time and in that part of the country; and in such sort of agriculture young Jackson was much more proficient than in the study of jurisprudence. He never had a legal tone of mind, or any but the crudest knowledge of law; but in that frontier society a small amount of legal knowledge went a good way, and in 1788 he was appointed public prosecutor for the western district of North Carolina, the district since erected into the state of Tennessee. The emigrant wagon-train in which Jackson journeyed to Nashville carried news of the ratification of the Federal constitution by the requisite two thirds of the states. He seems soon to have found business enough. In the April term of 1790, out of 192 cases on the dockets of the county court at Nashville, Jackson was employed as counsel in 42; in the year 1794, out of 397 cases he acted as counsel in 228; while at the same time he was practising his profession in the courts of other counties. The great number of these cases is an indication of their trivial character. As a general rule they were either actions growing out of disputed land-claims or simple cases of assault and battery. Court day was a great occasion in that wild community, bringing crowds of men into the county town to exchange gossip, discuss politics, drink whiskey, and break heads. Probably each court day produced as many new cases as it settled. Amid such a turbulent population the public prosecutor must needs be a man of nerve and resource. It was a state of chronic riot, in which he must be ever ready to court danger. Jackson proved himself quite equal to the task of introducing law and order in so far as it depended on him. “Just inform Mr. Jackson,” said Gov. Blount when sundry malfeasances were reported to him; “he will be sure to do his duty, and the offender will be punished.” Besides the lawlessness of the white pioneer population, there was the enmity of the Indians to be reckoned with. In the immediate neighborhood of Nashville the Indians murdered, on the average, one person every ten days. From 1788 till 1795 Jackson performed the journey of nearly two hundred miles between Nashville and Jonesboro twenty-two times; and on these occasions there were many alarms from Indians, which sometimes grew into a forest campaign. In one of these affairs, having nearly lost his life in an adventurous feat, Jackson made the characteristic remark: “A miss is as good as a mile; you see how near I can graze danger.” It was this wild experience that prepared the way for Jackson's eminence as an Indian-fighter. In the autumn of 1794 the Cherokees were so thoroughly punished by Gen. Robertson's famous Nickajack expedition that henceforth they thought it best to leave the Tennessee settlements in peace. With the rapid increase of the white population which soon followed, the community became more prosperous and more orderly. In the general prosperity Jackson had an ample share, partly through the diligent practice of his profession, partly through judicious purchases and sales of land.
With most men marriage is the most important event of their life; in Jackson's career his marriage was peculiarly important. Rachel Donelson was a native of North Carolina, daughter of Col. John Donelson, a Virginia surveyor in good circumstances, who in 1780 migrated to the neighborhood of Nashville in a very remarkable boat-journey of 2,000 miles down the Holston and Tennessee rivers and up the Cumberland. During an expedition to Kentucky some time afterward, the blooming Rachel was wooed and won by Capt. Lewis Robards. She was an active, sprightly, and interesting girl, the best horsewoman and best dancer in that country; her husband seems to have been a young man of tyrannical and unreasonably jealous disposition. In Kentucky they lived with Mrs. Robards, the husband's mother; and, as was common in a new society where houses were too few and far between, there were other boarders in the family — among them the late Judge Overton, of Tennessee, and a Mr. Stone. Presently Robards made complaints against his wife, in which he implicated Stone. According to Overton and the elder Mrs. Robards, these complaints were unreasonable and groundless, but the affair ended in Robards sending his wife home to her mother in Tennessee. This was in 1788. Col. Donelson had been murdered, either by Indians or by white desperadoes, and his widow, albeit in easy circumstances, felt it desirable to keep boarders as a means of protection against the Indians. To her house came Andrew Jackson on his arrival at Nashville, and thither about the same time came Overton, also fresh from his law studies. These two young men were boarded in the house and lodged in a cabin hard by. At about the same time Robards became reconciled with his wife, and, having bought land in the neighborhood, came to dwell for a while at Mrs. Donelson's. Throughout life Jackson was noted alike for spotless purity and for a romantic and chivalrous respect for the female sex. In the presence of women his manner was always distinguished for grave and courtly politeness. This involuntary homage to woman was one of the finest and most winsome features in his character. As unconsciously rendered to Mrs. Robards, it was enough to revive the slumbering demon of jealousy in her husband. According to Overton's testimony, Jackson's conduct was irreproachable, but there were high words between him and Robards, and, not wishing to make further trouble, he changed his place of abode. After some months Capt. Robards left his wife and went to Kentucky, threatening by and by to return and “haunt her” and make her miserable. In the autumn of 1790 rumors of his intended return frightened Mrs. Robards, and determined her to visit some friends at distant Natchez in order to avoid him. In pursuance of this plan, with which the whole neighborhood seems to have concurred, she went down the river in company with the venerable Col. Stark and his family. As the Indians were just then on the war-path, Jackson accompanied the party with an armed escort, returning to Nashville as soon as he had seen his friends safely deposited at Natchez. While these things were going on, the proceedings of Capt. Robards were characterized by a sort of Machiavelian astuteness. In 1791 Kentucky was still a part of Virginia, and, according to the code of the Old Dominion, if a husband wished to obtain a divorce on account of his wife's alleged unfaithfulness, he must procure an act of the legislature empowering him to bring the case before a jury, and authorizing a divorce conditionally upon the jury's finding a verdict of guilty. Early in 1791 Robards obtained the preliminary act of the legislature upon his declaration, then false, that his wife had gone to live with Jackson. Robards deferred further action for more than two years. Meanwhile it was reported and believed in the west that a divorce had been granted, and, acting upon this report, Jackson, whose chivalrous interest in Mrs. Robards's misfortunes had ripened into sincere affection, went, in the summer of 1791, to Natchez and married her there, and brought her to his home at Nashville. In the autumn of 1793 Capt. Robards, on the strength of the facts that undeniably existed
