The question of whether Andrew Jackson had been a "negro trader" was a campaign issue during the 1828 United States presidential election. Jackson denied the charges, and the issue failed to connect with the electorate. However, Jackson had indeed been a "speculator in slaves," participating in the interregional slave trade between Nashville, Tennessee (buying people from the Virginia–Tennessee–Kentucky region) and the Natchez and New Orleans slave markets of the lower Mississippi River valley. Little is known about the people Jackson sold. There are surviving records naming eight individuals carried to Mississippi: Candis, age 20, and Malinda, age 14 ($1000); Fanny ($280); a 35-year-old woman named Betty and her 15-year-old daughter Hannah ($550); and a young mother named Kissiah, and her two children, a three-year-old named Ruben and an infant named Elsy ($650).
Jackson traded in enslaved people between 1788 and 1844, both for "personal use" on his property and for-profit through slave arbitrage.
Jackson's "negro speculation" slave sales initially took place in the Natchez District of Spanish West Florida, a North American colony of Spain bounded by the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and the Chattahoochee River, in what is now the U.S. states of Mississippi and Alabama. The land was then was then a remote southwestern frontier, which had initially opened to American colonists by the Spanish government on August 23, 1787. The Mississippi Territory of the United States was established in 1798.[1] As of 1800, the total estimated population of the region that would later become Mississippi's Adams, Claiborne, Jefferson, and Wilkinson counties was 4,660 people (2,403 white people and 2,257 enslaved black people; estimates did not include Indigenous people resident in the area). By the last decade of the 18th century, the region surrounding Natchez was in the midst of a transition from timber and tobacco agriculture to cotton production, thanks to the removal of the Spanish tobacco subsidy and an increase in available labor (in the form of cotton gin innovation, and imported enslaved black people).
On the whole, Spanish Mississippi has been understudied but according to historian William S. Coker, "Population clusters were located along the creeks and bayous which emptied into the Mississippi such as the Big Black, Bayou Pierre, Cole's Creek, Fairchild's Creek, and St. Catherine's, with its two upper branches, Second and Sandy Creek. The rest of the present state of Mississippi at the time was largely Indian territory." Mississippi became the 20th U.S. state on December 10, 1817.[2]
In 1789, Jackson built a cabin and a trading post at Bruinsburg, on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, near Old Greenville (then just newly established), and just north of Natchez: "Jackson traded in wine and 'sundries' sent from his business associate in Nashville. Those sundries included enslaved Blacks." Bruinsburg was the northernmost white settlement in the Natchez District as of 1789. According to the memoir of a migration to the lower Mississippi in 1789, there were no other settlements for hundreds of miles north along the river (nothing "from L'Anse à la Graisse to Bayou Pierre, something like sixty miles above Natchez.") In July 1789 Jackson was in the Natchez District swearing allegiance to the king of Spain so that he could trade there without paying a tax intended for American traders. According to biographer Robert V. Remini, he made the acquaintance of "a great many Natchez businessmen and through them began an extensive trading operation." Preserved letters from 1790 between Jackson and "Melling Woolley, a Natchez merchant" record goods being carried from Nashville to Natchez, including "cases of wine and rum; also a snuff box, dolls, muslin, salt, sugar, knives and iron pots". Another letter of 1790 thanks Jackson for his help with "The Little Venture of Swann Skins," which some scholars believe is a euphemism for a shipment of enslaved people. As Remini put it, if nothing else, "The business was extremely lucrative and impossible to avoid in the course of regular trade between two distant points such as Nashville and Natchez. His friends frequently asked him to transport slaves as a courtesy, and Jackson was never one to deny his friends. On one occasion he returned a runaway slave to the Spanish governor of Natchez, Manuel Gayoso de Lemos, for James Robertson."
Jackson's slave trading is closely tied to the related Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy. Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards ran off together in 1790, leaving behind Rachel's first husband Lewis Robards; Rachel reportedly spent the winter of 1790–1791 with the families of Thomas Green and Peter Bruin (namesake of Bruinsburg). When they returned to Nashville from Bayou Pierre in September 1791, they went in a company of about 100, including Jackson's cousin's husband's brother, Hugh McGary, and "Considering Jackson's position as a lawyer, trader, and slave dealer, it is safe to assume that he and Rachel were accompanied by black servants on the trip, which generally required twenty-one days. Along the way such slaves handled the baggage and prepared the meals. Perhaps the Jacksons had better fare than ordinary travelers. From the journals of others we know that most people headed northward had as their principal provisions dried beef and a special kind of hard biscuit. They carried one powder of roasted Indian corn and another called Conte, made from the root of the China briar. Travelers high and low praised fritters made of this powder when sweetened with honey and fried in bear oil."
Jackson was still trading into the 19th century, probably at least until the War of 1812 catapulted him to national fame. According to Frederic Bancroft's Slave-Trading in the Old South (1931), letters in the Jackson papers at the Library of Congress at least suggest he had signaled a continuing interest in the market, "From Natchez, Wm. C. C. Claiborne, wrote to Andrew Jackson, Dec. 9, 1801: 'I will try to find a purchaser for your horses; as for negroes, they are in great demand and will sell well.' And again, Dec. 23, 1801: 'The negro woman he [Mr. Hutchins] has sold for $500, in cash, and I believe he has, or will in a few days sell the boy, for his own price, to Colo. West.'"
We know the most about specific trades made by Jackson in 1811. The Port Gibson Correspondent newspaper of Port Gibson, Mississippi published an "extra" edition on September 13, 1828 to address the subject of "Gen. Jackson's Negro trading.—"
In 1812, Jackson got into a dispute with a Choctaw agent named Silas Dinsmoor who was determined to enforce a regular that every enslaved person crossing through the Choctaw Nation possess a document identifying their legal owner and the purpose of their travel. The intention was to prevent runaway enslaved people from using the Choctaw lands as a refuge, which in turn would hopefully reduce complaints from white settlers about the Choctaw. Jackson disliked Dinsmore enforcing this rule, and while traveling, he "happened to pass by Dinsmore's agency with a considerable number of slaves, the property of a business firm (Jackson, Coleman and Green) of which he was now an inactive partner." Dinsmore was not at the agency when Jackson passed by. Still, Jackson left a note promising a future confrontation with Dinsmore, who persisted in regulating the passage of enslaved people over the Trace. Jackson later saw to it that Dismore was removed from his post. According to The Devil's Backbone, a history of the Natchez Trace, "No explanation has been made as to why Jackson felt this passport ruling was unreasonable when applied to him, except that Wilkinson's treaty of 1801 opened the road through the Indian nations to all white travelers, and presumably also to their slaves."
American abolitionist Benjamin Lundy covered the controversy in his newspaper, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, or American Anti-Slavery Journal and Register of News. Lundy felt that there was evidence for Jackson escorting two separate droves for sale, and that Jackson had provided a full confession: "This, we repeat, is Gen. Jackson's own story. It amounts to this. A speculation was to be made in cotton, tobacco and negroes: Coleman was to do the business and Jackson to furnish the means; the negroes were bought up, taken to market, followed by Jackson, part of them sold by himself at Natchez, and the rest carried back by him to Tennessee in the year 1812."
According to a letter by an author writing pseudonymously as Idler, from Rodney, Mississippi, dated 1854:[3]
Another letter by the same author, dated August 1854, explained that it was common in the early history of the region for travelers to float down and walk back up: "At that day the trade of the Ohio and Mississippi was carried on entirely by flatboats, keels and barges. Arrived at Natchez or New Orleans, after the cargo was sold, the flats were broken up and the gunwales converted by the City Fathers into sidewalks. Camp street was thus banquetted when I came there, in 1826. There was no other mode of returning to the West in those days except by land, and for their mutual protection they usually went in companies. As there were but few settlements on the road they were compelled to camp out, without the benefit of a tent."[4] British traveler Francis Baily said as much about the camping-out nature of journeys over the Natchez road, recording in his journal of a 1796–1797 trip, "The very house at Grindstone Ford from which I now write this, and which consists but of one room, is filled with the bridles, saddles, and baggage of our party, as well as other lumber belonging to the family. In this, our supper (consisting merely of mush and milk) is to be cooked; and in this (after that was over) we are to take up our abode for the night. For my own part, rather than be poisoned with the effluvia of the living, I walked on the banks of the river till supper-time; and that over, I spread my blanket out on a grassplat in the garden, and there laid me down till morning; yet, even for this rough fare, they had the impudence to charge us a quarter of a dollar apiece."[5] He also wrote about what he called "encamping grounds" when they were earlier crossing the Amite River, a description that may be suggestive of the experience had by other travelers on the old southwestern frontiers: "Immediately on the borders of the river we observed an old encamping ground on each side; consequently we supposed that this was the common crossing place. These encamping grounds are spots which you often meet with in the woods, and are known by the remains of fires, trees cut down, a well-trodden surface, &c.; but they are more particularly observed on the borders of rivers, because, as the Indians generally fix upon the most shallow part of the stream for their crossing place, this part becomes more frequented; and as they generally halt before they pass over, there comes (in course of time) to be a considerable clearance made."
The memoirs of William Henry Sparks, published in 1870, describe his knowledge of Jackson's slave-trading business:
A 1912 biography comments, "The biographers of Andrew Jackson strain and strive mightily to ignore the fact that their hero was a negro trader in his early days, but it is a fact nevertheless...Ordinarily, the Memories of Fifty Years is to be rejected as an authority: the book was written in the extreme old age of the author and is full of fable. But William H. Sparks himself married into the Green family, lived in the Bruinsburgh neighborhood, and must be presumed to have known what the Greens had to say concerning their great friend and his beloved wife." A surviving letter to Jackson from a Natchez businessman named George Cochran mentions this place, recalling "many agreeable hours" at his "friendly retreat at Bayou Pierre." The writer called "Idler" recalled Jackson and participating in foot races and wrestling matches at Bruinsburg, naming several local residents as participants in these activities. A partner in a plow manufacturing company based in Lebanon, Ohio traveled widely between 1822 and 1845, traveling up and down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers selling the company's products. According to the local historian for Warren County, Ohio, this man, named John E. Dey, spent his winters at Bruinsburg, and "Andrew Jackson, years before when he was just a Colonel, lived at this place. Colonel Jackson quite often frequented the plantation and Mr. Dey became well acquainted with him. He remembered that he was a tall, slim man, with a nervous manner. He used to carry a pocket full of shelled corn and play with the grains at the dining table...He says that Colonel Jackson, soon after he came to Mississippi, went back into the woods about four miles from the river to a noted hunting place of the hunting gentlemen of the country. Here he started a saloon which he continued for many years. He never appeared behind the bar, but the establishment was his and he was responsible for it."
Documents published by the Natchez Ariel and the Port Gibson Correspondent newspaper shed some light on Jackson's trading. The Correspondent had one bill of sale from Andrew Jackson to Abraham Green of "Betty about thirty-five years of age and Hannah her Daughter about fifteen years of age."[6] A transcript reprinted in a Rhode Island paper had the date of this sale as December 27, 1800. The cost to purchase the mother and daughter was $550. The Ariel published a receipt dated December 27, 1811 confirming that Abraham Green had paid $650 cash for "one Negro woman named Kessiah with Two Cheldren, Ruben about three years old and a female cheld at the breast called Elsey." At the bottom of the receipt for Kessiah and her children is a notation "one Negro Wench named Faney $280." Abraham Green was a brother of Abner Green and former delegate to Congress for the Mississippi Territory Thomas M. Green Jr. Abraham Green died in late 1826 and his estate was still being settled as of 1828.[7] One of the executors of Abraham Green's estate had the bill of sale notarized before showing it to the Ariel. Jackson also had kinship ties to the Green family and by extension the Green–Hutchins–West–Hinds political alliance in Mississippi Territory:[8] Abraham Green's mother-in-law and Andrew Jackson's wife were sisters.
Another sale documented by the Correspondent was the sale of Malinda and Candis on December 28, 1811.[9] The Correspondent stated that the sale record was entirely in Jackson's handwriting (except for the signatures of the witnesses) and "could be viewed at the office of the Democratic Press at any time between the hours 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily." Malinda was described as being "about fourteen years old of a yellow complecion." Candis was said to be "about 20 years old of a black complection formerly owned by Mary Coffery." The buyer, James McCaleb, paid $1,000 for the pair. According to May Wilson McBee's extracts of Natchez District court records, in 1804 James McCaleb had filed a claim for "555 acres on Boggy Br. of North Fork of Bayou Pierre, 3 mi. east of Grindstone Ford, Plat shows 513 acres adj. Wm. Kilcrease, John Robinson, Abner Green and the old survey of Catura Proctor." McCaleb also operated a "gin" near Bayou Pierre circa 1814.[10]
The examination of Jackson's enslavement of people like Gilbert, and his history of slave trading, was promulgated in large part by a man named Andrew Erwin, who, according to history Mark Cheatham was "determined to undermine Jackson's campaign out of personal spite, as well as for political benefit. The national media then seized on the accusations against Jackson as part of a larger discussion about abolitionism and disunion, prompted by the sectionalism of the 1820s." Erwin was related to Henry Clay by marriage. Among other efforts, Erwin convinced Nashville Bank director Boyd McNairy to publicly disclose relevant transactions in Jackson's accounts.
Even though "the slaves he bought and sold as a young man as part of the burgeoning interstate trade in enslaved people helped make him rich," during the 1828 United States presidential election, Jackson repudiated the claim that he was a slave trader.[11] Moreover, allies of Jackson were recruited to swear it was not true. The editorial page of The Ariel newspaper of Natchez, Mississippi wrote, "It is a matter of astonishment that the friends of Gen. Jackson have the hardihood to deny that in the year 1811, their idol was not actually and personally engaged in the sale of Negroes as an object of speculation, because like almost every other charge brought against him, the more they endeavor to 'hide the crimes they see' and to screen him from odium, the deeper they impress on the minds of the investigating the strength of the evidence which support them. To the sale of negroes as an object of speculation, the General's bank transactions which have been published at Nashville, show how those negroes were purchased—with this however we have nothing to do—but we unhesitatingly state, that in 1811 Gen. Jackson sent on a number of negroes to this state for sale, they were brought down the river, and landed, at Bayou Pierre forty-five miles from Natchez, in Claiborne county. The General came here to attend to the sales himself, sold some, but in consequence of the low price of cotton he took the remainder back to Tennessee, with the hope to realize a greater profit, not however without first taking them to Washington, six miles from this place and offering them for sale. These facts are known to numbers in this state. We have in our possession two bills of sale, signed by Andrew Jackson, and not by any firm, and we expect in a few days to receive several more.—We publish one of the Bills of Sale, not thinking it necessary unless urged by circumstances to give any more. The one we publish is dated December 27th, 1811, and the Nashville Republican the General's official paper admits that he took back negroes to Tennessee in 1812."[12] As retold in a Mississippi history journal article published in 1910, "It may cause some of the warm friends of Old Hickory to scoff to recall the accredited fact that he, in those early days, for a time followed the business of a negro-trader at this place [Old Greenville, Mississippi]. A proof that this fact was not taken with the best grace at that day is that in several political campaigns, his followers were compelled to swear by the eternal that he did not."
Andrew Jackson's business model and actions as part of Coleman Green & Jackson met the definition of "slave trader" as understood by abolitionists. Still, as a campaign issue, it fell flat, according to historian Robert Gudmestad, in part because "Southerners wanted to believe that there was a small group of itinerant traders who created most of the difficulties. It was this type of speculator, most thought, who destroyed slave families, escorted coffles, sold diseased slaves, and concealed the flaws of bondservants. They were the 'slave-dealers.' All others who bought or sold slaves, even if they did so on a full-time basis, were innocent." Further to the point, some Jacksonian scholars have argued that it was Jackson's status as a wealthy enslaver and former slave trader that made him politically attractive to certain voters. If nothing else, according to biographer Remini, Jackson and his allies "believed that 'slaveholding was as American as capitalism, nationalism, or democracy'."