Overcoming Hardship

Overcoming Hardship

 "The early life of Andrew Jackson, nick-named "Old Hickory", will be an inspiration to us all. 
His father emigrated to North Carolina in 1765, and died five days after his son's birth. The mother, with her babe and two other children, then moved into a destitute portion of South Carolina, where Andrew's boyhood was passed. Their means was slender. When the Revolution broke out the oldest boy enlisted, and was killed. At he age of thirteen, Andrew, with his brother Robert, joined a corps of volunteers attached to General Sumter's brigade. 
  In the next year, 1781, both boys were captured by mounted soldiers. Andrew was ordered by an enemy officer to clean a pair of muddy boots, but Andrew proudly refused, whereupon the officer aimed a sword stroke at his head, which the boy parried, and thereby received a wound upon his hand which he bore for life. 
His brother was ordered to do the same thing for another officer, and for his refusal actually received a sword-cut upon the head from which he never recovered. The boys were imprisoned in Camden, and the boys suffered severely from their undressed wounds, and also from small-pox which raged among the prisoners. When at length they were exchanged along with five neighbors, and given to their mother, they were little more than mere wrecks. Their home was forty miles from the prison where they were released and there were but two horses for them all. On one, without saddle or bridle, Mrs. Jackson rode, on the other the weak and wounded Robert was borne; young Andrew, barefooted, half naked, and half sick with the small pox, trudging the whole distance on foot. A heavy rain set in, and drenched them to the skin, and drove the disease back again into the systems of the two boys. Two days after, Robert died, and Andrew hung upon the brink of death for two weeks. After his recovery, his mother died, and then, the boy who would become the seventh President of the United States, was left alone upon the earth, penniless and friendless."