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He possessed a sanguinary disposition, as was exhibited in the cruel massacre of Col. Buford's regiment at the Waxhaws. In tracing his history in America, we look in vain for any redeeming traits in his character. The ardor of his temper and military ambition received a severe check at the battle of the "Cowpens" on the 17th of January, 1781.
Less than ten years old, Nashville had now a population of not over two hundred. But it was the center of a somewhat settled district extending up and down the Cumberland for a distance of eighty or ninety miles, and the young visitor from the Waxhaws quickly found it a promising field for his talents.
His feeling against the British was one of the things that colored his opinions on public questions; the supreme hour of his life was the hour when, at New Orleans, he had his revenge full measure, heaped up, and running over for all that he had suffered in the Waxhaws.
He immediately issued orders to Colonel Francis Locke, of Rowan; Major David Wilson, of Mecklenburg; also to Captains Falls, Knox, Brandon, and other officers, to raise men to disperse the Tories, deeming it unwise to weaken his own force until the object of Lord Rawdon, still encamped at Waxhaws, should become better known.
Within seven miles of Nashville, during the years 1780-1794, the Indians killed, on an average, one white person every ten days. Life in such a country was even rougher and barer than in the Waxhaws. The houses were chiefly cabins made of unhewn logs, and the things which in older communities make the inside of houses attractive were almost wholly wanting.
The sick, the heavy baggage, and the military stores were ordered under a guard to Waxhaws, and the army was directed to be in readiness to march precisely at ten in the evening in the following order. Colonel Armand's legion composed the van.
For that purpose he put his army in motion at 10 in the evening of the 15th of August, having sent his sick, heavy baggage, and military stores not immediately wanted, under a guard to Waxhaws.
General Jackson was a boy at the Waxhaws and dug his toes in the red mud. He was a man at Jonesboro, and tradition says that he fought with a fence-rail. Sevier was captured as narrated. Monsieur Gratiot, Monsieur Vigo, and Father Gibault lost the money which they gave to Clark and their country.
After being employed for some time in Ninety Six, he was directed to enter the western parts of North Carolina, for the purpose of embodying the royalists in that quarter. The route marked out for the main army was from Camden, through the settlement of the Waxhaws to Charlottestown, in North Carolina.
That he fully sustained the reputation which he had gained in the Waxhaws is indicated by testimony of one of Macay's fellow townsmen, after Jackson had become famous, to the effect that the former student had been "the most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, card-playing, mischievous fellow that ever lived in Salisbury."
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