Another anecdote of the period represents him engaged with boon companions in a carousal, which lasted throughout the night and wound up with a general smashing of all the furniture in the room.
A flood of light is poured upon his standing with the “unco’ good and rigidly righteous” at this time by the exclamation of the old lady of Salisbury, who, on being told, forty years later, that Andrew Jackson was a candidate for President, cried out:
“What! Jackson up for President? _Jackson?_ _Andrew_ Jackson? The Jackson that used to live in Salisbury? Why, when he was here, he was such a rake that my husband would not bring him into the house! It is true, he _might_ have taken him out to the stable to weigh horses for a race, and might drink a glass of whisky with him _there_. Well, if Andrew Jackson can be President, anybody can.”
From the office of Judge Spruce McCay Jackson went to that of Colonel John Stokes, where he continued his studies until he thought himself ready for admission to the Bar. In the spring of 1787 he applied for and received his license to practice law.
For a year after his admission to the Bar he appears to have lived at a village in Martinsville, N. C., where two friends of his kept a store. Tradition says that he helped them in running the business, and that he accepted a local position as constable or deputy-sheriff. At any rate, he realized soon that he was gaining no foothold in North Carolina, and he made up his mind to try his fortune in the new country beyond the mountains, where Robertson and Donelson and Sevier were planting the beginning of another state on the Cumberland.
Before we follow Jackson into Tennessee, let us pause “to take his picture.”
He was tall and slender--standing six feet and one inch in height. Carrying himself straight as a ramrod, and stepping with a quick, springing clearlift walk, he made the impression upon the observer that he was as active as a cat--lithe, sinewy, tough, and with not a lazy bone in his body.
He had a shock of red hair, and a pair of fine blue eyes, which rested unwinkingly upon one in conversation, and which blazed when he was aroused. His face was sallow, freckled, long, thin, angular, with a fighting jaw.