Although his mother had intended for him to be a clergyman, and his mother’s family taught him the saddling trade, Jackson must have seen opportunities to travel and earn a decent living as an attorney. Before his 18th birthday, Jackson rode to Salisbury, N.C., and entered the law office of Mr. Spruce McCay, where he began his legal studies.

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A legal education in post-Revolution North Carolina was a far cry from the more formalized education of today’s law schools. It was far removed even from contemporary legal programs in England or in the American Northeast, where John Quincy Adams was commencing his higher education at Harvard College.

This less-formalized Southern education complemented a wilder lifestyle. And Jackson was never far from chicanery. He fell into a crowd of like-minded peers, engaging in cock-fighting, horseracing, drunken revelry and pranks. On one occasion, after concluding a pleasant dinner at a local tavern, the young men decided that a finer time should not and would never be had with the dining ware they had used. They made good on their feelings by shattering the plates and glasses. Then they broke the table in two, battered the chairs and other furniture into splinters, heaped it all into a pile and set the pile ablaze.

Some of his indiscretions were less destructive but more scandalous. The young Jackson ruffled feathers when, in helping organize a Christmas ball at the town’s dancing school, he invited two notorious prostitutes. The women took the invitation seriously, to the universal embarrassment of all present at their arrival. It was a cruel joke, and Jackson later apologized to the other women at the ball (it is not clear if he ever apologized to the prostitutes). This remains the only occasion in which Jackson was less than ideally chivalrous in his dealings with women.

In spite of his youthful distractions, there is reason to believe Jackson was serious in his legal studies. As one of his early biographers, James Parton, claimed in his 1860 Life of Andrew Jackson:

At no part of Jackson’s career, when we can get a look at him through a pair of trustworthy eyes, do we find him trifling with life. We find him often wrong, but always earnest. He never so much as raised a field of cotton which he did not have done in the best manner known to him. It was not in the nature of this young man to take a great deal of trouble to get a chance to study law, and then entirely to throw away that chance.

In 1786 Jackson left McCay’s office and moved to that of Colonel John Stokes, where he completed his legal education. On September 26, 1787, judges Samuel Ashe and John F. Williams of the Superior Court of Law and Equity of North Carolina authorized him to practice as an attorney, finding him to be a man of ‘unblemished moral character’ and knowledgeable in the law. At the age of 20, Andrew Jackson was ready to begin his life of public service in the courtrooms of North Carolina.

The next year of Jackson’s life was spent mostly in Martinsville, N.C. Legal work was sparse, and Jackson made do working as a constable and assisting in the management of a store with two of his friends. Even with three jobs, his means were limited. During one of his travels to court in the town of Richmond, Jackson stayed at the inn of Jesse Lister, and apparently left without paying his bill. According to tradition, Lister later wrote in his account book that the charge was ‘Paid at the Battle of New Orleans.’ (Jackson as president would deny the validity of this story when presented with the board-bill by Lister’s daughter.)

It was soon clear to Jackson that better opportunities must lie in the West. Although young, and with questionable legal knowledge, Jackson possessed a magnetic character. The friendships he developed in his early years would reap huge benefits throughout his life. They began to pay off in 1788, when Jackson’s fun-loving companion from his law school days, John McNairy, earned an appointment as Superior Court judge for the Western District of North Carolina (in present-day Tennessee). McNairy needed a prosecutor, and Jackson seized upon the offer. Jackson and McNairy, along with several other friends, worked their way from town to town toward Nashville. On the way, Jackson took cases to pass the time between legs of the journey.

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