Gallatin later described him as "a
tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging
over his face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his
dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough
backwoodsman." And Jefferson is represented as saying of Jackson to
Webster at Monticello in 1824: "His passions are terrible. When I was
president of the Senate he was Senator, and he could never speak on
account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it
repeatedly, and as often choke with rage."
Return to Tennessee meant, however, only a transfer from one branch of
the public service to another, for the ex-Senator was promptly
appointed to a judgeship of the state supreme court at a salary of six
hundred dollars a year. The position he found not uncongenial and he
retained it for six years. Now, as earlier, Jackson's ignorance of law
was somewhat compensated by his common sense, courage, and
impartiality; and while only one of his decisions of this period is
extant, Parton reports that the tradition of fifty years ago
represented them as short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes
ungrammatical, but generally right.
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