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Rh to an election, and Jackson was made to taste the bitterness of malice and slander as well as the sweetness of glory. He could endure that aimed at him, but what was directed at his wife he could not endure. He raged and fumed at the insults that were dealt her with the fiery wrath of an old soldier. Mrs. Jackson herself was grieved and appalled at the cruel things that were said of her, when into the peace and harmony of her quiet, retired existence there broke as fierce a volley of taunts as ever issued from a political campaign. When the news of her husband's election reached her at the Hermitage she received it quietly. "Well, for Mr. Jackson's sake, I am glad," she said. "For my own part, I never wished it."

The ladies of Tennessee, who were all proud of Mrs. Jackson, were preparing to send her to the White House with the most elegant wardrobe that could be found, and the people of the neighborhood were planning an elaborate banquet in honor of the President-elect. On the evening before the fete, worn out with the excitement and pain of the contest through which she had been passing, the mistress of the Hermitage died. Mrs. Jackson was heard to say when she was dying that the General would miss her, but if she lived she might be in the way of his new life. It was thus that she reconciled herself to leaving him. Andrew Jackson proceeded to his place at the head of the nation, a lonely, broken-hearted man. The memory of the wrong that had been done his wife was always present in his mind. Years after, when he came to die, the clergyman bent over him, asking the last question. "Yes," said the old general, "I am ready. I ask forgiveness, and I forgive all—all except those who slandered my Rachel to death."

President Van Buren had been a widower for seventeen years when he was elected President, consequently his daughter-