A BEING SO GENTLE

A scandalous marriage proves Old Hickory’s political scourge and emotional rock in this uncomplicated, accessible biography of the Jacksons.

Rachel Donelson and her family were early settlers to the newly opened-up frontier of Tennessee, then Kentucky, purchasing a large tract of land near Harrodsburg. Her early marriage to Capt. Lewis Robards in 1785 swiftly turned sour. Rachel was “a girl of spirit,” writes New Orleans–based historian Brady (Martha Washington: An American Life, 2005, etc.), and her new husband was jealous. A few years into her marriage, Rachel met Andrew Jackson, a fledgling lawyer from North Carolina who had gone West like many other brash, determined young men seeking their fortune. The couple eloped to Natchez, Miss., where they claimed to be married—yet Rachel was not yet divorced. This obfuscation would haunt Jackson’s career, especially when he ran for president in 1824. However, it was by all accounts a sweet match, as Brady demonstrates through Jackson’s ardent letters dispatched during his frequent absences from his wife. He moved from being attorney to attorney general, Tennessee state delegate, congressman, senator and governor of Florida, all while Rachel was largely left alone to run the house and farm. As Jackson’s star rose in the military, Rachel remained childless, stout, Presbyterian and capable, fond of smoking her pipe and supervising their growing homestead near Nashville, christened the Hermitage, for the next 17 years. Despite his reputation for violence, dueling and Wild West expansionism, Jackson was a great favorite of the public, and while he narrowly lost the 1824 election to John Quincy Adams, he gained the White House four years later. Rachel, sadly, would not live long enough to attend his inauguration.

Brady’s melodious account rarely digs beneath the official line in the lives of these two strong characters.