Edison has made few, if any real scientific discoveries, but he has made many ingenious inventions, and has applied scientific principles to practical purposes so as to increase the comfort and economy of living. Andrew Jackson The Man of the People While Washington, the aristocrat, was using his sword and Jefferson, the scholarly gentleman, was using his pen, to form in America a government of the people, there was growing up in a border settlement a youth who was to be a “man of the people” and bear rule over it. Andrew Jackson was the son of a poor Irish emigrant, who spent the years after his coming to America in a brave fight for bread for his wife and children. Worn out by the struggle, he died, and the children were left to their mother’s care. Andrew was born at the Waxhaw settlement which is partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina, both of which states have been claimed as Jackson’s native place. In childhood he attended an “old field school” where he gained the rudiments of an education and at work and play held his own among his comrades. “I could throw him three times out of four,” said an old schoolmate, in later days “but he never would _stay throwed_. He was dead game and never would give up.” Neither then nor in later life was he handsome, with his pale, sharp-featured face, his sandy red hair, and his keen steel blue eyes. Andrew’s elder brothers, mere lads at the time of the Revolution, served in the patriot forces and Andrew joined them when he was only thirteen. He was taken prisoner by the British and it was then that a well-known incident occurred. A British officer ordered Andrew to black his boots and the lad refused. “I am a prisoner of war,” he said, “and demand to be treated as such.” The angry officer drew his sword to chastise the young rebel; Andrew, raising his arm to parry the blow, received a wound, the scar from which he carried to his grave. One of his brothers died from neglected wounds. Andrew and Robert were confined with about three hundred other American prisoners in a stockade at Camden. Andrew, through a hole in the fence, watched the battle of Hobkirk’s Hill and the last hope of release departed when brave General Greene was forced to retreat. Not long after, however, the two brothers were released, probably in an exchange of prisoners. With their mother they made their way home. Robert died of smallpox caught while in prison and Mrs. Jackson died soon after of fever contracted while nursing American prisoners. Thus Andrew was left alone in the world,--with a bitter feeling that his mother and brothers had been sacrificed to British injustice.