Brian Kilmeade - Andrew Jackson and the Miracle of New Orleans

I n the spring of 1781, the redcoats arrived in upland Carolina, and they brought terror with them. As they searched the countryside for the rebels, they turned the region the Jackson family called home into an armed camp. Elizabeth Jacksons youngest son, Andrew, though barely fourteen years of age, hated their presenceand quickly learned just how costly the fight for liberty could be.

On April 9, Andy and his brother, Robert, two years older, earned the wrath of the invading force by joining a battle to defend the local meetinghouse against a band of Tories reinforced by British dragoons. The fight went badly for the Americans, but the brothers, unlike a cousin who was severely wounded and captured, were lucky. They escaped and, after spending a night hiding in the brush, the two Jackson boys managed to reach their cousins home to deliver the news of his fate. Once there, however, their luck ran out: a Tory spy spotted their horses and informed the British of their whereabouts.

A lesson in the cruelties of war was soon delivered. As the Jackson brothers stood helplessly at the point of British swords, the enemy set about destroying their aunt and uncles home. Determined to make an example of these rebels, the redcoats shattered dishes. They ripped clothing to rags. They smashed furniture. Then, with the house in ruins, the commanding officer decided upon one more humiliation. He chose Andy Jackson as his target.

He ordered tall and gangly Andy Jackson to kneel before him and clean the mud from his boots. The boy refused.

Sir, I am a prisoner of war, and claim to be treated as such.

Enraged by the young Americans defiance, the British officer raised his sword and brought it down on Jacksons head. Had Andy not raised his arm to deflect the blow, his skull might have been split open. As it was, the blade gashed his forehead and sliced his hand to the bone. Not satisfied at drawing blood from Andy, the soldier turned and slashed at his brother, tearing into his scalp, leaving him dazed and bleeding.

No one dressed their wounds. Instead, the Jackson brothers were marched forty miles, with neither food nor water, to join more than two hundred other rebellious colonists in a prison camp in Camden. There they were fed stale bread and exposed to the smallpox that raged among the prisoners kept in tightly packed conditions.

Their mother, Elizabeth Jackson, had already lost too much. Her husband, Andrew Jackson Sr., had worked himself to death shortly before Andrew was born, leaving the pregnant Elizabeth with two, soon to be three, young sons in the rugged wilderness of upland South Carolina. She had raised the baby and his brothers as best she could and tried to protect them from the dangers of the war, but the boys had joined the fight despite her pleas. Hugh, the oldest, had died at age sixteen of heat exhaustion after a battle the year before. Elizabeth was not about to lose her remaining sons now.

Traveling the long distance to their prison, she managed to persuade their jailers to include them in a prisoner exchange. But freedom didnt mean safety. Robert had fallen dangerously ill, his wound infected, and the family of three had many miles to travelon just two horses. Robert, delirious, rode one, and the exhausted Elizabeth the other.

Andrew walked. He made the journey barefoot, since the British had taken his shoes. Although all three made it home through driving rains, Robert died two days later. Elizabeth had no time to nurse her griefor her remaining son. As Andrew recovered from a fever, she set off for Charleston, where two of the nephews she helped raise were prisoners. She would never return. After completing a 160-mile journey, much of it through enemy territory, she became ill with cholera and died. Andrew would learn he was an orphan when a small bundle of her clothes was returned to his home.

Andrew Jackson would never forget the pain and humiliation of that summer. His father, mother, and brothers were dead. He himself bore the memory of British brutality, his forehead and hand forever marked by the British officers sword, a reminder of the callous cruelty that had destroyed his family.

His mother may have left him alone, but she had not left him without words to live by. Years later, he would report that she had told him, Make friends by being honest and keep them by being steadfast. Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue for slandersettle them cases yourself!