kind. It terminated when he went to sea, at the age of twelve, but he supplied its defects by subsequent study, so as to enable himself to write with fluency, strength and clearness, and to sustain his part respectably in the polished society into which he was thrown. In his letters, he inculcates the necessity of knowledge for naval officers, and intimates that he had devoted 'midnight studies' to the attainment of that information which he deemed requisite in his situation. His memorials, correspondence, etc., are quite voluminous. He also wrote poetry, and in Paris was a great pretender to ton, as a man of fashion, especially after his victory over the Serapis, which, of course, gave him great eclat amongst the ladies of the French capital. At this period, he is described by an English lady then resident of Paris, as 'a smart little man of thirty-six; speaks but little French, and appears to be an extraordinary genius, a poet as well as a hero.' An account of his life has been written by J. H. Sherburne (Washington, 1828).
GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON.
General Andrew Jackson was born on the 15th of March, 1767, at
the Waxsaw settlement, in South Carolina. His parents emigrated to this
country, two years previously, from the north of Ireland. He lost his
father at a very early age; and the task of bringing him up devolved
exclusively upon his mother. Intending him, it is said, to become a clergyman,
she resolved, though restricted in her pecuniary circumstances, to
give him a liberal education. For this purpose, she placed him at an
academy, where he continued until his studies were interrupted by the
advance of the British troops into the neighborhood, during the revolutionary
war. Young as he was (scarcely 14 years of age), in company with
an elder brother, he joined the American army. Before long, however,
they had the misfortune of being made prisoners by the enemy, who maltreated
them as rebels, and inflicted upon them injuries of which the
brother died after having been exchanged. Andrew Jackson commenced
the study of the law at Salisbury, in North Carolina, in the winter of
1784, and was admitted to the bar in 1786. In 1788, he removed to
Nashville, then a new settlement in the western district of North Carolina.
This district having been ceded to the United States, and organized into a
territory in 1790, he was appointed to the office of United States' attorney;
and when the territory, in its turn, in 1796 became the state of Tennessee,
he was a member of the convention to frame a constitution for it,
and took a conspicuous part in the proceedings of this body. He was
immediately afterwards chosen a representative, and in the next year a
senator, in Congress. But his seat in the Senate he held only for a single
session, alleging, as a reason for resigning it, his distaste for the intrigues
of politics. On this, he was appointed by the Legislature of Tennessee to
be a judge of the Supreme Court of that state; an office which he accepted
with reluctance, and from which he soon retired to his farm on the Cumberland
river, near Nashville. And there he continued to reside till the
breaking out of the war with Great Britain, in 1812. During the earlier
part of his residence in Tennessee, General Jackson had repeatedly distinguished
himself by his prowess, in the warfare carried on by the settlers
with their Indian neighbors, and had even earned from the latter, by his
