The people of Nashville, proud of the success of their favorite, resolved to celebrate the event by a great banquet on the 22d of December, the anniversary of the day on which the general had first defeated the British below New Orleans; and some of the ladies of Nashville were secretly preparing a magnificent wardrobe for the future mistress of the White House.  Six days before the day appointed for the celebration, Mrs. Jackson, while busied about her household affairs in the kitchen of the hermitage, suddenly shrieked, placed her hands upon her heart, sank upon a chair, and fell forward into the arms of one of her servants.  She was carried to her bed, where, for the space of sixty hours, she suffered extreme agony, during the whole of which her husband never left her side for ten minutes.  Then she appeared much better, and recovered the use of her tongue.  This was only two days before the day of the festival, and the first use she made of her recovered speech was to implore her husband to go to another room and sleep, so as to recruit his strength for the banquet.  He would not leave her, however, but lay down upon a sofa and slept a little.  The evening of the 22d she appeared to be so much better that the general consented, after much persuasion, to sleep in the next room, and leave his wife in the care of the doctor and two of his most trusted servants.

At nine o’clock he bade her good-night, went to the next room, and took off his coat, preparatory to lying down.  When he had been gone five minutes from her room, Mrs. Jackson, who was sitting up, suddenly gave a long, loud, inarticulate cry, which was immediately followed by the death rattle in her throat.  By the time her husband had reached her side, she had breathed her last.

“Bleed her,” cried the general.

But no blood flowed from her arm.

“Try the temple,” doctor.

A drop or two of blood stained her cap, but no more followed.  Still, it was long before he would believe her dead, and when there could no longer be any doubt, and they were preparing a table upon which to lay her out, he cried, with a choking voice: 

“Spread four blankets upon it; for if she does come to she will lie so hard upon the table.”

All night long he sat in the room, occasionally looking into her face, and feeling if there was any pulsation in her heart.  The next morning when one of his friends arrived, just before daylight, he was nearly speechless and utterly unconsolable, looking twenty years older.

There was no banquet that day in Nashville.  On the morning of the funeral, the grounds were crowded with people, who saw, with emotion, the poor old general supported to the grave between two of his old friends, scarcely able to stand.  The remains were interred in the garden of the Hermitage, in a tomb which the general had recently completed.  The tablet which covers her dust contains the following inscription: