In the same presidential contest this gentle being did not herself escape calumny. When her husband was elected President of the United States, she said: “For Mr. Jackson’s sake, I am glad; for my own, I never wished it.” To an intimate friend she said in all sincerity: “I assure you I would rather be a door-keeper in the house of my God than to dwell in that palace in Washington.” Dearer to her heart was the Hermitage, with the little chapel built by her husband for her own especial use, than all the prospective pomp of the President’s house. She was a mother to every servant on the estate, and anxious to make every one comfortable during her absence in Washington. She made numerous journeys to Nashville, to purchase, for all left behind, their winter supplies. Worn out, after a day’s shopping, she went to the parlor of the Nashville Inn to rest. While she waited there for the family coach which was to convey her back to the Hermitage, she heard her own name spoken in the adjoining room. She was compelled to hear, while she sat there, pale and smitten, the false and cruel calumnies against herself which had so recklessly been used during the campaign to defeat her husband, and which he had zealously excluded from her sight in the newspapers. Here the arrow came back from the misfortune of her youth, when she married a man intellectually and morally her inferior, from whom she was afterwards divorced, and it entered her gentle heart too deep to be withdrawn. She was seized almost immediately with spasmodic disease of the heart. Everything possible was done for her relief without avail. A few nights afterwards she exclaimed: “I am fainting,” was lifted to her bed, and in a few moments had breathed her last sigh. The grief of her husband amounted to agony. It seemed for a time that his frame must break under such grief, but he lived to worship and serve her memory for many years. December 23, 1828, a great ball and banquet was to have been given in Nashville, in honor of General Jackson’s victory at New Orleans. The whole city was gay with preparations, when the word came from the Hermitage: “The President’s wife is dead!”