“On the contrary, madam, my life has been a dismal failure,” he replied. “The one great object I have worked for has never been accomplished. I was never able to beat Haynie’s Maria,” and he smiled at her astonishment. The tragedy, as well as the sweetness of Jackson’s life lies around his love for Rachel Donelson. This paper will tell of the tragedy. Before she was twenty Rachel Donelson first married Lewis Robards and went with him, as stated, to live in pioneer Kentucky. He was a jealous, drinking, ill-tempered fool. Horsemen have a term which fits him better than any thing elegant I can think of—sour-headed. Robards soon became jealous of his wife and made her life unhappy. Finally he wrote to Rachel’s mother, the widow Donelson, then living near Nashville, that he would send her daughter back to her. This he did, but soon afterward repented and on the promise of better behavior was reunited to his wife by the intervention of Judge Overton and went to live with her near Nashville. Jackson and Judge Overton, both were lawyers, boarded in the same home, the widow Donelson’s, with Robards and his wife, and in a lengthy article written 1827, when Jackson was a candidate for President, Judge Overton tells pointedly and graphically of the affair. He says that after Robards sent his wife back to Tennessee he became unhappy and induced Overton, who was then boarding at old Mrs. Robards’ near Nashville, to beg his wife to let him come back to her, agreeing to live in Tennessee and to treat her better. This Overton did, and Robards and his wife were reunited. In the meanwhile Jackson, a young lawyer, came to board in the house, and in a few months Robards began to treat his wife ill again, even accusing her of liking Jackson. Jackson left the house, to avoid any unpleasantness, but Robards finally left his wife, went to Virginia and applied to the legislature in the winter of 1790 for a divorce. This the legislature granted and Jackson married Mrs. Robards in the summer of 1791, believing the marriage between her and Robards was annulled. But it seems under the Virginia law a final decree of the court was necessary, which Robards did not apply for until 1793. Jackson, learning this, was remarried to his wife in 1794. “It was a happy marriage,” says Parton, the biographer, “a very happy marriage—one of the very happiest ever contracted. They loved one another dearly. They held each other in the highest respect. They testified the love and respect they entertained for one another by those polite attentions which lovers cannot but exchange before marriage and after marriage. “Their love grew as their age increased and became warmer as their blood became colder.