VOL. XV.
BOSTON.
No. 8.
AUGUST, 1903.
ANDREW JACKSON AS A LAWYER. BY EUGENE L. DIDIER. ANDREW JACKSON as an Indian fighter, Andrew Jackson as the hero of New Orleans, Andrew Jackson as the seventh President of the United States, fills a prom inent place in American history; but Andrew Jackson as a lawyer is scarcely known to the present generation; yet it was as a law yer that he began his remarkable career, a career almost unparalleled in the history of the United States. The child of poor ScotchIrish immigrants, his father dying before he was born, Andrew Jackson began life under circumstances which did not seem to offer any promise of future distinction. A boy in years, a man in resolution, a' hero that was to be, he threw himself, with youthful en thusiasm, into the American struggle for in dependence, and after a brief but thrilling experience, he found himself, at the age of fifteen, alone in the world, his father, mother, and brothers dead, left to his own guidance at the most critical period of his life—left, like Byron, "Too young such loss to know, Lord of himself, that heritage of woe." Andrew Jackson's heritage was very dif ferent from that of the young lord of Newstead Abbey. The American youth inherited no title, no worldly goods, no ancestral home. But taking into consideration the environ ment of the two, the time, place and circum stances of their lives, fortune treated Jack son better than she did Byron.
After spending two or three years in idle ness, the young man's better nature pre vailed, he determined to study law, and he set out on horseback to find a preceptor; no easy matter in those early days in the back woods of North Carolina. He was eighteen years old when he entered the office of Spruce McKay, at Salisbury, N. C., as a law student. The old box of a house, built of shingles, which was Judge McKay's law of fice, is, or was, still standing within the mem ory of men yet living. Tradition says that during the two years that Andrew Jackson studied law at Salisbury, he was the "most roaring, game-cocking, horse-racing, cardplaying, mischievous fellow" that ever lived in that quaint old town. "He did not trouble the law books much—he was more in the stable than in the office;" he also indulged in foot races, a sport in which his long limbs made him facile princeps. But, in spite of all these sports and pastimes, he was licensed to practise law in North Carolina two years after he began his studies. Behold, then, the future hero of New Orleans and President of the United States, a full-fledged lawyer, standing six feet two in his stockings,—slen der, vigorous, manly; with eyes of dark blue, whose fearless expression, look of keen in telligence, commanding presence, all gave as surance of a born leader of men. He pos sessed two qualities not often found united in the same person—daring and prudence. He was an ardent lover of his country, for whose liberties he had fought and suffered,
