FRONTIERSMAN AND SOLDIER 237 



fined the expenditure of public money to the specific 

 objects for which each sum was appropriated." 



Three such votes as that, in one Congress, make a 

 noble record. Another vote, foolish in itself, was 

 characteristic of a representative from the backwoods. 

 It was against the presumed extravagance of appro- 

 priating $14,00x3 to buy furniture for the newly built 

 White House. Jackson's course throughout was 

 warmly approved by his constituents, and in the fol- 

 lowing summer he was chosen to fill a vacancy in the 

 federal Senate. Of his conduct as senator little is 

 known beyond the remark made by Jefferson in 1824 

 to Daniel Webster, that he had often, when presiding 

 in the Senate, seen the passionate Jackson get up 

 to speak and then choke with rage so that he could 

 not utter a word. One need not wonder at this if one 

 remembers what was the subject most frequently 

 brought up for discussion in the Senate during the 

 winter of 1797-1798. The outrageous insolence of the 

 French Directory was enough to arouse the wrath of 

 a far tamer and less patriotic spirit than Jackson's. 

 It is almost enough to make one choke with rage now, 

 in reading about it after one hundred years. At any 

 rate it is enough to make one rejoice that, although 

 war was never declared, the gallant Truxton did, pres- 

 ently, in two well-fought naval battles, inflict crush- 

 ing and galling defeat upon the haughty tricolour. 

 Those were the days when the new nation in America 

 was deemed so weak that anybody might insult it 

 with impunity, and France and England vied with 

 each other in bullying and teasing us. Under such 

 treatment it was hard to maintain prudence. Wash- 



