When about to emigrate to Tennessee, the family were residing in the neighborhood of Greensboro, North Carolina.

“I had,” said he, “contemplated this step for some months, and had made my arrangements to do so, and at length had obtained my mother’s consent to it.  All my worldly goods were a few dollars in my purse, some clothes in my saddle-bags, a pretty good horse, saddle, and bridle.  The country to which I was going was comparatively a wilderness, and the trip a long one, beset by many difficulties, especially from the Indians.  I felt, and so did my mother, that we were parting forever.  I knew she would not recall her promise; there was too much spunk in her for that, and this caused me to linger a day or two longer than I had intended.

“But the time came for the painful parting.  My mother was a little, dumpy, red-headed Irish woman.  ’Well, mother, I am ready to leave, and I must say farewell.’  She took my hand, and pressing it, said, ‘Farewell,’ and her emotion choked her.

“Kissing at meetings and partings in that day was not so common as now.  I turned from her and walked rapidly to my horse.

“As I was mounting him, she came out of the cabin wiping her eyes with her apron, and came to the getting-over place at the fence.  ‘Andy,’ said she, (she always called me Andy,) ’you are going to a new country, and among a rough people; you will have to depend on yourself and cut your own way through the world.  I have nothing to give you but a mother’s advice.  Never tell a lie, nor take what is not your own, nor sue anybody for slander or assault and battery. Always settle them cases yourself!’ I promised, and I have tried to keep that promise.  I rode off some two hundred yards, to a turn in the path, and looked back—­she was still standing at the fence and wiping her eyes.  I never saw her after that.”  Those who knew him best will testify to his fidelity to this last promise made his mother.

The strong common sense and unbending will of Jackson soon made him conspicuous in his new home, and very soon he was in active practice as a lawyer.  His prominence was such, that during the last year of the last term of General Washington’s Administration, a vacancy occurring in the United States Senate from Tennessee, General Jackson was appointed to fill it.  He was occupying this seat when General Washington retired from the Presidency, and, with William B. Giles, of Virginia, voted against a resolution of thanks tendered by Congress to Washington, for his services to the country.  For this vote he gave no reason at the time; and if he ever did, it has escaped my knowledge.

The career of General Jackson, as a public man, is so well known, that it is not my purpose to review it in this place; but many incidents of his private history have come to my knowledge from an association with those who were intimate with him, from his first arrival in Tennessee.  These, or so many of them as I deem of interest enough to the public, I propose to relate.