Jackson

The two became close friends. Much of their
time was spent in horse-racing, cock-fighting-,
and carousing (Parton, post, 1860, I, 104, 108-
09). Certainly Jackson gained little knowledge
of Blackstone, but after two years of study, and
a brief stay in Martinsville, N. C, he and Mc-
Nairy in 1788 packed their horses and moved
along the slender trail which led to the trans-
montane West. Tradition has it that he arrived
at Jonesboro (now Tenn.) riding a fine horse
and leading another mount, with saddle-bags,
gun, pistols, and fox-hounds. This was elab-
orate equipment for a struggling young law-
yer, and within the year he increased it by the
purchase of a slave girl (John Allison, Dropped
Stitches in Tennessee History, 1897, pp. 8, 10).
Jackson and McNairy qualified to practise be-
fore the courts, but Jackson still found time to
engage in his favorite sport of horse-racing, and
he fought a bloodless duel with Waightstill
Avery, then the most famous lawyer in western
North Carolina. All this makes it clear that the
young man had set himself up in the world as a
"gentleman." Frontiersmen normally fought with
their fists rather than with pistols, and prided
themselves more upon physical prowess than
upon manners. Though commonly looked upon
as a typical Westerner, Jackson was ever an aris-
tocrat at heart.

In the fall of 1788 the first wagon road from
the vicinity of Jonesboro to the infant town of
Nashville was opened by the militia, and the
two budding attorneys were of the first party to
traverse the new highway. McNairy had been
appointed judge of the superior court of the new
jurisdiction, and Jackson accompanied his friend,
doubtless hoping to profit from the association.
On reaching Nashville, then a stockaded village
of log cabins, the young lawyer found lodging
with the widow of Col. John Donelson, a wealthy
and prominent land speculator from Virginia
and one of the founders of Nashville. In the
home of his widow was another lawyer-lodger,
named John Overton, and the daughter of the
house, Rachel, who had made an unfortunate
marriage to Lewis Robards. Overton was a well-
connected young man from Virginia, and he and
Jackson became lifelong friends. Jackson was
also attracted to Rachel Robards, and their friend-
ship led to divorce from her jealous husband,
By reason of misapprehension they were married
two years before the decree of divorce was grant-
ed, and a long-lived scandal was the result A
second marriage ceremony was, of course, nec-
essary. Jackson had married into a family far
superior to his own socially, and he reaped no
small benefit from this tie. Though of good

Jackson

birth, Rachel had been reared in the wilderness
and consequently was almost illiterate and with-
out training in the niceties of social usage. Jack-
son was attached to her with romantic devotion
throughout his life. They had no children, but
he adopted his wife's nephew, who in his foster
father's will was called Andrew Jackson, Jr.

While establishing himself in such personal
ways, Jackson was also engaged in establishing
himself in business. He secured a ready practice
in the collection of debts, and McNairy appoint-
ed him prosecuting attorney for the district In
1790 North Carolina ceded her western country
to the United States, and William Blount, pow-
erful in North Carolina politics, was appoined
governor, Blount was wealthy and prominent;
Jackson was an unknown backwoods lawyer. But
the two became acquainted shortly after Blount's
appointment. A man situated as was the Gov-
ernor needed energetic young lawyers in his ad-
ministration, and Jackson probably facilitated his
own introduction. In 1791 he was given the same
appointment under the territorial government
that he had held under North Carolina, and soon
was also appointed judge-advocate of the David-
son County militia regiment ("Governor Blount's
Journal," American Historical Magazine, Nash-
ville, July 1897, pp. 234,247). Strangely enough,
this was the only military office which Jackson
held until he became a major-general of Ten-
nessee militia in 1802. Land was the great com-
modity of the West and land speculation the
most obvious avenue to riches. Being an enter-
prising, ambitious young man, Jackson bought
and sold many thousand acres. His transactions
in two instances at least were extremely equivo-
cal, one of them gaining him an airing before the
United States Senate (T. P. Abernethy, From
Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee, 1932, pp.
262-76). Among other purchases was that of the
"Hermitage" tract, where he made his home and
lived the life of a cotton planter after 1795. He
established a store nearby where he exchanged
manufactured articles from Philadelphia for cot-
ton and peltry, which he shipped to New Or-
leans.

When Tennessee was admitted as a state in
1796, Jackson sat as a delegate in the convention
which framed its first constitution. The fact that
he was placed upon the committee which was
appointed to draw up a frame of government was
a recognition of his professional qualifications.
The constitution of North Carolina was followed
as a model, but the drafting committee omitted
from the new* instrument the clause in the older
document requiring all officials tinder the state
to believe in God, in a future state of rewards

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