. In appreciating what Jackson most admired in his beloved wife, one becomes poignantly aware of what he most valued in his country.
It is no coincidence that tourists today reach the site of the Hermitage by traveling down Rachel's Lane. In many ways the structure one visits today is Andrew Jackson's architectural monument to the exemplary qualities he had enumerated on his wife's gravestone. For President Jackson, the fledgling nation that had emerged from two bitter wars with Great Britain was, like the Hermitage, a twofold creation. On one hand it was a roughhewn, primitive, unsophisticated experiment in democracy, huddled between an ocean and an untamed wilderness. On the other it was the promise of reclaimed Eden, a new opportunity for men to reach heights of virtue and achievement undreamt of in the world from which they had come.
To get a glimpse of the promise of this new Eden, one need only follow a costumed site interpreter into the front hall of the Mansion House Hermitage. Particularly by contrast to the unassuming simplicity of the first log Hermitage, the Mansion House seems like an Arcadian dream. Richly decorated ornate wallpaper depicting vistas of classical mythology surrounds the visitor as he enters this home. As the eye travels the length of the entry that spans the entire depth of the house, one is immediately taken by the elegant sweep of a grand circular stairway leading to the second floor.
The rooms on either side of this expansive entrance hall continue the ambiance of affluent generosity. The parlor with its spacious area and ornate furnishings invites the visitor to imagine the Hermitage's continuous stream of welcome guests amusing themselves with music and conversation throughout the long evenings. The dining room's enormous table, filled to
