Yet at six and twenty he was in the Tennessee General Assembly and at four and thirty in Congress.
There was from first to last not a little about him to baffle conjecture.

I should call him a cross between Jack Cade and Aaron Burr.
His sympathies were easily stirred by rags in distress.

But he was uncompromising in his detestation of the rich.

It was said that he hated "a biled shirt." He would have nothing to do "with people who wore broadcloth," though he carefully dressed himself.

When, as governor of Tennessee, he came to Nashville he refused many invitations to take his first New Year's dinner with a party of toughs at the house of a river roustabout.
There was nothing of the tough about him, however.