not at all, and he seems to have made no considerable impression upon his colleagues.  Gallatin later described him as “a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman.”  And Jefferson is represented as saying of Jackson to Webster at Monticello in 1824:  “His passions are terrible.  When I was president of the Senate he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings.  I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage.”

Return to Tennessee meant, however, only a transfer from one branch of the public service to another, for the ex-Senator was promptly appointed to a judgeship of the state supreme court at a salary of six hundred dollars a year.  The position he found not uncongenial and he retained it for six years.  Now, as earlier, Jackson’s ignorance of law was somewhat compensated by his common sense, courage, and impartiality; and while only one of his decisions of this period is extant, Parton reports that the tradition of fifty years ago represented them as short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes ungrammatical, but generally right.  The daily life of Jackson as a frontier judge was hardly less active and exciting than it had been when he was a prosecuting attorney.  There were long and arduous horseback journeys “on circuit”; ill-tempered persons often threatened, and sometimes attempted, to deal roughly with the author of an unfavorable decision; occasionally it was necessary to lay aside his dignity long enough to lend a hand in capturing or controlling a desperate character.  For example, on arriving once in a settlement Jackson found that a powerful blacksmith had committed a crime and that the sheriff dared not arrest him.  “Summon me,” said the judge; whereupon he walked down from the bench, found the culprit, led him into court, and sentenced him.

In 1804 Jackson resigned his judgeship in order to give exclusive attention again to his private affairs.  He had fallen badly into debt, and his creditors were pressing him hard.  One expedient after another failed, and finally Hunter’s Hill had to be given up.  He saved enough from the wreck, however, to purchase a small plantation eight miles from Nashville; and there, after several years of financial rehabilitation, he erected the handsome brick house which the country came subsequently to know as “The Hermitage.”  In partnership with two of his wife’s relatives, Jackson had opened a store in which, even while still a member of the highest tribunal of the State, he not infrequently passed tea and salt and calico over the counter to his neighbors.  In small trading, however, he was not adept, and the store failed.  Nevertheless, from 1804 until 1813 he successfully combined with planting and the stock-raising business enterprises of a larger sort, especially slave and horse dealing.  His debts paid off, he now became one of the most prosperous, as he already was one of the most influential, men of the Cumberland country.