“i could have shot him”--11/9/26

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Today's selection-- from Andrew Jackson by  H. W. Brands. Thirteen-year old Andrew Jackson got the full measure of war during the American Revolution, leaving within him a deep and burning resentment against the British:

“Andrew Jackson was thirteen years old that brutal summer, at home in the Waxhaw district with his widowed mother and his two older brothers. Elizabeth was an ardent rebel, and Hugh rode with the rebel militia. Robert and Andrew were too young for military service, but they weren't too young to look after Elizabeth as Tarleton's dragoons approached the Waxhaw. The Tories slowed to burn barns and crops and houses throughout the predominantly rebel district, allowing the Jacksons to escape. After the raiders moved on, Elizabeth and the boys returned to their ravaged neighborhood-only to have to flee once more when the Tories came back. For several months the Waxhaw was in constant turmoil. 

“Several months is a long time in the life of a thirteen-year-old, and when those months include the stern lessons of war, a boy grows up quickly. Andrew ached to join the rebel militia and avenge the losses his family suffered. When word arrived that Hugh had died on campaign, not even Elizabeth's fears for her youngest could keep him out of the contest. The militia leaders judged him still too young to fight, but they let him serve as scout and courier, galloping the back roads of the Waxhaw with dispatches and the latest news of armed action. He observed a rebel assault on British forces at Hanging Rock, an attack that started promisingly and might have finished so but for the heat of the day and the attackers' thirst, which they assuaged with captured rum. As their thirst diminished, so did their interest in fighting, and what might have been a decisive victory turned out to be merely a morale booster. 

“The following fortnight brought word of a calamitous rebel defeat at Camden, south of the Waxhaw, where Cornwallis routed Horatio Gates, the rebel hero of Saratoga. Gates's defeat left the backcountry helpless, and as Cornwallis and his redcoats pushed north, the Waxhaw once more emptied. Elizabeth had kin near Charlotte, some forty miles over the border in North Carolina. To Charlotte she and Robert and Andrew fled. Through the end of 1780 they remained in the north, while Cornwallis and the British had their way in the Waxhaw, destroying what little remained of the property of the rebels, seizing what cattle and horses hadn't already been eaten or driven off, and installing Tories in positions of prominence and power. 

“The Tory presence didn't prevent the return of most of the refugees, including Elizabeth Jackson and her surviving sons. But it did prevent the return of peace, and for several months the ugliest kind of partisan warfare raged throughout the Waxhaw. Neighbor hunted neighbor; friends by day became foes by night. Beyond the patent horrors of the fratricidal campaign, the guerrilla character of the fighting strained the nerves of all and broke the spirit of some. One man, without warning, began striking murderously at those around him, killing everyone within reach until the madness passed and he discovered, to his own shock as much as anyone else's, some twenty corpses in various states of dismemberment. Others, more courageous than crazy, yet still self-destructive, burned their homesteads rather than let them fall into the hands of the enemy. 

The Brave Boy of the Waxhaws, an 1876 Currier and Ives lithograph depicting the story of a young Andrew Jackson defending himself from a British officer during the American Revolutionary War

“Andrew Jackson rode with the rebels, now as an irregular soldier. One night he and Robert, who had also enlisted, were assigned with several others to guard the house of a well-known rebel, which came under attack from a large group of Tories. The attackers fired into the house, and fourteen-year-old Andrew and the other defenders returned the fire. One young man, Andrew's cousin, was killed at his side. The position of the defenders grew increasingly grim, until a bugle calling the cavalry charge pierced the darkness. The Tory attackers, assuming the gunfire had attracted rebel reinforcements, abandoned the assault and fled into the night. Shortly after they left, a lone, unmounted rebel, with bugle in hand, appeared from the trees, chuckling to himself at the gullibility of the Tories.

“Not every encounter ended so happily. Disturbed at the revival of rebel activity in the Waxhaw, the British dispatched a troop of dragoons to sweep the area. Jackson and about forty others rode out to meet them. The British gained the advantage, capturing several of the rebels and scattering the rest. Jackson and his cousin Thomas Crawford galloped away across the fields with the dragoons close behind. Crawford's horse mired in a muddy patch, and before Jackson could turn to help him, a dragoon cut Crawford with his sword and took him prisoner. Jackson fled, eventually reaching safety in a thicket. 

“There he met Robert, who had survived a similar close scrape. The brothers spent the rest of that day and all the following night in the woods, hiding. Andrew was rail-thin already, and Robert wasn't much stouter, and after thirty-six hours without food they were on the verge of fainting. They crept to the home of their captured cousin, hoping to get a meal from their aunt. But some area Tories, either guessing that the Jackson boys would visit their cousin's house or simply spotting their horses, alerted the dragoons, who surrounded the house and captured the boys before they could put up a fight. 

“The British soldiers thereupon began systematically destroying the household belongings of Mrs. Crawford, before her eyes and those of her children. Furniture was broken, bedding was torn, dishes were smashed: the modest accumulation of a family's lifetime was ruined in minutes. Jackson, helpless at sword point, must have been mortified at what he had brought upon his aunt. (‘I'll warrant Andy thought of it at New Orleans,’ a cousin declared decades later.) A British officer, perhaps intending to complete the lad's humiliation, ordered him to clean his–the officer's–muddy boots. At this point Jackson's mortification flashed to anger, and he indignantly refused. The officer, determined to chastise the cheeky rebel, drew his sword and aimed a blow at the boy's head. Jackson raised his left hand and deflected the blow but received a severe gash on his hand and another on his head. With blood pouring down his face and from his hand, he defiantly stood his ground and dared the officer to strike again. 

“The officer must have been tempted to kill Jackson on the spot, but he decided to put him to better use. The dragoons didn't know the country, and the officer rightly guessed that Jackson did. The officer had orders to find a particularly troublesome rebel named Thompson. He insisted that Jackson show the way to Thompson's house and threatened to execute him if he led them awry. Jackson acceded to the demand but simultaneously frustrated it. There were two roads to Thompson's house, one that went there directly, the other that circled within sight of the place a half mile before actually arriving. Jackson chose the latter, assuming that Thompson would be watching the road and that a half-mile head start was all he would need. Jackson's assumption proved out, and he had the silent pleasure of watching Thompson ride away ahead of the dragoons, who were none the wiser for their failure. 

“Andrew, Robert, Thomas Crawford, and several other prisoners were then forcibly taken to Camden, where the British were collecting captured rebels. Jackson's wound had stopped bleeding, but the pain was excruciating and the loss of blood produced a searing thirst. The prisoners' guards, however, allowed them no water–or food either–on the journey, and when Jackson and the others tried to scoop water in their hands from the creeks they forded en route, their captors made them stop. 

“The prison camp was an abomination. More than two hundred inmates were crowded into a narrow annex to the county jail. They lacked beds, clothing, food, water, medicine–everything essential to prevent the outbreak of disease, which naturally occurred. Before long smallpox was raging through the camp, and the prisoners provided textbook illustrations of the progress of the disease, as the recently infected mingled with those farther gone, who in turn lay elbow to knee with the dying and the unburied dead. ‘I frequently heard them groaning in the agonies of death,’ Jackson recalled years later. 

“For many days Jackson somehow managed to avoid infection. Prospects of rescue appeared to rise upon the approach of a rebel army under Nathanael Greene. From the distraction of the guards, the bustle about the camp, and the boasts of the British soldiers that they would do to Greene what their fellows had done to Horatio Gates–boasts that were accompanied by threats to hang all the prisoners– Jackson and the other prisoners divined the day the British were to commence the battle. To gain a view of the contest that might well decide their fate, Jackson borrowed an old prisoner’s razor and with great effort whittled a hole in one of the boards that had been nailed over the jailhouse windows.

“From his peephole he reported to his fellow prisoners how the rebels, making effective use of artillery and small arms, initially forced the British to retreat. The news lifted the prisoners’ spirits. But then the British regrouped and counterattacked, and the rebel lines bent and broke. Greene was lucky to escape with his army intact. 

“Jackson and the other prisoners couldn’t help despairing. They saw nothing ahead but indefinite detention, broken only perhaps by death from the epidemic that continued to rage among them. The cause for which they had fought appeared equally endangered, raising the prospect that they would die in vain. 

“With time to reflect, Jackson must have thought of his mother, his dead brother, the father he had never known. And at the mercy of the British, he doubtless recalled a moment when he might have materially changed the course of recent events. Early in the Waxhaw fighting, not long after the massacre that made Banastre Tarleton infamous, the British colonel had ridden unknowingly past a place where Jackson had taken refuge. The boy could hear the horses snorting and almost make out what the Tory raiders were saying as they marched by. “Tarleton passed within a hundred yards,” Jackson remembered many years later. Still vexed at himself for his missed opportunity, he added, ‘I could have shot him.”