taste for books, although vanity prompted him to treasure throughout
his public career all correspondence and other documentary materials
that might be of use to future biographers. Indeed, he picked as a
biographer first his military aide, John Reid, and later his close
friend, John H. Eaton, whom he had the satisfaction in 1829 of
appointing Secretary of War.

When the Revolution came, young Andrew was a boy of ten. For a time
the Carolina backwoods did not greatly feel the effect of the change.
But in the spring of 1780 all of the revolutionary troops in South
Carolina were captured at Charleston, and the lands from the sea to
the mountains were left at the mercy of Tarleton's and Rawdon's bands
of redcoats and their Tory supporters. Twice the Waxhaw settlement was
ravaged before the patriots could make a stand. Young Jackson
witnessed two battles in 1780, without taking part in them, and in the
following year he, a brother, and a cousin were taken prisoners in a
skirmish. To the day of his death Jackson bore on his head and hand
the marks of a saber blow administered by a British lieutenant whose
jack boots he refused to polish. When an exchange of prisoners was
made, Mrs. Jackson secured the release of her two boys, but not until
after they had contracted smallpox in Camden jail. The older one died,
but the younger, though reduced to a skeleton, survived. Already the
third brother had given up his life in battle; and the crowning
disaster came when the mother, going as a volunteer to nurse the
wounded Waxhaw prisoners on the British vessels in Charleston harbor,
fell ill of yellow fever and perished. Small wonder that Andrew
Jackson always hated the British uniform, or that when he sat in the
executive chair an anti-British feeling colored all of his dealings
with foreign nations!