Further reference to the nuts is seen in a letter written by President Jackson in the spring of 1831 to his adopted son, who was about to return to Tennessee: “I sent to Mr. Daniel Donelson some hickory nutts with a request that he would hand them to the overseer with a letter directing Steele to plant them around your mother’s tomb.” That they were duly planted is attested by the attention-attracting row of tall, straight trees seen there today; but there is no sign of the inscription mentioned in General Jackson’s letter to Colonel Dudley. No one now living remembers whether the trees were planted in strict accordance with the General’s expressed wish that they encircle the tomb, although one of Jackson’s biographers does mention that “some fine hickory trees that grew in the garden” were at one time removed in a mistaken effort to improve the appearance of the place. Despite the careful and painstaking preparations made by General Jackson to insure that the last resting place of his mortal remains would be by the side of his beloved wife in the tomb in the Hermitage garden, it was only by the interposition of the governor of the state that there was frustrated an effort to nullify this last wish of the old General. When the state purchased the property in 1856 and then began to make plans to tender it to the Federal government as a suitable site for a military academy in the South, somebody had the bright idea of digging up the bodies of the General and Mrs. Jackson and removing them from the Hermitage to Capitol Hill in Nashville. Accordingly a bill was introduced in the General Assembly in 1860 providing for such removal, and it was promptly passed by the Senate. Before the lower house could act on it, however, Andrew Jackson, junior, heard of the plan and immediately raised a loud and well-justified protest. Directly to Governor Harris he went to remonstrate against the enactment of the bill, pointing out that upon his death-bed General Jackson had expressed the hope that the remains of himself and his wife should under no circumstances be removed from the Hermitage. Governor Harris thereupon sent a special message to the Senate and House of Representatives “respectfully recommending” that the bill be rejected and that Old Hickory’s wishes be respected. In those days a respectful recommendation from Governor Harris was just about equivalent to an edict, and nothing more was heard about disturbing the Jackson remains.