Read Online Andrew Jackson by H.W. Brands - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: H.W. Brands
Tags: Fiction
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you forget the plainness of his features.
When he was calm he talked slowly and with very good selected language. But if animated by anything, then he would talk fast and with a very marked North-Irish brogue, which he got from his mother and the Crawfords who raised him—all of whom grew to maturity in the old country. But either calm or animated, there was always something about him I cannot describe except to say that it was a presence , or a kind of majesty I never saw in any other young man.
E very culture has its founding myth, its tale of how it came to be. For those peoples who fancy themselves forever in place, this often includes an account of the creation of the world. For others it involves how they got to where they are. The journeys entail hardship and loss; not everyone reaches the promised land. But those who do get there live on in the collective consciousness.
The founding myth of middle Tennessee was the story of an epic boat trip down the Holston and Tennessee rivers and then up the Ohio and Cumberland. The leader of the journey was John Donelson, a Virginian with a wife, eleven children, and a fervent belief that fortune awaited him if he only knew where to look. In 1779 Donelson guided a boat he called the Adventure and some thirty or forty other craft carrying perhaps sixty families, including his own, to a valley in the heart of the trans-Appalachian wilderness, hundreds of miles from anything that passed for civilization. Donelson had visited the Cumberland Valley and decided that the soil in the river bend near the Big Salt Lick was as fine as any in North America. He arranged with James Robertson, another Virginian, to establish a colony there. Robertson would take a small party overland to ready the way for the larger group, which Donelson would direct, with all their worldly possessions, by water.
The river journey began at Fort Patrick Henry, on the western slope of the Blue Ridge. The demands of the harvest had kept these farm families working till late autumn, and preparations for the journey delayed them further, so that they got off only three days before Christmas 1779, when the cold weather had already set in. “Took our departure from the fort,” Donelson wrote in his journal of the voyage, “and fell down the river to the mouth of Reedy creek, where we were stopped by the fall of water and most excessive hard frost.”
For two months the emigrant fleet struggled with the cold and the winter’s low water. Rain eventually raised the river but created problems of its own. “Rain about half the day,” Donelson recorded on March 2, 1780. “About twelve o’clock Mr. Henry’s boat, being driven on the point of an island by the force of the current, was sunk, the whole cargo much damaged, and the crew’s lives much endangered, which occasioned the whole fleet to put on shore and go to their assistance.” Vessel, crew, and cargo were rescued with difficulty. And amid the excitement one member of the expedition, a young man, wandered off and didn’t return, “though many guns were fired to fetch him in.” For three days the young man stayed missing—“to the great grief of his parents”—till Donelson felt obliged to order the flotilla on. Luckily the lad, realizing he was lost, headed downstream and caught the last boats before they disappeared into the west. Two days later the bitter cold returned, claiming the life of one of the Negro slaves. The day after that, a woman of the expedition bore a child.
Indians were a constant danger. They threatened the main body of the fleet and preyed on those who became separated. Donelson described the “tragical misfortune of poor Stuart, his family and friends, to the number of twenty-eight persons.” A member of the Stuart group had come down with smallpox, whereupon Donelson decreed that they should follow the main body at a distance, keeping a kind of floating quarantine. This turned out to be their death sentence. “The
When he was calm he talked slowly and with very good selected language. But if animated by anything, then he would talk fast and with a very marked North-Irish brogue, which he got from his mother and the Crawfords who raised him—all of whom grew to maturity in the old country. But either calm or animated, there was always something about him I cannot describe except to say that it was a presence , or a kind of majesty I never saw in any other young man.
E very culture has its founding myth, its tale of how it came to be. For those peoples who fancy themselves forever in place, this often includes an account of the creation of the world. For others it involves how they got to where they are. The journeys entail hardship and loss; not everyone reaches the promised land. But those who do get there live on in the collective consciousness.
The founding myth of middle Tennessee was the story of an epic boat trip down the Holston and Tennessee rivers and then up the Ohio and Cumberland. The leader of the journey was John Donelson, a Virginian with a wife, eleven children, and a fervent belief that fortune awaited him if he only knew where to look. In 1779 Donelson guided a boat he called the Adventure and some thirty or forty other craft carrying perhaps sixty families, including his own, to a valley in the heart of the trans-Appalachian wilderness, hundreds of miles from anything that passed for civilization. Donelson had visited the Cumberland Valley and decided that the soil in the river bend near the Big Salt Lick was as fine as any in North America. He arranged with James Robertson, another Virginian, to establish a colony there. Robertson would take a small party overland to ready the way for the larger group, which Donelson would direct, with all their worldly possessions, by water.
The river journey began at Fort Patrick Henry, on the western slope of the Blue Ridge. The demands of the harvest had kept these farm families working till late autumn, and preparations for the journey delayed them further, so that they got off only three days before Christmas 1779, when the cold weather had already set in. “Took our departure from the fort,” Donelson wrote in his journal of the voyage, “and fell down the river to the mouth of Reedy creek, where we were stopped by the fall of water and most excessive hard frost.”
For two months the emigrant fleet struggled with the cold and the winter’s low water. Rain eventually raised the river but created problems of its own. “Rain about half the day,” Donelson recorded on March 2, 1780. “About twelve o’clock Mr. Henry’s boat, being driven on the point of an island by the force of the current, was sunk, the whole cargo much damaged, and the crew’s lives much endangered, which occasioned the whole fleet to put on shore and go to their assistance.” Vessel, crew, and cargo were rescued with difficulty. And amid the excitement one member of the expedition, a young man, wandered off and didn’t return, “though many guns were fired to fetch him in.” For three days the young man stayed missing—“to the great grief of his parents”—till Donelson felt obliged to order the flotilla on. Luckily the lad, realizing he was lost, headed downstream and caught the last boats before they disappeared into the west. Two days later the bitter cold returned, claiming the life of one of the Negro slaves. The day after that, a woman of the expedition bore a child.
Indians were a constant danger. They threatened the main body of the fleet and preyed on those who became separated. Donelson described the “tragical misfortune of poor Stuart, his family and friends, to the number of twenty-eight persons.” A member of the Stuart group had come down with smallpox, whereupon Donelson decreed that they should follow the main body at a distance, keeping a kind of floating quarantine. This turned out to be their death sentence. “The
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