Andrew Jackson (18 page)

The simultaneous decisions of the two men to seek the militia command shattered the truce that had existed between them. In the election the field officers of each of the militia districts caucused and cast their ballots. Jackson won the votes of the officers from the Cumberland and vicinity. Sevier carried his home districts in the eastern part of the state. The result was a tie. Sevier then proposed a second ballot. Jackson refused, asserting that nothing in the constitution or any statute authorized such a revote. Instead the decision must go to the governor.

As it happened, Jackson and the new governor, Archibald Roane, had been friends since they received their licenses to practice law in Washington County, North Carolina, on the same day. Roane repaid the friendship by casting the tiebreaking vote for Jackson, who on April 1, 1802, became major general of the Tennessee militia.

I
n many regards, the command of the militia was the best office Jackson ever held. The people of Tennessee addressed him as general and considered him the first warrior of the state. He held the post—like his judgeship—during “good behavior,” which meant that he was answerable only to his conscience and the requirements of Tennessee defense. In theory he reported to the governor, but in practice he often dealt directly with the War Department in Washington.

Not surprisingly, what to Jackson were the advantages of the office were to Sevier cause for bitterness at having lost it so narrowly. By battlefield experience Sevier should have won the election easily. He had beaten the British at King’s Mountain and the Indians in dozens of engagements before and since. What had Jackson done besides being captured after a skirmish and wounded resisting a shoe shine?

Sevier’s annoyance at Jackson only increased when Sevier launched a campaign to reclaim the governor’s house and Jackson, predictably, endorsed Roane. Sevier attacked Roane’s integrity, causing Jackson to rally to his friend’s defense with a counterattack in which he revived the charges of fraud against Sevier in the land deals of the previous decade. “To do this is not my wish,” Jackson disclaimed, unconvincingly, in a letter to the
Tennessee Gazette
. “My only object is to exonerate Mr. Roane from the imputations maliciously circulated against him, and to prevent a character, charged with crimes of a deep dye from ascending to the executive chair, an event which would wound the character of the state and reflect disgrace upon every good citizen in it.” Jackson asserted that Sevier had conspired in the destruction of the original records of land ownership and the replacement of the bona fide entries with forged claims. He alleged further that Sevier had resorted to bribery to keep the replacement quiet. Jackson reproduced letters and affidavits supporting his allegations, including a suspicious offer by Sevier of three parcels of land to a North Carolina official in exchange for altering records.

The voters of Tennessee took a more tolerant view of fraud than Jackson did, and they retired Roane in favor of Sevier. This merely moved the Jackson-Sevier feud to another level, pitting the chief executive of Tennessee against the state’s highest military officer, who was also a justice of the state’s superior court. Jackson’s court work regularly carried him to Knoxville, then the state capital, where Sevier resided. Knoxville being a small town, the antagonists could hardly avoid each other. One day they met outside the courthouse and exchanged words. Their voices rose as their emotions engaged, and onlookers gathered around. After heated words, Sevier apparently challenged Jackson to draw arms. But since Jackson carried only a cane, against Sevier’s sword, he declined. The hot language continued. Evidently Sevier alluded to Jackson’s lack of military experience before becoming major general, for Jackson defended his services to the state and the nation.

“Services?” Sevier riposted. “I know of no great service you rendered the country, except taking a trip to Natchez with another man’s wife.”

Silence enveloped the courthouse square. Everyone realized that Sevier had crossed a fateful line. The clouded origins of Jackson’s marriage to Rachel were no secret, but respect for her if not for him kept the common knowledge quiet. Now that Sevier had broken that quiet, another quiet—perhaps deadly—took its place. All strained to hear Jackson’s response.

“Great God!” he said. “Do you mention
her
sacred name?”

Jackson would have had it out with Sevier at once had he been better armed. Even so, collateral shooting did erupt briefly. “One man was grazed by a bullet,” eyewitness Isaac Avery said. “Many were scared, but luckily no one was hurt.” Avery added, “Jackson’s exclamation, ‘Great God!’ became a by-word among the young men at Knoxville.”

By the next day Jackson’s passion had subsided sufficiently that he was able to write Sevier a letter. But even after twenty-four hours his pen still scorched the page.

The ungentlemanly expressions and gasconading conduct of yours relative to me on yesterday was in true character of yourself, and unmasks you to the world, and plainly shows that they were the ebullitions of a base mind goaded with stubborn proofs of fraud and flowing from a source devoid of every refined sentiment or delicate sensation. . . . The voice of the people has made you a governor. This alone makes you worthy of my notice or the notice of any gentleman. To the office I bear respect. . . . As such I only deign to notice you, and call upon you for that satisfaction and explanation that your ungentlemanly conduct and expressions require. For this purpose I request an interview [“interview” being the term for a duel]. . . . My friend who will hand you this will point out the time and place when and where I shall expect to see you with your friend and no other person. My friend and myself will be armed with pistols. You cannot mistake me or my meaning.

Sevier didn’t want to duel Jackson. He considered the younger man an upstart against whom he had no need to defend his reputation. Besides, he was governor of Tennessee, and Tennessee law as of the previous year forbade dueling. Yet he didn’t feel he could ignore the challenge. Even a hero of the Indian wars had to answer such a direct affront. So he fired back a note that matched Jackson’s insult for insult—in places, word for word: “Your ungentlemanly and gasconading conduct of yesterday, and indeed at all other times heretofore, have unmasked yourself to me and to the world. The voice of the Assembly has made you a judge, and this alone has made you worthy of my notice or any other gentleman’s. To the office I have respect.” Sevier went on to say, in a nod to the law, “I shall wait on you with pleasure at any time and place not within the State of Tennessee, attended by my friend with pistols, presuming you know nothing about the use of any other arms. Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina are all within our vicinity.” He closed by quoting Jackson: “You cannot mistake me and my meaning.”

Jackson wouldn’t accept Sevier’s condition. “This, sir, I view as a mere subterfuge,” he replied. “Your attack was in the town of Knoxville. In the town of Knoxville did you take the name of a lady into your polluted lips. In the town of Knoxville did you challenge me to draw, when you were armed with a cutlass and I with a cane. And now, sir, in the town of Knoxville you shall atone for it or I will publish you as a coward and a poltroon.” Sevier’s offer to fight in a neighboring state, Jackson insisted, was “a proposition made by you to evade the thing entirely.” Jackson nonetheless made a counterproposal: “If it will obviate your squeamish fears, I will set out immediately to the nearest part of the Indian boundary line.” On Indian soil they could legally settle their differences. “I shall expect an answer in the space of one hour.”

“I am happy to find you so accommodating,” Sevier responded. “My friend will agree upon the time and place of rendezvous.” But Sevier was still in no hurry to fight Jackson. He instructed his friend to tell Jackson that their meeting could take place no sooner than five days hence. Jackson would have to wait.

Jackson was outraged. He published his threatened condemnation of the governor. “To all who shall see these presents greeting—Know ye that I, Andrew Jackson, do pronounce, publish, and declare to the world that his Excellency John Sevier, Esqr., Governor, Captain General and commander in chief of the land and naval forces of the State of Tennessee, is a base coward and poltroon. He will basely insult, but has not the courage to repair the wound.”

Sevier had to answer. “I am again perplexed with your scurrilous and poltroon language,” he wrote. “I have constantly informed you that I would cheerfully wait on you in any other quarter”—than Tennessee—“and that you had nothing to do but name the place and you should be accommodated. I am now constrained to tell you that your conduct, during the whole of your pretended bravery, shows you to be a pitiful poltroon and coward.” Yet Jackson might still retrieve his reputation. “If you wish the interview, accept the proposal I have made you, and let us prepare for the campaign.”

They agreed to meet at Southwest Point, Virginia, a day’s ride from Knoxville. Jackson went ahead, with Sevier to follow. But the business of government—and his continuing reluctance to be tested by this young hothead—held Sevier in Knoxville forty-eight hours. Jackson waited, and waited, and finally decided that Sevier really was the coward and poltroon he had been stating him to be.

He started to return to Knoxville, riding in company with Thomas Vandyke, a surgeon’s assistant with the U.S. Army at Fort Southwest Point. Not far from Kingston, Tennessee, they saw Sevier and his son James approaching. Jackson dismounted, drew pistols, and walked toward Sevier, who also dismounted and readied his guns. Jackson called Sevier an assortment of names and demanded that the two settle their dispute on the spot. “Sevier replied that he would not fire, and that he did not wish to be assassinated,” Vandyke recounted shortly afterward. Vandyke assured Sevier that this was no assassination. “I then requested that the gentlemen should both deliver me their pistols, and meet in a proper manner on the field of honor. General Jackson agreed to the proposition. General Sevier positively refused.” After more swearing between the two, Vandyke urged them to holster their pistols and remount their horses. They did so, with ill grace. “Scurrility ensued. General Jackson observed that there had been too much low abuse made use of, and that he would correct him. General Jackson then drew his sword cane and pistol, and rode up to General Sevier. General Sevier drew his sword, dismounted, and let his horse loose. General Jackson pursued him around us, as we”—Vandyke and two other riders who happened along—“sat upon our horses, several times. Young Mr. Sevier drew his pistol on General Jackson, on which I immediately drew mine and observed that I should protect Mr. Jackson.” A second eyewitness told this part of the story slightly differently. “Judge Jackson swore that he would cane him . . . and as Jackson advanced toward him, the Governor drew his sword, which frightened his horse and he ran away with the Governor’s pistols. . . . Judge Jackson immediately drew his pistol and advanced again, on which the Governor went behind a tree and damned Jackson. Did he want to fire on a naked man? On which the Governor’s son drew his pistol and advanced toward his father. . . . Doctor Vandyke immediately drew his pistol and advanced toward the Governor’s son.”

By both accounts the two disputants retrieved their horses and rode off, each cursing the other for cowardice, poltroonry, and conduct unbecoming any kind of gentleman. In Knoxville each told his version of the story to friends and followers, who amplified the competing versions in the area newspapers. “Let us ask,” wrote one Sevier partisan, “how many hundreds of respectable characters are in this and several other states who have been eyewitnesses of the governor’s courage? . . . Is he not the man whose exertions have taken from the numerous hordes the savage wilds and placed on them a rising, growing, and respectable republic?” The governor had no need to prove his courage. As for Jackson: “The judge, shark-like, intending to grasp the prey into his voracious jaws, has unfortunately darted himself out of the water flat on his own back, upon a dirty beach, from where it will be impossible for him, with all his serpentile windings, to make his retreat with credit.”

A Jackson advocate answered that the blame all lay with Sevier, for “vulgar and ungentlemanly expressions” drawn from “the most secret recesses of his infernal disposition.” The governor had claimed his greater age as reason not to fight Jackson. “If you had saw the ease with which his Excellency dismounted, and the good use he made of his heels after he had dismounted, you would have thought him a youth of not more than eighteen.”

The affair afforded entertainment for months afterward, as each side spent the autumn and winter recounting the insults and outrages committed and suffered by their champions. Few minds, apparently, were changed by all the words and ink.

Yet for those paying close attention to Jackson, the spat with Sevier revealed something significant. Sevier never took Jackson’s challenge seriously because he considered it politically motivated, which it was in part. And for Sevier, politics was politics, a game that didn’t lack importance but hardly rose to the level of putting one’s life in jeopardy.

Jackson didn’t play games, at least not with politics. He took politics very seriously, for politics involved honor, reputation, and principle. These meant more to Jackson than life itself. He would have fought Sevier over politics even if he had expected to die in the duel.

And he certainly didn’t play games with Rachel’s reputation. When Sevier, having affronted Jackson politically, compounded his sin by slandering Rachel, there was no chance Jackson would forgive him. And he never did.