'OLD HICKORY' WAS MAN OF MANY FACES, MANY HATS

Andrew Jackson, 78, had less than eight weeks to live when legendary photographer Mathew Brady ventured to the Hermitage to shoot the only photograph ever taken of the ex-president.

A man of unquestioned vigor and will, Andrew Jackson was nevertheless an enigmatic figure. Ill-tempered, yet charming, backwoodsy, yet adroit, Jackson still presents historians with seeming contradictions.

The seventh president of the United States, "Old Hickory" was best known as the first "common man" to enter the White House. An orphaned rural youth, Jackson (who actually got five years of fundamental and classical education) knew the feel of moccasins on the feet and a knife or rifle in the hand.

Dueling pistols were also not unknown to his palms and he carried bullets from two duels most of his life.

Controversy even surrounds where Jackson was born, March 15, 1767. The pregnant Elizabeth Hutchinson Jackson, having just buried her husband, left for her sister's home in present-day Lancaster County, South Carolina. Some think she stopped to visit another sister in present-day Union County, North Carolina, on the way. The future president could have been born either place.

Since 1979 the two counties have left the bragging rights up to their local high school football teams. The two teams square off every year in the "Old Hickory Football Classic," with the winner keeping a 17-inch stone bust of Jackson and getting to claim him as a native son for the next year.

Jackson and his brother, mounted messengers for the Continental Army, were taken prisoners by the British during the American Revolution. There the legendary boot polishing incident occurred. Refusing to polish a British officer's boots, both were seriously wounded by the officers' sword, then marched 40 miles to a prisoner of war camp.

Jackson is the only former POW to become president.

After briefly studying law, Jackson became a successful backwoods lawyer, whose reuptation began to grow. He was briefly a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator, before becoming Justice of the Tennessee Superior Court. The judicial position (1798-1804) did much to enhance Jackson's stature. Despite his lack of scholarship, he won praise for swift, fair decisions.

Before leaving the bench in 1804, Jackson had also been elected major general of the Tennessee State Militia. He actively campaigned for the position of territorial governor of the (new) Louisiana Territory. President Thomas Jefferson, however, appointed General James Wilkinson instead.

Jackson turned his attention to business affairs for several years. while maintaining the part time militia position, he concentrated on building up his large plantation called The Hermitage. He also bred race horses, including the legendary Truxton, said to bring Jackson tens of thousands of dollars in winnings.

By the time the War of 1812 broke out, Jackson had won many important friends, but also many important enemies -- including President James Madison. Nevertheless, he led a troop of 1,000 Tennessee militiamen in an important campaign early in the war. Later, during the separate Creek War (going on simultaneously with the War of 1812), he performed masterfully and was finally named major general in the U.S. Army (much more significant than his similar title with the Tennessee Militia).

"He was a very competent, extraordinarily driving and decisive general in a war characterized, on the American side, mostly by incompetence and paralysis," wrote biographer Hal Morris.

This was the Jackson for whom Jackson, Mo. was named, July 4, 1814. It would take the Battle of New Orleans in the winter of 1814-15 to make "Old Hickory" (nicknamed during his first War of 1812 march) a national celebrity. For the Tennessee immigrants who made up a good percentage of the early Jackson residents, Old Hickory had already established an admirable record. This was clearly the first town named after Jackson.

After the huge victory at New Orleans made Jackson a folk hero, he was asked to put down a Seminole Indian uprising on the Florida-Georgia border in 1817. Getting conflicting signals from President James Monroe, Jackson pursued the Seminoles into Spanish-held Florida and created a huge controversy. In the end, the U.S. bought Florida and Jackson survived a failed attempt by the Congress to censure him.

After again leaving public life for a while, Jackson was elected to a second Senate term in 1822. Taking office 25 years after last serving in the Senate, he became chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. He lost a bitter 1824 presidential election to John Quincy Adams, despite having more popular votes.

Jackson was actually nominated again by the Tennessee legislature (in those pre-caucus days) in 1825 -- giving him a full three years to prepare for the election of 1828. That time around, the growing West surged Jackson into office. His 1828 supporters were the first to call themselves "Democrats."

He was overwhelmingly re-elected in 1832, during the first election featuring a modern party convention.

Jackson's administration, like his early career, was marked by bold -- if not rash --decisions. He challenged the unpopular Bank of the United States, opposed states' rights to nullify federal law or secede from the Union, made the veto and pocket vetoes powerful presidential tools and, in the words of historian William A. DeGregorio, was "the founder of the modern presidency."

After leaving the White House, the elderly Jackson, frail and gaunt for years, retired to the Hermitage in 1837. His final years were marred by increasingly poor health and financial stresses. Still, the old man kept a keen interest in national politics and took great pride in his protg, James K. Polk of Tennessee (nicknamed "Young Hickory") entering the White House in March, 1845.

Jackson died June 8, 1845. Although a slave owner, his dying wish was to one day be reunited in Heaven with all his friends -- "both white and black."

Old Hickory did live long enough to be one of the first ex-presidents photographed. Rising young daguerreotype "artist" Mathew Brady visited the Hermitage April 15, 1849 and snapped the only photographic image of Jackson.

Of course, today Jackson lives in the name of countless cities and counties across the United States. None, however, had honored Old Hickory as early as Jackson, Mo.