General Jackson successively showed us his garden and farm, which appeared to be well cultivated. We every where remarked the greatest order, and most perfect neatness; and we might have believed ourselves on the property of one of the richest and most skilful of the German farmers, if, at every step, our eyes had not been afflicted by the sad spectacle of slavery. Every body told us that General Jackson’s slaves were treated with the greatest humanity, and several persons assured us, that it would not surprise them, if, in a short time, their master, who already had so many claims on the gratitude of his fellow citizens, should attempt to augment it still more, by giving an example of gradual emancipation to Tennessee, which would be the more easily accomplished, as there are in this state but 79,000 slaves in a population of 423,000, and from the public mind becoming more inclined than formerly to the abolition of slavery.
On returning to the house, some friends of General Jackson, who probably had not seen him for some time, begged him to show them the arms presented to him in honour of his achievements during the last war; he acceded to their request with great politeness, and placed on a table, a sword, a sabre, and a pair of pistols. The sword was presented to him by congress; the sabre, I believe, by the army which fought under his command at New Orleans. These two weapons, of American manufacture, were remarkable for their finish, and still more so for the honourable inscriptions, with which they were covered. But it was to the pistols, that General Jackson wished more particularly to draw our attention; he handed them to General Lafayette, and asked him if he recognized them. The latter, after examining them attentively for a few minutes, replied that he fully recollected them, to be a pair he had presented in 1778 to his paternal friend Washington, and that he experienced a real satisfaction in finding them in the hands of one so worthy of possessing them. At these words the face of old Hickory was covered with a modest blush, and his eye sparkled as in a day of victory. “Yes! I believe myself worthy of them,” exclaimed he, in pressing the pistols and Lafayette’s hands to his breast; “if not from what I have done, at least for what I wished to do for my country.” All the bystanders applauded this noble confidence of the patriot hero, and were convinced that the weapons of Washington could not be in better hands than those of Jackson.