Oregon--although not to fifty-four forty--was soon to be duly made American soil. But Jackson did not live to witness the event. Early in 1845 his health began to fail rapidly and on the very day of Polk's inauguration he was at the point of death. Rallying, he struggled manfully for three months against the combined effects of consumption, dropsy, and dysentery. But on Sunday, the 8th of June, the end came. In accordance with a pledge which he had given his wife years before, he had become a communicant of the Presbyterian church; and his last words to the friends about his bedside were messages of Christian cheer. After two days the body was laid to rest in the Hermitage garden, beside the grave of the companion whose loss he had never ceased to mourn with all the feeling of which his great nature was capable. The authorities at the national capital ordered public honors to be paid to the ex-President, and gatherings in all parts of the country listened with much show of feeling to appropriate eulogies. "General Jackson," said Daniel Webster to Thurlow Weed in 1837, "is an honest and upright man. He does what he thinks is right, and does it with all his might. He has a violent temper, which leads him often to hasty conclusions. It also causes him to view as personal to himself the public acts of other men. For this reason there is great difference between Jackson angry and Jackson in good humor. When he is calm, his judgment is good; when angry, it is usually bad. . . . His patriotism is no more to be questioned than that of Washington. He is the greatest General we have and, except Washington, the greatest we ever had." To this characterization of Andrew Jackson by his greatest American contemporary it is impossible to make noteworthy addition. His was a character of striking contradictions. His personal virtues were honesty, bravery, open-heartedness, chivalry toward women, hospitality, steadfastness. His personal faults were irascibility, egotism, stubbornness, vindictiveness, and intolerance of the opinions of others. He was not a statesman; yet some of the highest qualities of statesmanship were in him. He had a perception of the public will which has rarely been surpassed; and in most, if not all, of the great issues of his time he had a grasp of the right end of the question.