Rachel's Death | Andrew Mourns| Retaliation
Nashville Mourns | Obituaries | Her Memory Honored

The shock of Rachel's death
was almost too much for
Jackson to bear.

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! [1]

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.

Footnotes :

1. Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson, Volume Two, The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) p. 154.

Sources :

Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson, Volume Two, The Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998) Chapter 8, "Triumph and Tragedy."

James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, Volume III (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861) Katherine W. Cruze, An Amiable Woman: Rachel Jackson (Nashville: The Hermitage and the Ladies Hermitage Association, 1994)