This final assault lasted only thirty minutes. In that time the defenders of Texas won immortal fame. Four days before, the Republic of Texas had been proclaimed. Those who fell in the Alamo were hailed the heroes of the struggle. "Remember the Alamo!" was the battle cry of the war for independence that was waged until the Mexican Army was routed at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836. On the capitol grounds at Austin, Texas, stands a monument to the heroes of the Alamo, with the inscription: "Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat; the Alamo had none." [Illustration: THE HERMITAGE, NASHVILLE, TENN. _Photo by Wiles, Nashville_ See page 351] LXXX THE HERMITAGE, NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE ANDREW JACKSON'S RETREAT IN THE INTERVALS OF HIS PUBLIC SERVICE Andrew Jackson was a pioneer. From North Carolina he crossed the mountains to what was then the Western District. He was a lawyer, but he wanted to be a farmer also. His first land purchase was made in 1791. This land was lost in the effort to pay the debts of another. The second effort at farming was more successful. This was begun in 1804, when he bought a tract of some twenty-eight thousand acres, six thousand acres of which he retained permanently as the Hermitage plantation. From the beginning he showed that he had a genius for farming. Crops were large, and his wealth grew rapidly, until he became the wealthiest man in all that country. After a few years he became famous as a breeder of race horses. He owned a track of his own not far from the mansion. For fifteen years Mr. and Mrs. Jackson lived in a log cabin. But they maintained a large establishment. They had their slaves, and they drove in a carriage drawn by four horses. And they entertained royally. Jackson's biographer, James Parton, tells of a Nashville lady who said that she had often been at the Hermitage "when there were in each of the four available rooms not a guest merely, but a family, while the young men and solitary travellers who chanced to drop in disposed themselves on the piazza, or any other shelter about the house." The log house was still the plantation-house when General Jackson's neighbors gathered to welcome him home as the victor of New Orleans. In the response he gave to their greeting he made a prophecy: "Years will continue to develop our inherent qualities, until, from being the youngest and the weakest, we shall become the most powerful nation in the universe."