His mother nursed him back to life, and then started for Charleston to see what could be done for the prisoners rotting in the British prison-ships in the harbor, only herself to catch the prison-fever, and to be buried in a grave which her son was never able to discover.

Young Jackson, sobered by this and other experiences, applied himself with some diligence to his books, taught school for a time, studied law, and at the age of twenty was admitted to the bar, for which the standard was by no means high.  To the west, the new state of Tennessee was in process of organization—­an unpeopled wilderness for the most part—­and early in the year 1788, Jackson secured the appointment as public prosecutor in the new state.  It is not probable he had much competition, for the position was one calling for desperate courage, as well as for endurance to withstand the privations of back-woods life, and the pecuniary reward was small.  In the fall of 1788, he proceeded to Nashville with a wagon train which came within an ace of being annihilated by Indians before it reached its destination.

Jackson found his new position exactly suited to his peculiar genius.  His personal recklessness made him the terror of criminals; he possessed the precise qualifications for success before backwoods juries and for personal popularity among the rough people who were his clients, with whom usually might was right.  At the end of three or four years, he practically monopolized the law business of the district; and he soon became by far the most popular man in it, despite a hot-headed disposition which made him many enemies, which involved him in numberless quarrels, and which resulted in his fighting at least one duel, in which he killed his opponent and was himself dangerously wounded.

It was inevitable, of course, that he should enter politics, and equally inevitable that he should be successful there.  Eight years after his arrival from Carolina, at the age of twenty-nine, he was elected to represent his state in Congress, and covered the eight hundred miles to Philadelphia on horseback.  From the House, he was appointed to serve in the Senate, resigned from it to accept an election as Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, was chosen major-general of the Tennessee militia, and so began that military career which was to have a remarkable culmination.

On the 25th of June, 1812, apprised of the outbreak of the second war with England, Jackson offered to the President his own services and those of the twenty-five hundred militia men of his district.  The offer was at once accepted, and Jackson, getting his troops together, proceeded down the river to New Orleans.  But jealousies at headquarters intervened, he was informed that New Orleans was in no present danger, his force was disbanded and left to get back home as best it could.  Jackson, wild with rage, pledged his own resources to furnish this transportation, but was afterwards reimbursed by the government.