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Sparks, William Henry, 1800-1882

"The Memories of Fifty Years Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent i"

The memory of those days, and the men
who made them memorable, flits vividly before me; but I am not writing
a history, and can attempt no order, but shall write on as these
memories of men and events shall seem to me most interesting in their
character to the general reader.
General Jackson was one of those rare creations of nature which appear
at long intervals, to astonish and delight mankind. It seems to be
settled in the public mind that he was born in South Carolina; but
there is no certainty of the fact. His early life was very obscure, and
he himself was uncertain of his birth-place, though he believed it was
South Carolina. He remembered the removal of his family from South
Carolina, and many of the incidents of the war of the Revolution
transpiring there; but more especially those occurring in North
Carolina, to which the family removed. Judge Alexander Porter, of
Louisiana, was an Irishman, and from the neighborhood where were born
and reared the parents of Jackson. His own father was brutally executed
at Vinegar Hill, by sentence of a drum-head court martial, in 1798, and
his family proscribed by the British Government.


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