# Stockley D. Hays

Stockley Donelson Hays (1788–1831) was a nephew of U.S. President Andrew Jackson. He was involved in historically significant events from an early day, accompanying Aaron Burr down the Mississippi during the Burr conspiracy, serving in Jackson's army during the Creek War, and assisting Jackson in a famous tavern brawl during the same period. He was one of the founding settlers of the town of Jackson in Madison County in west Tennessee. In 1831, President Jackson sought to appoint Hays to a public office in Mississippi, which triggered a political conflict with U.S. Senator George Poindexter.

## Early life, Burr expedition

Hays' father was Robert Hays, and his mother was Jane Donelson, a sister of Rachel Donelson Jackson.
At the age of 17, when he was supposedly "preparing to enter school in New Orleans," Hays was a part of Aaron Burr's 1806 Mississippi River expedition, known to history as the Burr conspiracy. According to a profile of the Hays family read to the Madison County Historical Society and republished in the Jackson Sun in 1944, "Stokely Hays consulted his great adviser. Jackson gave his permission for the boy to go. The somewhat nebulous light in which Aaron Burr's plans appear at this day seemed, doubtless, clearer to Jackson. According to Parton, Col. Hays, father of the boy, was still alive. If so, the father, as well as Jackson, was probably consulted. Jackson took the precaution to write a letter in behalf of Hays to Governor Claiborne. Parton found a letter from the boy also, stating that he had been instructed if anything inimical to the United States were intended, he was to return or place himself under the care of the governor." In 1828 one article claimed that Hays was sent along as an "aid" to Burr. A letter sent to John Coffee in April 1807 referred back to December 1806: "Four months have now, with the setting of this days sun, elapsed since I parted with you at Clover Bottom. when you and all friends were doubtfull of my impending fate—when all was doubt, the question whether to go or not to go, you on whom I called as a friend and whose advise as such I received." According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, after the Burr party landed at Bayou Pierre, Hays connected with Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne and Cowles Mead at Washington, Mississippi Territory.
John Overton of the Nashville Committee, a group dedicated to the election of Andrew Jackson to be U.S. president, solicited a letter from Hays and submitted it for publication:
   SIR: In answer to your call on me, for any information in my possession in relation to the Burr business, I have to remark. Col. Burr was an intimate friend and brother officer of my father, during the revolutionary war. He visited him in 1804 or 5, became acquainted with me; professed to be much pleased with me, and enlisted my feelings for him. He requested my father to permit me to so with him to New York and study law. He objected on the ground that I was too young, and had advanced sufficiently in my Academical course. But of it was agreed and understood that I should go in the course of two or three years to finish my education with Col. Burr. In the winter of 1806–7, the Col. came to Nashville and sent for me when at school, near there, and on meeting him, he claimed the promise which had been made to him on his first visit but stated he was going by the way of the Mississippi, and that must accompany him, and that he had seen my father and obtained his consent—that he received me as a son, and I must consider him in the character of a father. I observed to him that I must see and consult my friends before I gave my fmal consent. On advising with them some doubt of Mr. Burr's object was suggested, but he with having pledged his word of honor, that he bad nothing in view hostile to the best interests of the United States, I determined to go with him. Mr. C. C. Claiborne, was at that time Governor of Louisiana, and an old friend of my father's, and had requested him to permit me to go to New Orleans as his private secretary. To him Gen. Jackson wrote a letter, and, gave me to deliver, urging it on me, in the most earnest manner to leave Burr, if at any time I should discover, he had any views or intentions inimical to the interests or integrity of the government. I left my father's on horseback, about the middle of December 1806, and joined Mr. Burr at the mouth of Cumberland river and went with him down to the mouth of Bayou Pierre, where I left him, and saw him no more except at a ball in Washington, Miss., and on his trial there before the court. Respectfully, your obedient servant, S. D. HAYS. John Onerton, Chairman Committee.
Around the same time and through the same venue (Overton to the newspapers), Dr. Felix Robertson wrote, "I know of no circumstance, in this matter which could point suspicion to General Jackson in preference to any other prominent man, unless it be that Col. S. D. Hays, [a nephew of Mrs. Jackson] accompanied Burr to the lower country, and with those who knew the young man, this could have no weight. I always understood that Mr. Hays went against the advice and wishes of General Jackson. I have been intimately acquainted with Col. Hays from his infancy, and know he has always been in the habit of relying on his own judgment, and disposed to execute its decisions, independent of the opinions of others. I saw General Coffee a few days after Burr's departure, who told me he went off complaining of the treatment he had received from General Jackson, and most of his other acquaintance of the country. He had become so extremely peevish, that General Coffee said he could do nothing which seemed to please him. I never have understood, that Col. Hays' trip with Burr had injured him in the public estimation. He is at this time, a highly respectable citizen of this State."

## Legal career, Creek War, settlement of west Tennessee

In 1810, Hays and young Thomas Hart Benton were junior counsel to Jenkin Whiteside at the trial of the Magnesses for killing Patton Anderson. Hays was admitted to the bar of Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1812. He served as paymaster of Tennessee Volunteers, and quartermaster general of Jackson's army as of 1813. During a fight in 1813 in a tavern in downtown Nashville, Thomas Hart Benton's brother Jesse Benton shot Andrew Jackson, and Hays "nearly killed" Jesse Benton.
He drew $1,000 for contingent expenses on June 20, 1814, the same day Jackson drew $2,000. On September 10, 1816, he was appointed to the rank of judge advocate of the U.S. Army, with "brevet rank, pay, &c. of a major of cavalry." These were the "pay and emoluments of a topographical engineer." Hays and his brother-in-law Robert E. Butler are believed to have made a "prospecting journey" to the lands ceded under the 1818 Chickasaw treaty in 1819. Also in 1819 he endorsed the racing ability of a thoroughbred horse named Oscar.
He continued in this role in U.S. Army's Division of the South until at least 1820, when Jackson was Major General of the same division. Hays was the "last judge advocate of the Southern Division, were honorably discharged on June 1, 1821, and the Army did not have a full-time statutory judge advocate again until 1849."
As of January 1822 Hays was living on a farm called Greenvale, formerly owned by James Jackson, located "on the main road from Nashville to Haysboro and two miles from the former place." In 1822 Hays was one of the cofounders of Jackson, Tennessee, originally known as Alexandria. He and five others, Thomas Taylor, Austin Miller, William Stoddert, William Arnold, Archibald Hall, and James Wilson, were authorized to practice law in Madison County, Tennessee, on June 17, 1822. He was on the board of a local private school, and the board of commissioners, and worked as a lawyer, and was remembered "as the finest looking man in Jackson in the early days of the town." He suffered financially, possibly struggling to pay debts after the Panic of 1819, reportedly as a consequence of being "land poor." In January 1823, a newspaper notice announced the dissolution of the business partnership of S. D. Hays and James F. Theobald. In May 1824 Hays and Robert Hughes announced the establishment of a legal partnership based in Jackson, Tennessee.
During the 1828 U.S. presidential election, opponents of Jackson resurfaced the fact that his nephew, Stockley D. Hays, had accompanied Aaron Burr down the river during the expedition now known as the Burr conspiracy.

## Jackson administration

In November 1830, President Jackson wrote to Hays' brother-in-law Robert I. Chester about a possible political patronage job: "I wish you to say to Col. S. D. Hays that he must send on here at once testamonials of his sobriety and capacity as a surveyor. To serve as an opportunity offers to give him a surveyor's district, in order to mortify me his appointment will be opposed and Crockett will represent him as intemperate. Let the necessary recommendations be strong." In June 1831 an opponent of Jackson described Hays as unqualified based on his "intemperate, idle, and wholly disqualifying habits." Jackson sought to appoint Hays to office in Mississippi, to which U.S. Senator George Poindexter objected, on the basis that Hays was a Tennesseean and the position should go to a Mississippian. This was the land office at Mount Salus, later known as Clinton, Mississippi. Eventually, "A temporary truce was reached on this issue, when Hays was appointed to the lesser office of register of the Clinton Land Office, while Jackson nominated Poindexter's candidate to the surveyorship," but this incident was the beginning of a deeper rift between Jackson and Poindexter.$^{:55}$ Hays died shortly after his appointment and Jackson sought to replace him with Samuel Gwin, "son of an old comrade," and brother of future U.S. Senator William McKendree Gwin. Poindexter objected and blocked the nomination and the feud exploded.$^{:56}$
The Southern Statesman newspaper of Jackson published an obituary for Hays on September 10, 1831, which read: "Mr. Hays' death of bilious fever has spread an unusual gloom around us—possessed of hospitable, kind, and generous feelings, even to a fault, no man had fewer enemies...Hays was by profession a lawyer— endued with a strong mind, and possessing advantages of liberal education. Fame and fortune were within his grasp, but such were his social habits that neither ambition of parsimony could find a resting place in his bosom. For the purpose of removing his family he had just returned in apparently good health from Clinton, Mississippi, where he had been for some time attending his official duties as Register of the Land Office. He has left a widow, two children, and numerous train of relatives. Masonic honors."