On May 30, 1806, Andrew Jackson, a thirty-nine-year-old Tennessee lawyer, came within inches of death. A duelist\u2019s bullet struck him in the chest, just shy of his heart (the man who fired the gun was purportedly the best shot in Tennessee). But the wounded Jackson remained standing. Bleeding, he slowly steadied his aim, returned fire, and the other man dropped to the ground, mortally wounded. Jackson\u2013still carrying the bullet in his chest\u2013later boasted, \u201cI should have hit him if he had shot me through the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0duel in Logan County, Kentucky, was one of many that Jackson fought during the course of his long and highly controversial career. And the tenacity, toughness and vengefulness that carried Jackson alive out of that duel\u2013and the mythology and symbolism that would be attached to it\u2013would also characterize many his later dealings on the battlefield and in politics. By the time of his death almost forty years later, Andrew Jackson would become an enduring and controversial symbol, a kind of cipher to gauge the ways\u00a0that various\u00a0Americans thought about their country.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t