strictly belong to it. The cancelled passages were especially important in Chapters VIII., IX., and X. of the first edition. The great number of excellent works which have been added to the literature of American history within sixteen years make these passages less necessary. On the whole, therefore, I have curtailed the history and extended the biography.. YALE UNIVERSITY, October, 1898. W. G. SUMNER. CHAP. CONTENTS 1. West India Trade; 2. Spoliation Claims; 3. Federal Judiciary; 4. Indians; 5. Public Lands; ANDREW JACKSON CHAPTER I THE FIRST FORTY-FIVE YEARS OF JACKSON'S LIFE IN the middle of the last century a number of Scotchmen and Scotch-Irishmen migrated to the uplands of North and South Carolina. Among these was Andrew Jackson, who came over in 1765, with his wife and two sons, being accompanied also by several neighbors and connections from Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Ireland. They appear to have been led to the spot at which they settled, on the upper waters of the Catawba river, by the fact that persons of their acquaintance in Ireland had previously found their way thither, under special inducements which were offered to immigrants. The settlement was called the Waxhaw Settlement, and was in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, but close to the South Carolina 1 2 Hewitt, 13, 268, 272. A bounty was offered equal to the cost of passage. Ship captains became immigration agents. For the full titles of books referred to, see the list at the end of the volume. boundary. Andrew Jackson had no capital, and never became an owner of land. In 1767 he died. His son Andrew was born within a few days of the father's death, March 15, 1767. Parton fixes his birthplace in Union County, North Carolina; Kendall in South Carolina. In Jackson's Proclamation of 1832, in a letter of December 24, 1830,1 and in his will, he speaks of himself as a native of South Carolina. It appears that Andrew Jackson's mother abandoned the settlement which her husband had commenced, and it is probable that she owed much to the assistance of her relatives and connections while Andrew was a child. Circumstances of birth more humble than those of this child can scarcely be imagined. It was not, probably, hard to sustain life in such a frontier community. Coarse food was abundant; but to get more out of life than beasts get when they have enough to eat was no doubt very difficult. The traditions of Jackson's education are vague and uncertain. Of book-learning and school-training he appears to have got very little indeed. The population of the district was heterogeneous, and, when the Revolutionary War broke out, the differences of nationality and creed divided the people by opposing sympathies as to the war. The English penetrated the district several times in the hope of winning recruits and strengthening the tories. On one of these raids Andrew Jackson 1 39 Niles, 385. |