that he considered the short, stout, beaming matron at his side the
perfection of her sex and far and away the most charming woman in the
world."[4] "Aunt Rachel," as she was known throughout western
Tennessee, lived to see the hero of New Orleans elected President, but
not to share with him the honors of the position. "I have sometimes
thought," said Thomas Hart Benton, "that General Jackson might have
been a more equable tenant of the White House than he was had she been
spared to share it with him. At all events, she was the only human
being on earth who ever possessed the power to swerve his mighty will
or soothe his fierce temper."

Shortly before their departure the Jacksons were guests of honor at a
grand ball at the Academy. The upper floor was arranged for dancing
and the lower for supper, and the entire building was aglow with
flowers, colored lamps, and transparencies. As the evening wore on and
the dances of polite society had their due turn, the General finally
avowed that he and his bonny wife would show the proud city folk what
_real_ dancing was. A somewhat cynical observer--a certain Nolte, whom
Jackson had just forced to his own terms in a settlement for war
supplies--records his impression as follows: "After supper we were
treated to a most delicious _pas de deux_ by the conqueror and his
spouse. To see these two figures, the General, a long haggard man,
with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la Générale, a short fat
dumpling, bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to
the wild melody of _Possum up de Gum Tree_, and endeavoring to make a
spring into the air, was very remarkable, and far more edifying a
spectacle than any European ballet could possibly have furnished." But
Jackson was only less proud of his accomplishments as a dancer than as
a fighter, and it was the part of discretion for a man of Nolte's
critical turn to keep a straight face on this occasion.