Shortly before their departure the Jacksons were guests of honor at a grand ball at the Academy.  The upper floor was arranged for dancing and the lower for supper, and the entire building was aglow with flowers, colored lamps, and transparencies.  As the evening wore on and the dances of polite society had their due turn, the General finally avowed that he and his bonny wife would show the proud city folk what real dancing was.  A somewhat cynical observer—­a certain Nolte, whom Jackson had just forced to his own terms in a settlement for war supplies—­records his impression as follows:  “After supper we were treated to a most delicious pas de deux by the conqueror and his spouse.  To see these two figures, the General, a long haggard man, with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la Generale, a short fat dumpling, bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild melody of Possum up de Gum Tree, and endeavoring to make a spring into the air, was very remarkable, and far more edifying a spectacle than any European ballet could possibly have furnished.”  But Jackson was only less proud of his accomplishments as a dancer than as a fighter, and it was the part of discretion for a man of Nolte’s critical turn to keep a straight face on this occasion.

In early April the General and his wife started homeward, the latter bearing as a parting gift from the women of New Orleans the somewhat gaudy set of topaz jewelry which she wears in her most familiar portrait.  The trip was a continuous ovation, and at Nashville a series of festivities wound up with a banquet attended by the most distinguished soldiers and citizens of Tennessee and presided over by the Governor of the State.  Other cities gave dinners, and legislatures voted swords and addresses.  A period of rest at the Hermitage was interrupted in the autumn of 1815 by a horseback trip to Washington which involved a succession of dinners and receptions.  But after a few months the much feted soldier was back at Nashville, ready, as he said, to “resume the cultivation of that friendly intercourse with my friends and neighbors which has heretofore constituted so great a portion of my happiness.”

After Jackson had talked over his actions at New Orleans with both the President and the Secretary of War, he had received, as he says, “a chart blank,” approving his “whole proceedings”; so he had nothing further to worry about on that score.  The national army had been reorganized on a peace footing, in two divisions, each under command of a major general.  The northern division fell to Jacob Brown of New York, the hero of Lundy’s Lane; the southern fell to Jackson, with headquarters at Nashville.