Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/308

254 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS brother-in-law, Mr. Crawford, just over the border in South Carolina, near the Waxhaw creek, and there his early years were passed. His education, obtained in an "old-field school," consisted of little more than the "three R s," and even in that limited sphere his attainments were but scanty. He never learned, in the course of his life, to write English correctly. His career as a fighter began early. In the spring and early summer of 1780, after the disastrous surrender of Lincoln s army at Charles ton, the whole of South Carolina was overrun by the British. On August 6 Jackson was present at Hanging Rock when Sumter surprised and de stroyed a British regiment. Two of his brothers, as well as his mother, died from hardships sustained in the war. In after years he could remember how he had been carried as prisoner to Camden and nearly starved there, and how a brutal officer had cut him with a sword because he refused to clean his boots ; these reminiscences kept alive his hatred for the British, and doubtless gave unction to the tre mendous blow dealt them at New Orleans. In 1781, left quite alone in the world, he was apprenticed for a while to a saddler. At one time he is said to have done a little teaching in an "old- field school." At the age of eighteen he entered the law-office of Spruce McCay, in Salisbury. While there he was said to have been "the most roaring, rollicking, gamecocking, horse-racing,