This consoling letter from his old friend must have laid unction to Jackson’s soul; but not all of the Nashville citizens accepted Dickinson’s tragic death with Judge Overton’s complacency. The unfortunate victim of the duel had some warm and influential friends in Nashville; and they spent their days and nights industriously giving circulation to an account of the duel which placed Jackson in the worst possible light. His popularity suffered accordingly. Then close on the heels of this tragedy came the embroglio with Aaron Burr into which he had permitted himself to become innocently entangled. Jackson’s popularity in Tennessee was never at a lower ebb—and he was not a man to regard such a state of affairs with resignation. On top of all this, he was worried about his financial affairs, and it is easy to understand how he might have been attracted by the idea of starting life over again in a new location—and with a government job carrying a comfortable salary. Mississippi was a new country, the government of which was just being organized, and Jackson wrote to Jenkyn Whitesides, United States Senator from Tennessee, regarding the possibility of receiving a federal appointment as judge in the new territory. “From my pursuits for several years past,” he wrote in February, 1810, “from many unpleasant occurrences that took place during that time, it has given my mind such a turn of thought that I have labored to get clear of. I have found this impossible, and unless some new pursuit to employ my mind and thoughts, I find it impossible to divest myself of those habits of gloomy and peevish reflections that the wanton and flagitious conduct and unmerited reflections of base calumny heaped upon me has given rise to.” It had occurred to him, he said, that new scenes might serve to relieve him from this unpleasant tone of thought, and he was therefore serving notice that he would accept the judgeship if it were offered him. As a further reason for his dissatisfaction he cited the “lethargy and temporizing conduct” of the government, and he expressed the fear that “as a military man I shall have no amusement or business, and indolence and inaction would shortly destroy me.” One of Mrs. Jackson’s nephews in Natchez, Donelson Caffery, heard of his uncle’s plan to sell the Hermitage home place and remove to Mississippi, and he hastily wrote to dissuade him. “You have nearly got through all your embarrassments,” wrote young Caffery, “You have a delightful farm, from the products of which you will at least be able to live comfortably; by the respectable and well-informed part of the country you are highly esteemed; you are able to select a good society from your neighborhood.” And, concluding in a burst of eloquence: “You have been able there to read the characters of men in their actions; here another volume will be presented to your view in which human baseness will take up a considerable part.”