Violence and death welcomed baby Andrew Jackson into the world. More precisely,

into America, into the remote backcountry between North and South Carolina. He's

born on the aides of March just a few weeks after his father died in an accident.

Then when he's just a young boy, British soldiers in the Revolutionary War

captured Jackson and his brother and take them as prisoners. They're basically

starved and abused and at one point Jackson refuses to shine one of the British

officer's boots who's keeping them. That officer takes out a saber and

slashes Jackson whose only 13 slashes him across the face and leaves a scar that

he'll have for the rest of his life. Eventually his mother orchestrates a

prisoner exchange and she rescues her two sons. But Jackson's brother dies just a

few days later from the mistreatment and the smallpox they caught while they

were there. Jackson has a second brother who also dies during the war and while

Jackson's still recovering his mother goes to Charleston to help care for

other prisoners and she gets cholera and dies. So by 14 years old, Andrew

Jackson is an orphan. War and death have taken every single person in his

family and for the rest of his life he fights back. I think that taught him the

whole world is rough, the whole world is violent, everybody suffers at the

hands of someone else. That was Barbara Bear with the Library of Congress and I'm

Lillian Cunningham with the Washington Post. This is the seventh episode of

presidential.

This episode is about violence.

It's about the violence and sadness of Andrew Jackson's personal life.

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