Old Hickory and Our Lady of Prompt Succor

Mosaic of the three times Our Lady of Prompt Succor saved New Orleans. General Jackson
and his men may be seen in the bottom right. I took this photo of the mosaic at the
Ursuline Convent in New Orleans in 2019. 

Andrew Jackson was a study in contrasts. By most accounts, he was hot tempered and had a tendency to violence. In his youth, he engaged in most of the vices common to young men of that time: drinking, carousing, and engaging in every form of gambling known to man. He apparently had a passion for cock-fighting. He got into brawls without number and fought duels, killing at least one man—though admittedly, that man had shot him first, hitting Jackson square in the chest. The bullet lodged too close to his heart to be extracted, and Jackson would carry it inside him for the rest of his life.

Jackson was a slave owner and an Indian fighter. He is perhaps most infamous today for his policy while president of removing tribes from the eastern states to Indian Territory in the present-day state of Oklahoma. This policy's most noteworthy and awful result was the removal of the Cherokee from Georgia along the Trail of Tears. At the same time, Jackson was compassionate, taking in an orphaned Creek boy named Lyncoya after the Battle of Tallushatchee in 1813. He would adopt Lyncoya as his son, and later took in two other Creek orphans, Theodore and Charley.   

If you read about Jackson in any of the earlier biographies, you get a sense that Old Hickory's contemporaries—whether friend or foe—struggled to pigeon-hole the man. Later in his life, Jackson apparently became quite religious, even helping to found Hermitage Presbyterian Church on land donated from his estate in Nashville, Tennessee. Indeed, even in Jackson's dissipated youth, it seemed that there was a latent tendency toward Christian piety to be found buried deep within him. Biographers struggled to reconcile these conflicting tendencies, resulting in awkward passages like this one from Cyrus Townsend Brady:

General Jackson was a thoroughly religious man during the greater part of his life…Now, when I say he was a religious man I do not mean that his religion was at first of the active, personal sort. On the contrary, it was originally intermixed with worldliness to an excessive degree. [The True Andrew Jackson (1906), p. 366]

Writing in 1888, another biographer, James Parton, recorded the following anecdote that exemplifies Jackson’s internal paradox in a concrete way:

After his wife had joined the [Presbyterian] church, the general, in deference to her wishes, was accustomed to ask a blessing before meals. The company had sat down at the table one day, when the general was telling a warlike story with great animation, interlarding the discourse, as was then his custom, with a profusion of expletives most heterodox and profane. In the full tide of this narration, the lady of the house interrupted her lord, “Mr Jackson, will you ask a blessing?” Mr. Jackson stopped short in the midst of one of his most soldier-like sentences, performed the duty required of him, and then instantly resumed his narrative in the same tone and language as before. [Life of Andrew Jackson, Volume 2 (1888), p. 655]

Many of us have known men similar to this. They are often individuals who have lived a harsh early life (Jackson was orphaned at 14) and find it nearly impossible to make that final conversion of heart to Christ, crying out with the young Augustine of Hippo, "Lord make me pure—but not yet!" 

I, for one, think Jackson's religious tendencies were sincere, even if he often consciously chose the course of worldliness and sin. Let's look at an incident during the Battle of New Orleans as an example. 

In January of 1815, at the age of 47, Jackson was placed in command of a rag-tag collection of regular army units, local militia, a squad of gunners from Jean Lafitte's crew of privateers, and even a detachment of Choctaws. Jackson's force numbered about 5,000 all told. 

These men were meant to defend New Orleans against an army of 10,000 British regulars under the command of General Edward Pakenham. Many of these men were veterans of the Napoleonic War in Europe and both officers and men had every expectation that they would brush aside Jackson's disorderly mob with little effort and capture New Orleans. 

Gambler that he was, Jackson must have known that the odds of survival were long, and the odds of victory even longer still. As Pakenham's redcoats advanced, Jackson came face-to-face with that old adage: there are no atheists in foxholes. Some accounts of activities prior to the battle include mention of Jackson visiting Abbe William DuBourg to request public prayers for the success of American arms. 

In New Orleans, that city of contrasts nearly as striking as those affecting Jackson, the 18,000 inhabitants were in a state of near panic. The mood at the Ursuline Convent, however, was markedly different. Writing in The Story of the Battle of New Orleans (1915) Stanley Clisby Arthur offers the following account of what went on among the nuns on that fateful eve of battle:

From the windows of the Convent, the Ursulines could see the smoke rising from the battle-field on the plains of Chalmette. The night of January 7th had been spent in prayer before their Blessed Sacrament. Everything seemed hopeless for the Americans; and Jackson himself had sworn that, should he be vanquished, the enemy would find New Orleans a heap of ruins.

The wooden statue of Our Lady of
Prompt Succor that was placed on the
altar during the Battle of New Orleans 

In order to assist in averting this imminent peril — for all was in consternation on the morning of January 8th — the Chapel was continually thronged with pious ladies and poor negresses, all weeping and praying at the foot of the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, which had been placed on the main altar; and the Community, through the Superioress, Mother Ste Marie (in the world, Marie Francoise Victoire Olivier de Vezin), made a vow to have a solemn Mass of thanksgiving sung every year, should the Americans gain the victory.

That morning, January 8, 1815, Very Reverend William DuBourg, the Vicar Apostolic (afterwards Bishop of New Orleans), offered up the holy sacrifice of the Mass before the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor.

At the moment of communion, a courier entered the chapel to announce the glad tidings of the enemy’s defeat.

After Mass, the Abbe DuBourg entoned Te Deum, which was taken up and sung with accents of such lively gratitude that it seemed as though the very vaults of the chapel would open to allow this touching thanksgiving to ascend more freely to the throne of God. [The Battle of New Orleans (1915), p. 239). 

It is said that the battle itself was over within half-an-hour. The badly mauled British were forced to retreat and Jackson's riff-raff were left in possession of the field. Operating from a hastily fortified position, Jackson's troops inflicted over 2,000 casualties on the British. By contrast, the Americans had suffered only 13 killed in action, and 39 wounded. 

The latter group, along with the sick, were lodged in the schoolrooms of the convent and nursed by the gentle hands of the Ursuline sisters who had prayed so fervently for them. Shortly after returning to New Orleans, Jackson would visit the Ursulines. In a lecture read before the Louisiana Historical Society in 1901, Henry Renshaw described the scene:

In the period of the city's dread anxiety and peril, the Ursulines invoked Divine assistance that victory might be won by the soldiery of the Republic. Andrew Jackson, in the flush of brilliant triumph, visited the convent and thanked these pious women for their prayers for his success. What a scene was this — the victorious warrior expressing gratitude to these nuns for the petitions which they had offered for celestial aid in his behalf. What a subject to be represented in stone or in metal, or upon the painted canvas. 

And not alone by fervent supplication did the Ursulines evince their sympathetic patriotism. The sick and wounded soldiers were received at the convent and lodged in the class rooms of the day scholars where, for three months they were cared for by the nuns. ["The Louisiana Ursulines," Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society, Volume 2, Issues 3-4].

An even earlier historical record confirms the good offices of the Ursuline sisters:

The Ursuline nuns are also entitled to a particular notice. They gave admittance within the walls of their monastery to as many of the sick as could be conveniently lodged therein, and afforded them every aid, comformably to the dictates of true charity. [Historical Memoir of the War in West Florida and Louisiana (1816) Appendix, p. cxxviii]

Jackson also chose to express his gratitude publicly at the very center of Catholicism in the city:

In the old cathedral, burnished up for the occasion, a solemn service of thanksgiving was held at Jackson's request. [Crawford, Romantic Days in the Early Republic (1912) p. 383]

This was not merely a momentary episode of piety on the part of Jackson. Thirteen years later, during the bruising election campaign of 1828, Jackson would have occasion to visit New Orleans again. Though a man embroiled in the bare-knuckles brawl of a very contentious political battle for the nation's highest office, Jackson made time to visit the humble sisters who had prayed so fervently for him at the crisis of his life:

In 1824, the Ursulines removed to their present convent near the lower limits of the city. There, also, Andrew Jackson visited the nuns. This was in 1828. The political campaign which eventuated in his election to the presidency had opened. Jackson had come to New Orleans upon the invitation of the Louisiana legislature to participate in the thirteenth anniversary of the victory at Chalmette. He was accompanied to the convent by several of his staff and by some of the most distinguished men and women of the city. The convent’s cloistered precincts were opened to the renowned guest and to those who were with him. It may that among these surroundings the chieftains thoughts were diverted from the presidential contest, that the suggestions of ambition receded before the grateful reminiscence of the nuns who, thirteen years before, had prayed for victory to his battalions. ["The Louisiana Ursulines," Publications of the Louisiana Historical Society, Volume 2, Issues 3-4].

Here we find yet another example of how God Almighty uses very imperfect men as the instruments of His holy Will. 

Statue of Andrew Jackson in Jackson Square, New Orleans, with the Cathedral-Basilica of
Saint Louis in the background. I took this photo during a visit in 2016.