When Andrew Jackson died in 1845, a glowing elegy entitled “Death of Jackson” by Mary M. Glover appeared in the Patriot soon after.⁴¹

It has been remarked ironically that Mrs. Glover was probably the only writer in America to refer to the tough old warrior as “sainted,” and the epithet is certainly remarkable even if put into the context of the religiously moving accounts of the scene at his deathbed. In a degree it was the tribute of a young woman sheltered from the rough-and-tumble conflicts of a man’s world, but it was also an index of Mrs. Glover’s genuine love and admiration for a real fighter.

In her study of nineteenth-century woman, Margaret Fuller had just written: “Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.”⁴²

Intensely feminine though she was, Mrs. Glover yet possessed qualities which in time would cause Mark Twain to refer to her as “the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that has appeared on the earth in centuries.”⁴³  A hint of these qualities appears in her attitude to the Mexican War.

These were stirring times. A sense of limitless possibilities contended with a sense of intolerable injustices. It was Texas that focused the moral issues for many Americans when at the end of 1845 that great territory was annexed to the Union. A few months later Mexican and American soldiers clashed. The common man, South and North, rushed to recruit. But when war was actually declared in May, public opinion was split down the center.

Henry Thoreau went to jail (for a day) rather than pay a tax to a government which he considered to be waging an iniquitous war for the extension of slavery. James Russell Lowell and John Greenleaf  ● ● ●