230 ANDREW JACKSON 



prisoner to Camden and nearly starved there, and how 

 a brutal officer had cut him with a sword because he 

 refused to clean his boots ; these reminiscences kept 

 alive his hatred for the British, and doubtless gave 

 unction to the tremendous blow that he dealt them at 

 New Orleans. In 1781, left quite alone in the world, 

 he was apprenticed for a while to a saddler. At one 

 time he is said to have done a little teaching in an 

 "old-field school." At the age of eighteen he entered 

 the law office of Spruce McCay in Salisbury. While 

 there he was said to have been " the most roaring, 

 rollicking, game-cocking, horse-racing, card-playing, 

 mischievous fellow " that had ever been seen in that 

 town. Many and plentiful were the wild-oat crops 

 sown at that time ; and in such sort of agriculture 

 young Jackson seems to have been more proficient 

 than in the study of jurisprudence. But in that 

 frontier society a small amount of legal knowledge 

 went a good way, and in 1 788 he was appointed public 

 prosecutor for the western district of North Carolina, 

 the district since erected into the state of Tennessee. 

 The emigrant wagon train in which Jackson journeyed 

 to Nashville carried news of the ratification of the 

 federal Constitution by the requisite two-thirds of the 

 states. He seems soon to have found business enough. 

 In the April term of 1790, out of 192 cases on the 

 dockets of the county court at Nashville, Jackson was 

 employed as counsel in 42. In the year 1794, out of 

 397 cases he acted as counsel in 228, while at the 

 same time he was practising his profession in the 

 courts of other counties. The great number of these 

 cases is an indication of their trivial character. As a 

 general rule they were either actions growing out of 



