If Jackson had had his way, he would have been accompanied by Rachel, but the stresses of the 1828 election a dozen years earlier had cost him dearly. So many insults were cast at both husband and wife that Rachel remarked to a friend just before ballots were cast, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace in Washington.” Just days after the close of the hard-fought electoral battle, Rachel Jackson was indeed summoned by her Lord, stricken with an intense pain in her left arm, shoulder, and chest. Suddenly, the president-elect was in mourning for the love of
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