Upon his release from prison, Andrew Jackson stepped into a world much changed. Men normally timid by nature were talking boldly of civil war. Charles Pinckney had died suddenly, and people were looking to him now, hanging on his words like he were some kind of oracle.
In the back room of a hotel in Savannah, he sat at a table near the fireplace, drinking a bourbon that had been aged for eight years, and had been poured out for the first time tonight. The air was thick with tobacco smoke, and the walls were covered with old yellowed maps of The South.
”Hickory! Hickory!” They shouted it like it was a battle cry, eyes afire with the promise of glorious battle , and cheap whiskey. He saw these men as they were. He saw old men, brittle men, vainglorious men, and perhaps some who, when standing singly in the face of great odds, would prove to be cowards. But he also knew that if they stood together, they would be strong. And if the order came from Old Hickory, they would fight.
But another voice spoke to him. He thought of the sacrifices that had been made to create this union of states, of all the blood shed. He thought of the men who had stood together at New Orleans.
He slowly stood, looking each man in the eye, and spoke in a firm voice.
”Gentlemen.”