Just as
arrangements were completed, however, Mrs. Jackson, who had long been
in failing health, suffered an attack of heart trouble; and at the
very hour when the General was to have been received, amid all the
trappings of civil and military splendor, with the huzzas of his
neighbors, friends, and admirers, he was sitting tearless, speechless,
and almost expressionless by the corpse of his life companion. Long
after the beloved one had been laid to rest in the Hermitage garden
amid the rosebushes she had planted, the President-elect continued as
one benumbed. He never gave up the idea that his wife had been killed
by worry over the attacks made upon him and upon her by the Adams
newspapers--that, as he expressed it, she was "murdered by slanders
that pierced her heart." Only under continued prodding from Lewis and
other friends did he recall himself to his great task and set about
preparing for the arduous winter journey to Washington, composing his
inaugural address, selecting his Cabinet, and laying plans for the
reorganization of the federal Civil Service on lines already
definitely in his mind.
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