Andrew Jackson and slavery
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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.
Slave trade
[edit]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.[2] 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?"[3]
Plantations
[edit]In addition to his Hermitage labor camp, which had an enslaved population of 150 people at the time of Jackson's death,[4] Jackson and his son Andrew Jackson Jr. bought a plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi called Halcyon. Halcyon was managed by overseer J. M. Parker.[5]
Jackson also owned 640 acres of former Creek lands "south of the Tennessee on the Military road between the river and big spring." [6]
Slave quarters
[edit]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."[7]
Fugitives
[edit]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.[8] 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."[9]
War of 1812
[edit]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."[10] 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?"[11]
Presidency
[edit]During Jackson's presidency, slavery remained a minor political issue.[12] Though federal troops were used to crush Nat Turner's slave rebellion in 1831,[13] Jackson ordered them withdrawn immediately afterwards despite the petition of local citizens for them to remain for protection.[14] Jackson considered the issue too divisive to the nation and to the delicate alliances of the Democratic Party.[15]
Jackson's view was challenged when the American Anti-Slavery Society agitated for abolition[16] by sending anti-slavery tracts through the postal system into the South in 1835.[15] Jackson condemned these agitators as "monsters"[17] who should atone with their lives[18] because they were attempting to destroy the Union by encouraging sectionalism.[19] The act provoked riots in Charleston, and pro-slavery Southerners demanded that the postal service ban distribution of the materials. To address the issue, Jackson authorized that the tracts could be sent only to subscribers, whose names could be made publicly accountable.[20] That December, Jackson called on Congress to prohibit the circulation through the South of "incendiary publications intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection".[21]See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Domestic". Richmond Enquirer. 1828-09-09. p. 1. Retrieved 2024-08-29.
- ^ Cheathem, Mark R. (April 2011). "Andrew Jackson, Slavery, and Historians" (PDF). History Compass. 9 (4): 326–338. doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2011.00763.x.
- ^ "Gen. Jackson and Silas Dinsmore". The Weekly Natchez Courier. 1828-06-07. p. 5. Retrieved 2024-08-17.
- ^ "Enslaved Stories | Andrew Jackson's Hermitage". thehermitage.com. Retrieved 2024-08-24.
- ^ "Presidents Purchased Land in State". Clarion-Ledger. 1947-05-18. p. 66. Retrieved 2024-08-17.
- ^ Olsgaard, John (1976-12-01). "States' Rights and Dualism: an Administrative Study of Andrew Jackson's Indian Policy". Theses and Dissertations: 53.
- ^ "The early pioneers and pioneer events of the state of Illinois including personal recollections of the writer; of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Jackson and Peter ..." HathiTrust. p. 149. Retrieved 2024-08-30.
- ^ Hay, Robert P. (1977). ""And Ten Dollars Extra, for Every Hundred Lashes Any Person Will Give Him, to the Amount of Three Hundred": A Note on Andrew Jackson's Runaway Slave Ad of 1804 and on the Historian's Use of Evidence". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 36 (4): 468–478. ISSN 0040-3261. JSTOR 42625783.
- ^ The Genius of Universal Emancipation 1827-07-28: Vol 1 Iss 4. Internet Archive. Open Court Publishing Co. 1827-07-28.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ "James Roberts, 1753-. The Narrative of James Roberts, a Soldier Under Gen. Washington in the Revolutionary War, and Under Gen. Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812: "a Battle Which Cost Me a Limb, Some Blood, and Almost My Life"". docsouth.unc.edu. Retrieved 2024-08-24.
- ^ "Negro Enlistments". Urbana Citizen and Gazette. 1863-02-05. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-08-25.
- ^ McFaul 1975, p. 25.
- ^ Aptheker 1943, p. 300.
- ^ Breen 2015, p. 105–106.
- ^ a b Latner 2002, p. 117.
- ^ Henig 1969, p. 43.
- ^ Henig 1969, p. 43–44.
- ^ Remini 1984, p. 260.
- ^ Brands 2005, p. 554.
- ^ Remini 1984, pp. 258–260.
- ^ Remini 1984, p. 261.
Sources
[edit]- Aptheker, Herbert (1974) [1943]. "The Turner Cataclysm and Some Repercussions". American Negro Slave Revolts. International Publishers. pp. 293–394. ISBN 9780717800032. OCLC 1028031914.
- Brands, H. W. (2005). Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times. New York, NY: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4000-3072-9. OCLC 1285478081.
- Breen, Patrick H. (2015). The Land Shall be Deluged in Blood : A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199828005. OCLC 929856251.
- Henig, Gerald S. (1969). "The Jacksonian attitude toward Abolitionism". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 28 (1): 42–56. JSTOR 1901307.
- Latner, Richard B. (2002). "Andrew Jackson". In Graff, Henry (ed.). The Presidents: A Reference History (3 ed.). New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 106–127. ISBN 978-0-684-31226-2. OCLC 49029341.
- McFaul, John M. (1975). "Expediency vs. morality: Jacksonian politics and slavery". The Journal of American History. 82 (1): 24–39. doi:10.2307/1901307. JSTOR 1901307.
- Remini, Robert V. (1984). Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833–1845. New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. ISBN 978-0-8018-5913-7. OCLC 1285459723.
Further reading
[edit]- Hopkins, Callie (August 1, 2019). "The Enslaved Household of President Andrew Jackson". WHHA (en-US).
- "Enslaved Community". Andrew Jackson's Hermitage. Retrieved 2024-09-01.