# Andrew Jackson and slavery

Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. president, was a slave owner and slave trader who demonstrated a lifelong passion for the legal ownership and exploitation of enslaved black Americans. Unlike Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, Jackson "never questioned the morality of slavery." Existing records show that Jackson and his immediate heirs owned 325 enslaved people between 1788 and 1865. Jackson personally owned 95 people when he was first sworn in as U.S. president and 150 at the time of his death in 1845. Only 0.1% of white southern families owned 100 or more slaves at the time of the American Civil War.

## Slave trade

Jackson was active in the interregional slave trade, transporting people by boat from the Cumberland River district of Tennessee to the Natchez District of Mississippi. In 1811 a Choctaw Indian agent, Silas Dinsmore, theoretically tried to enforce a prohibition on trafficking slaves through Choctaw territory. According to his political opponents, Jackson declared his intention to disregard this law, ranting, "I am no kidnapper. I am no slave. I want no passport. I am a freeman, and if I cannot pass freely with my property, my rifle and my pistols wilt pass me; they have never yet failed me; and while I have strength of arm to use them, they never will?"

## Plantations

Jackson owned three plantations in total, one of which was Hermitage labor camp, which had an enslaved population of 150 people at the time of Jackson's death. When General Lafayette made his tour of the United States in 1824–25, he visited the Hermitage and his secretary recorded in his diary, "General Jackson successively showed us his garden and farm, which appeared to be well cultivated. We everywhere remarked the greatest order, and most perfect neatness; and we might have believed ourselves on the property of one of the richest and most skilfull of German farmers, if, at every step, our eyes had not been afflicted by the sad spectacle of slavery."
During his presidency, the Hermitage all but fell to ruin, and Jackson's slaves suffered the consequences. According to a history of agriculture in early Tennessee, "Jackson had, beginning in 1795, an overseer; and all his race horses were fed and trained and cared for by other men. He managed very well—as long as Rachel lived to manage for him. The frantic, yet always hopeful letters to his adopted son during his second term as President, though coming long past this period, demonstrate too well the problem of the absentee owner on the Cumberland, trying to keep a plantation going almost entirely on money from the crop...The letters tell a tale of mismanagement and bad judgement...Neighbors wrote Jackson of Negroes sick and several dead, one suspects from brutality and ill treatment in general from the overseer, for there was no Rachel around to oversee the overseer...There is something infinitely pathetic about Jackson, honest, patient—a strange role for Jackson—old, watching the ruin of everything he had worked for all his life."$^{:303–305}$
Jackson and his son Andrew Jackson Jr. bought a plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi called Halcyon. Halcyon was managed by overseer J. M. Parker.
Jackson also owned 640 acres of former Creek lands "south of the Tennessee on the Military road between the river and big spring."
According to historian Mark Cheathem, between 1804 and 1827, "at least ten male slaves ran away from plantations owned by or under Jackson's control."

### Slave quarters

A visitor to the Hermitage described the slave quarters there: "Each family had a one-story frame house that was painted either white or red, and with it about an acre of ground, all fenced in with palings or board fence and whitewashed; and around each of these houses were a lot of fruit trees and shrubbery." Archaeologists have identified three separate "slave quarters" at the Hermitage: "the work yard just north of the mansion" was primarily inhabited by the house slaves, while cabins near "the First Hermitage and Field Quarter areas" were inhabited by a combination of skilled mechanics and agricultural laborers.

### Hermitage slave cemetery

The Hermitage's long-lost slave cemetery was rediscovered in 2024 after decades of investigation. Ground-penetrating radar identified 29 graves (although that is not necessarily equivalent to the number of burials). The cemetery is located about 1,000 feet (300 m) northwest of the mansion.

## Fugitives

Andrew Jackson is known to have placed two runaway slave ads, one for "a mulatto Man Slave" in 1804, and one for Gilbert in 1822. The year before the 1828 U.S. presidential election, pioneering American abolitionist Benjamin Lundy republished news items suggesting that Andrew Jackson had been a slave trader in his younger days, commenting, "I shall be slow to believe that General Jackson would at this day be guilty of carrying on the 'lawful business' of men-dealing, although it is strongly commended by high authority in Maryland. It may be, that the following circumstance gave rise to the suspicion entertained by the Kentuckian. Some years since, a gentleman, residing near the mouth of the Ohio river, informed me that a slave belonging to General Jackson having absconded, was taken up and committed to jail (if I mistake not) in Alabama. The General got word of it, and went for him. After identifying him, he took him out of the jail, tied him to a joist, in a blacksmith-shop, and gave him a very severe flogging. He then took him home. This case has often been related in Kentucky, and possibly magnified so as to give rise to the statement relative to the General's connection with the slave trade." The Jackson papers show that he expended time and effort on the problem of Tom Wid, George, and Osten, all three of whom, at one time or another made an effort to no longer be enslaved under the purview of Andrew Jackson. Historian Mark Cheathem believes George (b. c. 1770) was likely an estate slave inherited by Rachel Jackson from her father and who was once bitten by a snake; despite Andrew Jackson chasing him around for a while he ultimately made it to New Orleans from whence he disappeared.

## Violence

According to Anita Goodstein's study of frontier-era Nashville black history, Jackson was "furious when his wife's maid [laundered] clothes for people outside the family. He ordered that she be taken to the public whipping post and given fifty lashes should she try to do it again." Jackson was apparently strongly opposed to the possibility that his slaves might hire themselves out and earn money independent of his control. In 1822, while Jackson was in Alabama, four slaves escaped from his possession in Tennessee. These people were recaptured, and subsequently Jackson wrote his ward/nephew/political protégé Andrew Jackson Donelson, "although I hate chains, was compelled to place two of them in irons, for safe-keeping untill an opportunity offers to sell or exchange them-so soon as I have leisure I shall give you my ideas on the subject submitted to you for your opinion."
On the question of "irons" Jackson had been given a platform for sharing his perspective on the discipline and punishment of subordinates when the U.S. Army issued a statement about the prevalence of desertion and what might be done to ameliorate the problem, including improving conditions for the soldiery. Jackson, as Major General of the Division of the South, issued a statement on July 21, 1821, saying that issue was command weakness and the solution was more whipping and less chaining, writing (spelling and orthography is as written by Jackson):
   The government must annex an adequate & certain punishmt <for> to the crime of desertion, and, experience compels me to say it, although at varience with the more refined & sensative feelings of the day must restore corporeal punishment in the regulations for the government of the army, as it formerly existed, and as it now exists in the navy, or desertion & insubordination will still increase. But it is said to be dishonorable; why should it be more so in the army, than in the Navy? Is it more dishonorable to receive twentyfive stripes and be or dered to immediate duty, than to be manacled with Chains for months & years, an object of disgust to every freeman who sees him, more properly an appendage of ancient despotism, than any thing belong ing to republican institutions? Let the deserter in time of peace, for the first offence receive thirty nine stripes, for the second double that number, and for the third let him feel the highest penalty of the law. I will venture to say that a few examples will put an end to that extraordinary frequency of desertion which at present prevails, and the cause of which, has been so unjustly imputed "to an undue severity, or to the absence of system in the conduct of officers towards their men["]
The number of "39 stripes" (meaning 39 strikes with the whip or the cat o' nine tails or the paddle) comes from the Bible, Deuteronomy 25:3, "He may be flogged with forty lashes, but no more." This number was codified into black codes and other statues throughout the United States.

## Key slaves

* Dinwiddie (also known as Dunwoody), born c. 1773, purchased 1806, worked as a trainer in Jackson's stables until Jackson's death. Dinwiddie and a famous horse named Truxton were both available for lease from the Jacksons.
* John Fulton played violin and was sent to out to other plantations to provide music for parties. Another Hermitage slave played banjo. Fulton was employed at Vanderbilt after emancipation.

## War of 1812

According to James Robinson, after Jackson used slaves to fight and win the Battle of New Orleans, he made a speech recanting promises to free the slaves who fought in his command and added, "Before a slave of mine should go free, I would put him in a barn and burn him alive." Some 50 years later, amid the public debate about the formation of African-American military units during the American Civil War, an Ohio newspaper editorialized, "Out, we say, upon that squeamish Democracy that would shield the negro from the privations and dangers of the war! Gen. Jackson, whose Democracy no Democrat, at least, will question, had no scruples about negroes going into the army. They fought like veterans at the battle of New Orleans--(an event that Democrats even now delight to commemorate)--and publicly commended them for their bravery. If it was right that negroes should fight then, what makes it wrong now?"

## Presidency

By the 1830s, abolitionism in the United States had become a major reform movement, one often targeted by pro-slavery violence. Federal troops were used to crush Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831, though Jackson ordered them withdrawn immediately afterwards despite the petition of local citizens for them to remain for protection. Jackson considered the issue of slavery divisive to the nation and to the delicate alliances of the Democratic Party.

## Legacy

When Jackson's Ward and political protege Andrew Jackson Donelson was nominated for Vice President on the 1856 Know Nothing ticket under Millard Fillmore, he mentioned in his acceptance speech at the nominating convention that he personally owned 100 slaves and loved the South.