some knowledge of the law and was ready to begin life for himself.

In deciding where to open his office the young man's love of wild life and adventure induced him to leave the Carolinas and cross the mountains into Tennessee, then being settled. The journey was made on foot with a party of pioneers, who travelled nearly five hundred miles over the mountains and through the dense forests until they reached the little settlement on the Cumberland River which has grown into the city of Nashville.

The journey was one full of peril. The acts of lawless whites had made the Indians bitterly hostile, and safety was only to be found in wide-awake vigilance. On one occasion the party was saved by the alertness of the young lawyer. When the others had gone to sleep in the night camp, Andrew sat up by the fire smoking his pipe, and as he did so the hooting of owls around the camp attracted his attention. One especially loud hoot struck him as suspicious. He listened a while longer, then quietly roused some of the men, saying, "Indians are all around us. I have heard their signals on every side. They mean to attack us before daybreak."

The remainder of the party were quietly awakened and they moved away to a safer locality. Soon after they had gone a party of hunters came to their deserted camp and went to sleep there. Shortly before daybreak they were attacked by the Indians and only one of them escaped. Jackson's keenness and caution had saved the lives of his party.

Opening his office in Nashville, Jackson was soon appointed public prosecutor of the district. The office was one of small pay, little honor, and great peril, and

one which few were ready to accept. It was not a popular thing in that frontier region to be engaged in punishing the breakers of the law. People carried weapons everywhere and did not hesitate to use them even in the courts. In going from place to place to attend court, or in debt-collecting excursions, he was in danger alike from desperadoes and Indians.

had many escapes from deadly peril, but his fearless. disposition and his native caution carried him through and he won the reputation of being one of the ablest and most daring of the men in that wilderness region.

When Jackson reached Nashville the new Constitution of the United States had recently been adopted and it was expected that Washington would be elected President. The new Territory of Tennessee grew and Jackson with it, he making much money by purchasing large tracts of land and selling them off to the settlers. In 1796 Tennessee was made a State and the people showed their appreciation of him by electing him as their first representative to Congress. He rode to Philadelphia on horseback, and on entering the halls of Congress was stared at as a genuine oddity. He is thus described: "A tall, lank, uncouth personage, with lots of hair around his face, and a queue down his back tied with an eelskin, his dress singular, his manner and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman." He was a new sort of customer to appear among the polished members of Congress.

But he seemed to have won great favor in his own State, for he was soon after elected to the United States Senate, and carried his eelskin queue into its dignified halls. He probably found this body much too dignified for a man of his frontier habits, for he did not stay long in the Senate, leaving it to become a

justice of the supreme court of Tennessee. It was a long step upward from the lawless habits of his boyhood to be thus judged worthy the highest honors of his State.

We may pass over the story of Jackson's marriage to Mrs. Robards, a divorced woman, who made him one of the best of wives; and of his giving up the judgeship and becoming a storekeeper. His hot temper grew no cooler as time passed on, but went with him through his various occupations and led him into many brawls and not a few duels, which were very common in the West in those days.

One of the worst of his affrays came from a duel between William Carroll and Jesse Benton, in which Jackson was Carroll's second. Benton was severely wounded, and his brother, Colonel Thomas H. Benton, afterwards a famous senator, was furious at Jackson, on whom he had conferred favors. Jackson met the Bentons in a tavern soon after and a fight took place in which Jackson was terribly wounded, his arm and shoulder being horribly shattered by two balls and a slug from Jesse Benton's pistol.

It was an unfortunate affair for Jackson, for the war with Great Britain was now going on and his services were soon demanded. He had raised twentyfive hundred troops for the needs of the Government early in the war, but their aid was not called for until late in 1813, when the Creek Indians broke out in insurrection, attacked the settlers and murdered all the people in Fort Mimms, Alabama. Action, quick and vigorous, was needed, but Jackson, the leading military man of the State, was then stretched a wan and haggard invalid upon his bed, slowly recovering from his terrible wounds.

The news lifted him at once from his bed. With his arm in a sling, the wounded bones just beginning to heal, and needing to be fairly lifted to his horse, he took hold of the situation with extraordinary energy, and soon had a force in the field, with orders to rendezvous at Fayetteville, on the Alabama border. Here he joined them, weak from his wounds, scarce able to sit on his horse, but resolute as a Titan. After much marching and fighting, on the 27th of March, 1814, he attacked the Indians in their well-fortified stronghold on the Tallapoosa River, where a desperate battle took place, the savages being defeated so utterly that hardly a man of them escaped. The blow was a terrible one and forced the warriors to beg for peace. Jackson's prompt energy and quick success showed the people that in him they had a soldier of marked ability, and in May he was made a major-general in the army of the United States.

Throughout the whole campaign he had suffered terribly from his wounds, often undergoing agony, and leading his men like a pale and haggard spectre, only kept in the saddle by his indomitable energy. By the later months of the year he had fairly well recovered, and his services were demanded in the most momentous event of his life. The British had determined to try and take New Orleans and Jackson was ordered to collect an army and defend that city.

The British expedition was a formidable one. It consisted of sixty ships, carrying a thousand cannon, manned by nearly nine thousand sailors and marines while it transported ten thousand veteran soldiers from the Napoleonic wars. Jackson's army consisted of little more than four thousand men, raw as troops, but many of them skilled marksmen of the frontier.

New Orleans at that time contained about twenty thousand people, and many of these were made use of in the defence. Jackson himself was still feeble, but his old resolute will kept him in the field.

The British landed on the 10th of December, 1814, and marched from Lake Borgne toward the city, coming on slowly and cautiously, and not reaching the city front until the 23d. The delay gave Jackson time to throw up a line of intrenchments, in which he freely used the cotton bales from the city warehouses. The British used sugar hogsheads from the plantation storehouses for the same purpose.

Several fierce encounters took place and it was soon found that cotton bales and sugar hogsheads could not stand against cannon. They were replaced with earth. Pakenham, the British commander, made his first vigorous attack on the 28th, eight thousand veterans marching against the less than three thousand militia then behind Jackson's works. The British advanced with rolling drums and resolute men, but they were facing riflemen who knew how to make every shot tell, and the redcoats were hurled back like the shattered ranks at Bunker Hill.

Other assaults were made, the final one on January 8. It was a terrible scene. The British fought like heroes, but it was impossible to face the storm of bullets and cannon balls that rent their ranks. In a brief time it was all over, the British had lost their commander and twenty-six hundred men in killed, wounded and prisoners. Jackson's whole loss was the surprisingly small one of eight killed and thirteen wounded. Not long afterwards the news reached 'America that a treaty of peace had been signed at