Then the British troops came nearer, and Widow Jackson, with Robert and Andrew, was driven from her poor home. These terrible experiences developed in the tall, red-haired, freckled, thirteen-year-old Scotch-Irish lad a deep hatred of the “red-coats,” as the British soldiers were called. As if Andrew had not already reasons enough for hating his enemies, a squad of dragoons surprised him with his brother Robert and a cousin, Lieutenant Thomas Crawford, at the home of the Crawfords, where they had brought Tom, wounded and ill, for his mother’s care. After capturing the young American “soldiers three,” the British cavalrymen broke the Crawfords’ dishes, tore their clothing, ripped open feather beds, insulted the frightened mother and abused the little children. Then, as if for a crowning insult, the British officer ordered Andy to clean his boots. The young Irish soldier drew himself up and said proudly, “Sir, I am not a servant, but a prisoner of war, and I claim to be treated as such.” The angry dragoon struck at the youth’s head with his saber. Andy threw up his hand and saved his own life by breaking the force of the stroke, but received deep cuts on his forehead and hand. He wore the two scars to his dying day. Andrew’s brother Robert was commanded to perform the same low service and refused with the same proud spirit; he also received a sword-cut on his head which nearly killed him. The two Jackson youths were then taken away to a prison pen at Camden, South Carolina, where American soldiers were treated like beasts and where many were already dying of smallpox. While the Jackson brothers were in this prison, a battle was fought near by. Young Andrew whittled a hole through a board with an old razor, so that he could watch the battle that was raging around them. When the poor mother heard that her wounded sons were confined in a filthy prison where they were exposed to smallpox, she walked forty miles to Camden and managed to have them exchanged for some British soldiers the Americans had captured. Begging the use of two horses, she placed Robert on one of them, as he was very ill with smallpox. She rode the other horse to hold her son in his saddle; and young Andrew, “weak and wounded, sick and sore,” staggered along behind them on foot. Robert died two days after reaching home, but Andrew recovered after a long and severe illness. After nursing her only remaining son back to health, that brave, unselfish mother heard that many American soldiers were sick and dying in the British prison ship in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. She walked more than one hundred and fifty miles to nurse and help them as she had nursed her own sons. She took the ship fever and died, giving her devoted life for freedom and for country.