Blount was Jackson’s first political patron. A more promising mentor would have been hard to imagine, at least at first. Blount was the oldest of his father’s thirteen children (who confusingly included, besides William, a son named Willie, pronounced, perhaps even more confusingly, “Wylie”). William fought in the American Revolution under Horatio Gates, before and after which he served in the North Carolina legislature. He represented North Carolina in the Confederation Congress and at the Philadelphia constitutional convention. Blount’s ardent federalism, in a state full of antifederalists, made him an obvious candidate for governor of the new Southwest Territory when the federal government got around to creating it.
Blount’s interest in the southwest was more than political, however. Since the mid-1780s he had speculated heavily in lands along the Tennessee River, and he hoped to employ his political power to make those speculations pay. This was nothing unusual in an era when speculation was America’s national pastime and when many supporters of the federal Constitution didn’t bother to deny that ratification would greatly increase the value of their speculative interests. At first Blount confined his political fiddling to negotiations with the Cherokees and other Indians, who were enticed and coerced into ceding territory to white settlers. As long as the Indians were the only victims of his legerdemain, he continued to be popular.
Some of his popularity rubbed off on Jackson. Within months of appointment as district attorney, Jackson was honored by being named a trustee of Davidson Academy, the first educational establishment in the Cumberland and the forerunner of the University of Nashville.
Jackson’s chores as attorney for the state, and as trustee of the academy, didn’t come close to filling his time. He took on other clients, who often lacked money to pay counsel and so offered land deeds instead. Cash was a chronic problem on the frontier, and other items circulated in its place. Corn, cattle, and horses filled in for money, but nothing was so ubiquitous as paper representing land. In time prices for goods and services came to be quoted in acres, with “six-forty” representing a square mile, or 640 acres, “three-twenty” half a square mile, and so on. Jackson afterward remarked that during this period he accepted enough land in fees “to make a county, if all in one tract.”
His work took him from one end of the Mero District to the other. Conceivably he envisioned himself entering elective politics one day, but whether he did or didn’t his exposure to all aspects of western life was perfect training for a future candidate. He encountered people at their best, when he won his clients’ cases, and at their worst, when he didn’t. He learned to handle himself in difficult situations, which not infrequently involved physical combat. Years later he offered advice to a young man who carried a stick for self-defense:
If any one attacks you, I know how you’ll fight with that big black stick of yours. You’ll aim right for his head. Well, sir, ten chances to one he’ll ward it off; and if you
do
hit him, you won’t bring him down. No, sir, you take the stick
so
[grasping the stick to demonstrate], and punch him in the stomach, and you’ll drop him.
I’ll tell you how I found that out. When I was a young man practicing law in Tennessee, there was a big bullying fellow that wanted to pick a quarrel with me, and so trod on my toes. Supposing it accidental, I said nothing. Soon after, he did it again, and I began to suspect his object. In a few minutes he came by a third time, pushing against me violently, and evidently meaning
fight
. He was a man of immense size, one of the very biggest men I ever saw. As quick as a flash, I snatched a small rail from the top of a fence, and gave him the point of it full in his stomach. Sir, it doubled him up. He fell at my feet, and I stamped on him. Soon he got up
savage
, and was about to fly at me like a tiger. The bystanders made as though they would interfere. Says I, “Gentlemen, stand back, give me room, that’s all I ask, and
I’ll
manage him.” With that I stood ready with the rail pointed. He gave me one look, and turned away a whipped man.
B
eyond the courtroom battles and the street fights, Jackson moonlighted as a merchant and speculator. The circumstances and extent of his trade are hard to discern, but fragmentary records show him trafficking in a wide variety of goods. In the summer of 1795 he and a partner paid $644.80 for “contingent expences arising on the preparation, carriage, boating &c. of a cargo of merchandize” purchased in Philadelphia and delivered to Nashville. These goods were sold at a Nashville store Jackson operated with his brother-in-law Samuel Donelson. Its inventory included butcher knives, sharpening files, stirrup irons, silk hose, ladies’ hats, pocket handkerchiefs, calico, linen, coffee, tea, sugar, raisins, and wine.
But Jackson’s trading instincts revealed themselves most plainly in his numerous transactions involving land. During his first few years in Nashville, he seems to have made little overt effort to purchase land; most of his acquisitions were in payment for services rendered. But on May 12, 1794, he entered into a partnership with John Overton to buy and sell much larger quantities of land. According to their agreement, the partners were “to bear an equal proportion of all purchases, losses, and expenses, and to receive an equal part of all profits, advantages, and emoluments arising from the lands so purchased.” Two days later the Jackson-Overton partnership contracted to purchase 15,000 acres for 500 pounds. (To ease their chronic money shortage, westerners traded in three currencies: American dollars, British pounds, and Spanish pesos.) The day after that, Jackson and Overton acquired another 10,000 acres for 400 pounds, and in July 30,000 acres for 1,000 pounds. In May 1795 they picked up another 25,000 acres in two separate transactions that were part of a larger, more complicated scheme (as indicated by the nominal purchase price of 10 shillings).
The complications increased. Overton and Jackson transferred land between themselves. Jackson entered into partnership with others besides Overton. But the worst complications arose from the fact that title to much of the land wasn’t at all clear. Only a minor portion of the Mero District had been legally acquired from the Indians by treaty—mainly the 1791 Treaty of Holston with the Cherokees. The rest was up for grabs (as indicated by a 1783 North Carolina law commonly called the Land Grab Act, authorizing settlers to claim western land still owned by Indians). Much of the land Jackson and Overton acquired fell outside the area of authorized settlement. In the spring of 1795 Jackson traveled to Philadelphia to purchase goods for his store and dispose of some of his and Overton’s tracts. Overton advised him to be “candid and unreserved with the purchasers with respect to the situation and quality of the lands and particularly inform them that they are situated without the Treaty of Holston.” But then Overton had second thoughts, concluding that candor might impede a profitable sale. He wrote in the margin beside his earlier advice: “This clause to your own discretion; perhaps it would be best to raise as few difficulties [as possible].”
Jackson encountered difficulties enough without raising any of his own. Jackson and Overton paid very little cash for the land they acquired; the great majority of their purchases were on credit, which meant that they had to sell land at a profit in order to finance further speculation. But the market for western land rose and fell on the state of relations with the Indians and with the British in Canada and the Spanish in Louisiana, on the vagaries in the money supply, and on the intangibles that affect every speculation. In the spring of 1795 supply outstripped demand, and Jackson had trouble locating a buyer in Philadelphia. “To my sad experience I found nothing doing, no purchaser but Mr. Allison,” Jackson wrote Overton on the way home. David Allison was a merchant and speculator who had lived in Nashville but now worked out of Philadelphia. More savvy than Jackson, he let the visitor stew through what Jackson called “difficulties such as I never experienced,” before Jackson gave in and accepted Allison’s price for 50,000 acres. More than that, Jackson accepted Allison’s note in payment for the land. Believing Allison’s credit good, Jackson endorsed the note and used it to pay for the trade merchandise he required for his store. This made him liable for Allison’s willingness and capacity to pay. In the meantime it cast a pall over the trip and an uncharacteristic discouragement over Jackson. “I am very much fatigued, even almost unto death,” he told Overton.
His troubles didn’t end on his reaching home. Samuel Donelson, who traveled to Louisville to check on the goods Jackson had shipped from Philadelphia, wrote to say there had been a delay. The wagons from Philadelphia to Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) were slow arriving, and the first boat heading down the Ohio to the Cumberland was full. So Jackson’s goods were placed on another boat, manned by an associate of the shippers. The transfer produced further delays. “They have not the smallest expectation that his boat will arrive here before theirs starts for the mouth of the Cumberland,” Donelson said. He added that he had been haranguing the shippers to get things moving and would continue to do so. “I shall use all industry I possibly can to forward the boat on.” But Jackson had better consider alternative plans.
Worse news arrived from Jackson’s suppliers in Philadelphia. “We are sorry so soon after your departure to follow you with the advice that any notes or acceptances of David Allison’s now falling due are not generally or regularly paid, and that there is little reason to expect he will be more punctual hereafter.” They added, “We shall have to get our money from you.” But Jackson didn’t have the money, and he wouldn’t get it till he sold his goods.
The dunning continued. Jackson received a notice from another Philadelphia firm to which he had signed over an Allison note. Allison’s liquidity had not revived. “His note therefore that we received from you for goods which is due on the 13th of next month in all probability will not be paid by him. We therefore request you will make provision for the same.”
Jackson was stuck. He couldn’t pay his suppliers till his customers paid him, and he wouldn’t have enough customers to do so till the rest of his goods arrived. In Jackson’s day debt was a serious matter. People went to prison for debt. Jackson couldn’t know that Allison would be imprisoned for the debts that now entangled Jackson or that Allison would die in prison after a degrading year there. But he knew others who ended up behind bars when the money ran short, and he took the intended lesson from their experience.
The result was that he abandoned his mercantile business. He sold the store—literally lock, stock, and barrel—to Elijah Robertson, the brother of Nashville cofounder James Robertson. With the proceeds he paid his Philadelphia creditors, and he walked away congratulating himself that the fiasco hadn’t been worse.
A
small but not insignificant aspect of Jackson’s business during this early period was commerce in slaves. The great debate over slavery, which would grow in strength and virulence during the rest of Jackson’s life, was just beginning. The republican premise of the American Revolution, and in particular the ringing egalitarianism of the Declaration of Independence, with its unqualified assertion that “all men are created equal,” prodded consciences in several northern states to abolish slavery. Vermont and Massachusetts did so at once; Pennsylvania and some other states mandated gradual abolition. Yet these were relatively painless gestures, as slavery had never figured centrally in the northern economies. The decision by Congress in 1787 to bar slavery from the Northwest Territory fell into the same pro forma category—symbolically important but practically of little immediate effect.
In the southern states and the Southwest Territory, slavery played a much larger role than in the North. Slaves formed the backbone of plantation labor in the Carolinas and Georgia and a lesser though still substantial portion of the workforce elsewhere. Whether southern consciences were more calloused than their northern counterparts during this period is open to question; certainly the cost of abolition would have been higher to the South than it was to the North. In any event, the South held on to its slaves.
If Jackson ever reflected on the underlying moral issues involved in slavery, he kept such thoughts to himself. Did he think slavery was a good thing? No, or at least he never said he did—unlike numerous apologists for the peculiar institution, especially toward the end of Jackson’s life. But many things on earth weren’t good, including war, famine, and disease. Jackson didn’t second-guess the Creator regarding those existential evils, and he didn’t second-guess the Creator—who, on Jackson’s reading of the Bible, allowed bound labor—regarding slavery.
Jackson’s involvement with slavery began almost inadvertently. He acquired what appears to have been his first slave—a young woman named Nancy, in 1788—not by purchase but in exchange for legal services rendered to a client who ran short of cash. Two years later he and Rachel received two more slaves, named George and Molly, as part of the settlement of John Donelson’s estate.
Gradually Jackson began buying and selling slaves outright. In July 1791 he purchased a slave named Tom, “about seven and twenty years old,” according to the bill of sale, for 60 pounds. In December of that year, he bought six-year-old Aaron for 100 pounds. He acquired Peg, “about twenty-six years old,” in January 1793 for services rendered, and Roele in November for 150 dollars. In 1794 he purchased Hannah and her child Bet for 80 pounds, another Betty and her children Hannah and Tom for 125 pounds, and Mary for 233 dollars. In 1795 he bought an unnamed (in the surviving record) slave for 175 dollars. In 1796 he bought two slave boys, named Sawney and Charles, for an unspecified sum. In 1797 he sold and then bought back a teenage slave named Suck, in each transaction for 290 dollars.