Established again in his old home, surrounded by congenial relatives and friends, respected by neighbors without regard to politics, and visited from time to time by notable foreigners and Americans, Jackson found much of satisfaction in his declining years.  For a time he fully lived up to the promise made to Benton and Blair that he would keep clear of politics.  His interest in the fortunes of his party, however, was not diminished by his retirement from public life.  He corresponded freely with Van Buren, whose policies he in most respects approved; and as the campaign of 1840 approached the “old war-horse began once more to sniff the battle from afar.”  Admitting to his friends that the situation looked “a little dubious,” he exerted himself powerfully to bring about the reelection of the New Yorker.  He wrote a letter belittling the military qualities of the Whig candidate, thereby probably doing the Democratic cause more harm than good; and finally, to avert the humiliation of a Whig victory in Tennessee, he “took the stump” and denounced the enemy up and down through all western Tennessee and southern Kentucky.  But “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” was too much for him; the Whig candidates carried both Tennessee and Kentucky and won the nation-wide contest by 234 to 60 electoral votes.

The old warrior took the defeat—­his defeat, he always regarded it—­philosophically, and at once began to lay plans for a recovery of Democratic supremacy in 1844.  For another quadrennium his hand was on the party throttle.  When men speculated as to whether Van Buren, General Cass, General Butler, or Senator Benton would be the standard bearer in 1844, they always asked what Jackson’s edict on the subject would be; and the final selection of James K. Polk, while not fully dictated by the ex-President, was the result of a compromise in which his advice played a prominent part.  Though past seventy-seven and hardly able to sign his name, Jackson threw himself into the campaign and undoubtedly contributed to the election of his fellow-Tenneseean.  His satisfaction with the outcome and with the annexation of Texas which quickly followed found expression in a barbecue attended by all the Democrats of the neighborhood and by some of note from a distance.  “We have restored the Government to sound principles,” declared the host in a brief, faltering speech from the Hermitage portico, “and extended the area of our institutions to the Rio Grande.  Now for Oregon and Fifty-four-forty.”

Oregon—­although not to fifty-four forty—­was soon to be duly made American soil.  But Jackson did not live to witness the event.  Early in 1845 his health began to fail rapidly and on the very day of Polk’s inauguration he was at the point of death.  Rallying, he struggled manfully for three months against the combined effects of consumption, dropsy, and dysentery.  But on Sunday, the 8th of June, the end came.  In accordance with a pledge which he had given his wife years before, he had become