His bearing toward men was open, frank, confident, self-assertive.
Toward women he was deferential, most attentive and polite. Surprising as it may seem, there is no room for doubt that Andrew Jackson’s manner toward ladies was from the first, captivating to a marked degree. By the time he reached the age of eighteen he had developed a taste for good dressing. The same trait which led him to want the finest-looking horse, the richest caparison, the best pistols and guns, the best dogs and game chickens, led him to choose for himself a style of wearing apparel, both in the material and the make, which was far above the average of the backwoods.
Some of his lady friends went to the courthouse the day he was examined for admission to the Bar, and one of these has left a description of him as he then appeared.
Those who recall Albert Gallatin’s statement that Jackson, when in Congress, looked and dressed like an uncouth backwoodsman may not be able to reconcile his testimony with that of Mrs. Anne Rutherford, who says:
“He always dressed neat and tidy, and carried himself as if he was a rich man’s son.
“The day he was licensed he had on a new suit, with a broadcloth coat, ruffled shirt, and other garments in the best of fashion.”
There is no disputing about taste; and the reader is left to the conclusion that a style of dressing which appeared to be the best of fashion to a country girl of North Carolina may have seemed “irregular” to such a cosmopolitan gentleman as Gallatin.
The red breeches of Thomas Jefferson had been “the best of fashion” in Paris, but when he wore them in New York, as a member of Washington’s Cabinet, social rumblings were heard and social upheavals feared.
A young man was walking up and down the waiting room of a railway station, in an agitated condition. He wore blue spectacles, and, although he had not a cold, he used his pocket-handkerchief incessantly. He held a little black bag in his left hand which, as I learned later, contained a silk dressing-gown and a pair of Turkish pantaloons.
Every now and again he went to the door and looked into the street, then he drew out his watch and consulted the station clock. The train did not leave for an hour; but there are people who always imagine they will be late. This train was not for people in a pressing hurry; there were very few first-class carriages in it. It was not an hour at which stock-brokers left, after business was finished, to go to their country homes for dinner. When travellers began to appear, a Parisian would have recognized from their bearing that they were either farmers, or small suburban tradesmen. Nevertheless, every time anyone came into the station, or a carriage drew up at the door, the heart of the young man with the blue spectacles became inflated like a balloon, his knees trembled, his bag almost fell from his hands, and his glasses off his nose, where, we may mention in passing, they were seated crookedly.