Rachel & Andrew Jackson
rachel's death nashville public television rachel andrew jackson a love story
Rachel Jackson died a month after Andrew Jackson was elected President. What should have been a time of celebration became a time of mourning.
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At first he refused to believe she was dead and asked servants to lay blankets across the dining room table in case she woke up and needed comfort or warmth. Her body was arranged so that Jackson could lie by her side the night she died. In the morning, a colleague found Jackson still sitting in the same position. He remained in the room nearly all the next day, and basically lost his voice. He was barely audible when he spoke for the first time at her funeral.

Jackson spoke first during the ritual and then Reverend William Hume delivered the eulogy. For the first time since her death Jackson broke down and tears ran freely down his cheeks. He quickly gained composure and returned to the house.

In the northeast room he spoke these words:

"Friends and neighbors, I thank you for the honor you have done to the sainted one whose remains now repose in yonder grave. She is now in the bliss of heaven, and I know that she can suffer here no more on earth. That is enough for my consolation; my loss is her gain. But I am left here without her to encounter the trails of life alone. I am now President of the United States and in a short time must take my way to the metropolis of my country; and, if it had been God's will, I would have been grateful for the privilege of taking her to my post of honor and seating her by my side; but Providence knew what was best for her. For myself, I bow to God's will, and go alone to the place of new and arduous duties, and I shall not go without friends to reward, and I pray God that I may not be allowed to have enemies to punish. I can forgive all who wronged me, but will have fervently to pray that I may have grace to enable me to forget or forgive my enemy who has ever maligned that blessed one who is now safe from all suffering and sorrow, whom they tried to put to shame for my sake!"

She was buried in her garden on Christmas eve. Some have said she was wearing the gown and white slippers she planned to wear to her husband's Inauguration. Jackson never fully recovered from her loss and mourned for Rachel the rest of his life. It is said that he carried around a miniature of her during his waking hours and at night he placed the portrait on his bedside table. He never remarried and was completely devoted to her memory.

After serving two presidential terms, Andrew Jackson returned to the house he and Rachel loved dearly. In his retirement at the Hermitage he spent time with family and friends. In 1838, he finally fulfilled a promise he had made to Rachel many years before. He became a practicing Christian and joined the local Presbyterian Church.

Andrew and Rachel's granddaughter, little Rachel said Andrew visited the garden and Rachel's tombstone every night. He also had her portrait hung above his bed so that she was the first thing he saw every morning when he woke up and last vision before going to sleep.

On June 8, 1845, at 78 years old, Jackson died in his bedroom at the Hermitage. He is buried in the garden next to his beloved Rachel.

DEATH OF MRS. JACKSON

We are called on this morning to announce an event of the most awful and melancholy nature. In the midst of preparation for festivity and mirth, the knell of death is heard and on the very day when it was arranged and expected that our town should be a scene of general rejoicing, we are suddenly checked in our career, and are called on to array ourselves in garments of solemnity and woe, MRS. RACHEL JACKSON, wife of General Andrew Jackson, President Elect of the United States, died last night at the Hermitage in this vicinity.

The intelligence of this awful and unlooked for event has created a shock in our community almost unparalleled. It was known, a few days since, that Mrs. Jackson was violently attacked by disease, which however, was supposed to have been checked so as to afford a prospect of immediate restoration to health. This day, being the anniversary of an interesting and important event in the last war, was appropriately selected to testify the respect and affection of his fellow citizens and neighbors to the man, who was so soon to leave his sweet domestic retirement, to assume the responsibilities and discharge the important duties of Chief Magistrate of the nation. The preparations were already made. The table was well nigh spread, at which all was expected to be hilarity and joy: and our citizens had sallied forth on the happy morning with spirits light and buoyant, and countenances glowing with animation and hope - when suddenly the scene is changed, congratulations are converted into expressions of condolence, tears are where, but a moment before, universal happiness and public rejoicing prevailed. But we have neither time nor room at present to indulge in further reflections on this melancholy occurrence. Let us submit with resignation and fortitude to the decrees, however afflicting, of a just and merciful, though mysterious and inscrutable Providence.

Letters and papers from Nashville, confirm the intelligence of the death of Mrs. Jackson, wife of Gen. Andrew Jackson, at the Hermitage, at 9 o'clock, on the evening of Dec. 22. Her death was quite unexpected at Nashville, though it is said she had been ill for some days. The nature of her disease is not stated. Preparations had been made for a splendid public dinner at Nashville, in honor of the General, on the 23d.

It is far from our wish to disturb the repose of the dead, or needlessly to inflict a wound on the feelings on the living. We would 'tread lightly' on the ashes of the lady whose decease is announced above and would gladly erase from our memory, and from the records that we may have been instrumental of giving to the world, any and every reflections upon the frailties and foibles of her early existence. Of these we have said less than some others, but we have probably said something. Of her maturer life—knowing nothing either for or against it—we have not presumed to speak. If called upon to say any thing, it would, from recent testimony, be decidedly favorable.

After saying thus much, we are constrained to remark, that the maxim, 'nil de mortuis nisi bonum,' seems to us to have been carried in the present case to an unwarrantable extent. We are content that newspaper editors should say nothing of the dead, if they cannot speak well—but that they should task their vocabulary, as on the demise of Mrs. Jackson they seem to have done, to furnish out the most high-sounding and superlative epithets to proclaim her exemplary virtues—and should, as the editors of the Boston Statesman and some other papers have done, dress their sheet in the habiliments of mourning—is at once derogatory to the fearless independence of a free press, and a wanton reflections upon real living worth and excellence. The standard of female character in our country can hardly be thought sufficiently elevated, if Mrs. Jackson, under the known circumstances of the case, is to be spoken of as exhibiting the most "exemplary virtues and exalted character"— or if the inflated panegyric of the Washington Telegraph—contrasted with the unpretending notice of thousands who in truth live and die Mrs. Jackson's superiors in every accomplishment— is to go forth to the world as the test of comparative merit. "A nation," says the Telegraph, "mourns in sympathy with her 'favorite' son. Society has lost one if its brightest ornaments. The friend of the widow and the orphan; the pious Christian, the amiable wife, the consort of Andrew Jackson is no more." But enough of such flummery. In plain truth, Mrs. Rachel Jackson is dead.