When an exchange of prisoners was
made, Mrs. Jackson secured the release of her two boys, but not until
after they had contracted smallpox in Camden jail. The older one died,
but the younger, though reduced to a skeleton, survived. Already the
third brother had given up his life in battle; and the crowning
disaster came when the mother, going as a volunteer to nurse the
wounded Waxhaw prisoners on the British vessels in Charleston harbor,
fell ill of yellow fever and perished. Small wonder that Andrew
Jackson always hated the British uniform, or that when he sat in the
executive chair an anti-British feeling colored all of his dealings
with foreign nations!
At the age of fourteen, the sandy-haired, pockmarked lad of the
Waxhaws found himself alone in the world. The death of his relatives
had made him heir to a portion of his grandfather's estate in
Carrickfergus; but the property was tied up in the hands of an
administrator, and the boy was in effect both penniless and homeless.
The memory of his mother and her teachings was, as he was subsequently
accustomed to say, the only capital with which he started life.
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