The Man Who Loved Rachel

The Man Who Loved Rachel

No one understood disappointment better than Andy. His capacity to withstand pain was legendary. At age thirteen, he ran off to fight in the Revolutionary War. When he and his brother Robert were captured, Andy refused to shine the boots of a British officer. He was slashed across the forehead with a sword. That blow gave him a lifetime of migraine headaches.

During their imprisonment, both brothers came down with smallpox. Their mother hiked forty-five miles and somehow got her two boys released. A few days later, Robert died from the pox. Not long after Andy recovered, his mother died of cholera. He barely had time to digest her death when news came that another brother, Hugh, died of heatstroke. During that season of grief, Andy formulated a credo that would serve him well in rough years ahead: “One man with courage makes a majority.”

He arose to attack life with a vengeance. When Andy wasn’t fighting with local Indian tribes, he was mixing it up in barroom brawls. The hurt within drove him to inflict pain on others. Then he fell in love with Rachel. But she was a divorcée, and he had big political dreams in an age when divorce was scandalous. After he married Rachel, they discovered a court’s error that meant she was still legally married to her first husband. For years afterward, Rachel was the brunt of salacious gossip. Andy fought 103 duels defending her honor. People joked that his body carried so many bullets that it shook like a bag of marbles. A bullet lodged near his heart caused coughing spasms that left his handkerchiefs soaked with blood.

But he overcame his afflictions to become a military hero in the War of 1812. He parlayed his fame into a presidential run. The stakes were great in a nation on the edge of civil war. In one of the dirtiest political campaigns in US history, his opponents portrayed Rachel as a loose woman, unfit to be the first lady. During that brutal campaign, their sixteen-year-old adopted son died of tuberculosis. Yet with toughness that earned him the nickname Old Hickory, Andy won that election in 1828. But his joy was short lived when Rachel died of an illness of the heart and lungs. A grieving Andy was sworn in at an inauguration that turned into a riot when a mob of drunken supporters trashed the White House. Newspapers gave him a new nickname: King Mob.

Andy overcame the grief of those first days to serve two terms. He managed to steer America away from the brink of civil war and wipe out the federal deficit before retiring to Nashville to live out his final years. His bloated body was racked with a persistent cough, drenching his pillows in blood. During sleepless nights, he spoke incessantly of heaven and Rachel. On his deathbed, he gasped, “I go to meet Rachel. Follow Jesus and I will see you in heaven.” If you are going through a tough spell, pull out an old twenty-dollar bill. As you look at the engraving of Andrew Jackson, recall the saying that saw him through his darkest days:

One person with courage makes a majority.

One of you routs a thousand, because the LORD your God fights for you, just as he promised.

Joshua 23:10, NIV