But, alas, it developed that the news of the divorce was premature—the marriage with Jackson was consummated before the attenuated Kentucky divorce proceedings had been actually completed. Legally, therefore, Mrs. Robards-Jackson was technically guilty of bigamy; but the incensed Robards used a harsher term in discussing the young Tennessee lawyer’s relations with his erstwhile wife. Jackson patched the thing up as best he could by having another wedding ceremony promptly performed in January, 1794, after the Kentucky divorce was actually granted; but the irregularities attending his marriage rose to plague him again and again throughout his life, with his political enemies gleefully making capital of the unfortunate episode to the fullest possible extent. Jackson at the time of his marriage, though still a young man, was in prosperous circumstances. His success as a lawyer in the new community had been almost instantaneous, due largely to an unusual state of affairs existing in the Cumberland settlements when he arrived there. Nashville was still a young and undeveloped frontier town and up until the time of Jackson’s arrival boasted only one lawyer. This representative of the legal fraternity had been retained as counsel for a sort of combination of habitual debtors; and the result was that the merchants, as well as other creditors, found it well-nigh impossible to collect what was owing to them. When Jackson appeared on the scene and let it be known that he was a lawyer looking for clients, he was immediately offered these claims; and it was characteristic of him that he accepted with avidity a difficult class of litigation from which many other young lawyers might have shrunk. But Jackson’s physical and moral courage made him enjoy the kind of a fight against odds that most people would avoid; and he prosecuted his clients’ claims with such boldness and vim that he soon drove an irresistible wedge into the debt-paying strike. Naturally this immediately popularized him with the responsible elements in Nashville, and his law practice quickly flourished. Within seven years of his arrival in 1788 he had more cases on the docket in Davidson County than all the other Nashville lawyers combined. In the four terms of court in the county in 1794 there were 397 cases; Andrew Jackson appeared as counsel in 288 of them. Although he had accepted his official appointment with a mental reservation and had really come out to Nashville on a sort of prospecting trip, he soon decided to stay and grow up with the new settlement. His position as attorney-general or public prosecutor of the Mero District gave him distinction and naturally strengthened his legal prestige, and his private law practice had quickly developed to such an extent that at the time of his marriage he enjoyed a comfortable income.