"The Hero"

As Jesup and John Horse lobbied "Little Hickory," "Old Hickory," the Black Seminoles' historic nemesis, was dying. Wracked by edema and lifelong gunshot wounds, slowly poisoned by daily doses of calomel and mercury, Andrew Jackson was becoming a shadow of his former self. He continued to accept visitors. Gen. Jesup himself had made a pilgrimage to the Hermitage earlier that spring. When he asked Old Hickory what the future might hold, Jackson told him:

"Sir, I am in the hands of a merciful God. I have full confidence in his goodness and mercy …. The Bible is true. I have tried to conform to its spirit as near as possible. Upon that sacred volume I rest my hope for eternal salvation, through the merits and blood of our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ."