The work of a frontier solicitor was diverse and arduous. A turbulent
society needed to be kept in order and the business obligations of a
shifty and quarrelsome people to be enforced. No great knowledge of
law was required, but personal fearlessness, vigor, and
incorruptibility were indispensable. Jackson was just the man for the
business. His physical courage was equaled by his moral strength; he
was passionately devoted to justice; he was diligent and
conscientious; and, as one writer has remarked, bad grammar, incorrect
pronunciation, and violent denunciation did not shock the judges of
that day or divert the mind of juries from the truth. Traveling almost
constantly over the wretched roads and through the dark forests,
dodging Indians, swimming his horse across torrential streams,
sleeping alone in the woods with hand on rifle, threatened by
desperate wrongdoers, Andrew Jackson became the best-known figure in
all western Tennessee and won at this time a great measure of that
public confidence which later became his chief political asset.
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