Out Against Tarleton
Andrew Jackson was little more than thirteen, when the British Tarleton with his dragoons, thundered along the red roads of the Waxhaws, and dyed them a deeper red with the blood of the surprised Patriot Militia. For Tarleton fell upon the Waxhaws settlement, and killed one hundred and thirteen of the Militia, and wounded a hundred and fifty more.
The wounded men were abandoned to the care of the settlers, and quartered in the cabins, and in the old log Waxhaw meeting-house, which was turned into a hospital.
Andrew’s mother was one of the kind women who nursed the soldiers in the meeting-house. Andrew and his brother Robert assisted her in waiting upon them. Andrew, more in rage than pity, though pitiful by nature, burned to avenge their wounds and his brother’s death. For his eldest brother, Hugh, had mounted his horse the year before, and ridden southward to join the Patriot forces. He had fought gallantly, and had died bravely.
Tarleton’s massacre at the Waxhaws, had kindled the flames of war in all that region of the Carolinas. The time was now come when Andrew and Robert were to play men’s parts. Carrying their own weapons, they mounted their grass ponies—ponies of the South Carolina swamps, rough, Shetlandish, wild—and rode away to join the patriots.
Andrew and Robert served in a number of actions, and were finally taken captive.
They were at length rescued by their mother. This heroic woman arrived at their prison, and by her efforts and entreaties, succeeded in bringing about an exchange of prisoners.
Andrew and Robert were brought out of prison and handed over to her. She gazed at them in astonishment and horror,—so worn and wasted the boys were with hunger, wounds, and disease. They were both ill with the smallpox. Robert could not stand, nor even sit on horseback without support.
Two horses were procured. One, Mrs. Jackson rode herself. Robert was placed on the other, and held in his seat by some of the prisoners to whom Mrs. Jackson had just given liberty.
Behind the sad procession poor Andrew dragged his weak and weary limbs, bare-headed, bare-footed, without a jacket, his only two garments torn and dirty.
The forty miles of lonely wilderness to the Waxhaws were nearly traversed, and the fevered boys were expecting in two hours more, to enjoy the comfort of home, when a chilly, drenching rain set in. The smallpox had reached that stage when a violent chill proves wellnigh fatal. The boys reached home and went to bed.
In two days Robert Jackson was dead, while Andrew was a raving maniac. But the mother’s nursing and his own strong constitution brought Andrew out of his peril, and set him on the way to slow recovery.
James Parton (Retold)