Andrew Jackson and the slave trade in the United States

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. Jackson was elected to be the seventh U.S. President and served for two terms, from 1829 to 1837. 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. (In addition to slaves, Jackson also sold horses, alcohol, and trade goods like cooking pots and fabric.) 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 short-term gain through slave arbitrage.^[1] While Jackson had a number of business interests in Tennessee, many of Jackson's "negro speculation" slave sales appear to have taken place in the Natchez District of the lower Mississippi River valley. As part of British West Florida it had attracted a handful of Loyalist families during the American Revolutionary War, and then, as part of Spanish West Florida, it was opened to American colonists by the Spanish government on August 23, 1787.^[2] On the whole, colonial 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."^[3] 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).^[4] The Mississippi Territory of the United States was organized in 1798.^[2] As of 1800, the total estimated population of the region that would later become Mississippi's Adams, Claiborne, Jefferson, and Wilkinson counties was a little under 4,700 people, about evenly split between free white people and enslaved black people.^[5] Government estimates did not attempt to enumerate Indigenous people resident in the area,^[5] but there were likely 30,000 Native Americans resident in Mississippi Territory in 1801.^[6] Mississippi was admitted to the Union as the 20th U.S. state on December 10, 1817.^[7]

Slave trader Jackson would have traveled south from the Cumberland District of North Carolina—which shortly became the Territory South of the River Ohio, and is now the Nashville metropolitan area of Middle Tennessee—on an ungainly, oar-steered flatboat, using the Cumberland River to get to Ohio River and thence to the Mississippi River; the return trip from the Natchez District would have been on foot (slaves) or horseback (Jackson and partners) via Natchez Trace through the hundreds of miles of Chickasaw and Choctaw territory between the northern fork of Bayou Pierre and the Tennessee River, ending at Jackson's own farm/slave-labor camp, which was originally Hunter's Hill, and after 1804, The Hermitage. According to a letter by an author writing pseudonymously as Idler, from Rodney, Mississippi, dated 1854:^[10][a]

"...here [at Bruinsburg], nearly fifty years ago, Gen. Jackson—he was not 'Old Hickory' then—landed his flatboat, laden with Western produce, negroes, etc., which he had piloted from Nashville. I have understood that the original intention of Jackson was to settle in Mississippi, but he subsequently returned through the wilderness to Tennessee; and on this, as on many other occasions, showed those striking evidences of obstinacy and indomitable will for which then and after he was so remarkable. The removal of negroes through the Indian nation into one of the States of the Union was strictly prohibited. The Indians, with the few whites then found amongst them, had learned the intention of Jackson to return to Tennessee, and were determined to arrest him by force should he persist in his unlawful attempt. But Jackson was not deterred by this expedition so perilous, he nevertheless persisted; armed his negroes and a few of his friends and boldly marched unmolested through the Indian territory. A formidable array of warriors called out to stop his progress, witnessed his march without the courage either to attack or annoy him. They melted away like the mists of the morning."

— "Old Mississippi Correspondence," 1854^[10]

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...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."^[12][b]

The memoirs of William Henry Sparks, published in 1870, describe his knowledge of Jackson's slave-trading business:^[13]

Many will remember the charge brought against him pending his candidacy for the Presidency, of having been, in early life, a negro-trader, or dealer in slaves. This charge was strictly true, though abundantly disproved by the oaths of some, and even by the certificate of his principal partner. Jackson had a small store, or trading establishment, at Bruinsburgh, near the mouth of the Bayou Pierre, in Claiborne County, Mississippi. It was at this point he received the negroes, purchased by his partner at Nashville, and sold them to the planters of the neighborhood. Sometimes, when the price was better, or the sales were quicker, he carried them to Louisiana. This, however, he soon declined; because, under the [redhibition] laws of Louisiana, he was obliged to guarantee the health and character of the slave he sold.

On one occasion he sold an unsound negro to a planter in the parish of West Feliciana, and, upon his guarantee, was sued and held to bail to answer. In this case he was compelled to refund the purchase-money, with damages. He went back upon his partner, and compelled him to share the loss. This caused a breach between them, which was never healed. This is the only instance which ever came to my knowledge of strife with a partner. He was close to his interest, and spared no means to protect it.

It was during the period of his commercial enterprise in Mississippi that he formed the acquaintance of the Green family. This family was among the very first Americans who settled in the State. Thomas M. Green and Abner Green were young men at the time, though both were men of family. To both of them Jackson, at different times, sold negroes, and the writer now has bills of sale for negroes sold to Abner Green, in the handwriting of Jackson, bearing his signature, written, as it always was, in large and bold characters, extending quite half across the sheet. At this store, which stood immediately upon the bank of the Mississippi, there was a race-track, for quarter-races, (a sport Jackson was then very fond of,) and many an anecdote was rife, forty years ago, in the neighborhood, of the skill of the old hero in pitting a cock or turning a quarter-horse.^[13]

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,^[c] 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."^[15] A surviving letter written to Jackson on October 21, 1791 by a Natchez businessman named George Cochran mentions this place, recalling "many agreeable hours" at Jackson's "friendly retreat at Bayou Pierre."^[16][17]

The writer called "Idler" described Jackson and participating in foot races and wrestling matches at Bruinsburg, naming several local residents as participants in these activities.^[10] Idler names "Bruin, Price, Crane, Freeland, Harmon and others" as Jackson's companions in sport. Among those taking an oath of allegiance to the United States on October 30, 1798 were Lewellin Price, Waterman Crane, and James and Hezekiah Harmon.^[18] These men swore their oath before the founder of Port Gibson, which "rests tranquilly in the curve of Bayou Pierre," a man named Samuel Gibson who "came to this section in 1788 and soon became stockman, bee keeper, hunter, gardener, orchardist, planter, and operator of a grist mill and cotton gin...His plantation was a rendezvous for early travelers and circuit-riding preachers, and in his backwoods library were a surprising number of volumes."^[19] In 1801, George Cochran bought land on Bayou Pierre from Waterman Crane, property that was adjacent to land owned by Bruin and George Humphreys, father of future Confederate general Benjamin Humphreys.^[20] The Humphreys property was called the Hermitage,^[21] a name which supposedly inspired the name of the Tennessee plantation Andrew Jackson established in 1804.^[22]

According to the local historian for Warren County, Ohio, a local plow manufacturer, John E. Dey, travelled widely in the early 19th century via the Mississippi and Ohio River, seeking customers for the company's products. 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."^[23] Tax records show Jackson ran a whiskey still at his Hunter's Hill plantation in Tennessee in the late 1790s.^[24] In 1922, S. G. Heiskell, a pro-Jackson local historian and former mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, described Jackson's Mississippi business as "slaves and whiskey."^[25]

Last but not least, according to the slave narrative of James Robinson, written in 1858, when Andrew Jackson needed more men in the lead-up to what became the Battle of New Orleans, he visited the plantation of Calvin Smith on Second Creek near Natchez in approximately December 1815.^[26] Smith gave Jackson permission to take a large number of his slaves, and suggested more slaves could be gotten from Springfield, the plantation of Thomas Green.^[26] According to Robertson, Smith was willing to part with his slaves because he could always buy new ones whereas if the British sacked New Orleans his own irreplaceable children might be killed.^[26] Jackson may have known Smith through Judge Peter Bryan Bruin, who had worked with Smith's brother Philander Smith on multiple territorial political and judicial issues.^{[citation needed]} Thomas Hinds, of course, was also married to a daughter of Springfield.^[27]

In 1789, when he was about 22 years old, Jackson opened a log-built 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."^[28] 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.")^[29] On July 15, 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 non-resident American traders.^[30][31] The following month Natchez District planter Thomas M. Green Jr. granted power of attorney to the young lawyer.^[30] According to biographer Robert V. Remini, Jackson made the acquaintance of "a great many Natchez businessmen and through them began an extensive trading operation."^[16] 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". ^[32] Another letter of 1790 thanks Jackson for his help with "The Little Venture of Swann Skins," which historian Harriet Chappell Owsley asserts were feathers or down stuffing for pillows and mattresses,^[33] but which some scholars suspect was a euphemism for a shipment of enslaved people, perhaps previously owned by the Swanns of Tennessee.^[32] 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."^[16]

The study of Jackson's slave trading is closely tied to the study of 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 Bryan Bruin (namesake of Bruinsburg).^[32] 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 21 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."^[35] In his letters, Jackson referred to the path from Natchez to Nashville as a journey through "the wilderness,"^[36] and another traveler described the Trace in early days as "an impenetrable forest condensed by cane and cemented by grape vines, so that a dozen trees must be cut before one can fall..."^[37] British traveler Francis Baily described the camping-out nature of journeys over the Natchez road 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."^[38] 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."^[39]

There is no record of Jackson owning land on Bayou Pierre,^[40] and in 1828 the Natchez Ariel specified that he had never had his own plantation near Bayou Pierre.^[41] The exact site where the Bruinsburg store stood has been lost, but it was one of several such outlets for Jackson's business endeavors; according to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, "Between 1795 and 1807 Jackson followed general-store merchandising at least as fully as farming, the law, or the military."^[42] The Cincinnati Commercial newspaper reported on the life of Jackson in 1879, based on information from Mrs. Mary Wilcox, a descendant of Andrew J. Donelson, and stated, "At a distance of seven miles from Nashville 'Clover Bottom' is reached. It is an immense plain, fronting on Stone River, and at the time of my visit was one vast corn-field. Three quarters of a century ago and subsequently, Jackson did business as a merchant and trader there, built flatboats for the shipment of produce to New Orleans, and generally occupied himself as a man of affairs...For many years there was a racetrack at Clover Bottom, where the blue-blooded horses of the country contested their speed, and which was largely patronized by the General, who, to the day of his death, retained a remarkable fondness for thoroughbred horses."^[43] The Clover Bottom store where Jackson built and sold flatboats was "a two-story building near today's Downeymead Drive."^[44] River traffic statistics involving flatboats such as those produced by Jackson give a sense of how early he came to Mississippi, and thus how closely he must have been involved in its colonization. According to historian David O. Stewart, "In 1792 only a dozen flatboats made the journey downriver to New Orleans," but by 1802, it was more than 500, and by 1807, the count was closer to 2,000 a year.^[45] In the course of the 1806–07 expedition that came to be known as the Burr conspiracy, Aaron Burr ordered five of Jackson's flatboats, picked up two that were ready at Clover Bottom, and set off for the south from Jackson's landing at Stones River.^[34][46]

Jackson's mercantile enterprises appear to have been entangled with his slave-trading, real estate speculation, and his imperial designs on Indigenous lands. In 1795, Jackson set off on a work trip to Philadelphia intending to buy trade goods and to sell lands that were still legally under Indian title.^[47] In Philadelphia, he "traded land preemptions for flour, sugar, piece goods, and pocket knives."^[44] Before he left friend and business associate John Overton cautioned him, "If you purchase Negroes in any of the northern States, be careful in so doing not to subject yourself to the penal Laws of the State."^[47]

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.^[48] William C. C. Claiborne wrote to Jackson from "near Natchez" on December 8, 1801 with an update on local markets:^[49]

The Races in this District, commenced yesterday, and will hold for three days; Mr. Hutchings has attended the Race today, and will proceed from thence, to Mr. Green's, where he has left the Negroes & Horses. Mr. H. will be at my House, next Week; in the mean time, I will try to find a purchaser for your Horses, as for Negroes, they are in great demand, and will sell well. There is hardly any Corn in this District, and so soon, as the pumpkins give out, Horses will Suffer, & hence it is, they are not at present in demand; But if Mr. H. should bring his horses to Natchez, I will try to sell them, to the best advantage.^[49]

A couple of weeks later, an update from Claiborne:^[50]

I had the pleasure to deliver in person your Letters to Mr. Hutchins; he is now at my House, & is in good health & Spirits. The Negro Woman he has sold for 500 dolls. in Cash, and I believe he has, or will in a few days sell the Boy, for his own price, to Colo. West. The Horses are not yet disposed of, but I hope he will meet a purchaser, in a day or two. I shall on Tomorrow, set off for Fort Adams, & Mr. Hutchings has promised to accompany me; previous to our return, I hope, we shall be enabled to sell the Horses. I can assure you, with great truth, that Mr. Hutchings is a prudent, amiable young man, & is very attentive to your Interest.^[50]

The tandem vending of horse flesh and human flesh was common; as Bancroft explained in 1931, in many antebellum Southern marketplaces, "the same man dealt in horses, mules and slaves."^[51] The John Hutchings who appears in some reports and documents associated with the slave trade was Andrew Jackson's nephew-by-marriage.^[52] Rachel Donelson's older sister Catherine Donelson married Col. Thomas Hutchings; their firstborn child was a son named John Hutchings.^[53] According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Hutchings was "Jackson's partner in the Lebanon, Gallatin, and Hunter's Hill stores."^[54][e] On Christmas Day 1801 Hutchings wrote Jackson with his own update on the sale items described by Claiborne, declaring, "I shall meet with no dificulty to sell the negres."^[57] In 1805, Jackson wrote to a man who owed him money that he could not accept slaves as a form of payment because of timing, stating, "I cannot believe that you are seriously impressed with the belief, that you are now authorised to discharge a part thereof in negroes—had negroes been offerred before Mr Hutchings descended the river with negroes for sale they would have been recd."^[58]

Winter and spring were the traditional slave-trading seasons, after the harvest was in and before the next season's planting had begun, and before the summer heat and mosquitoes arrived, carrying their annual crop of malaria and yellow fever.^[59][60] Specific trades made by Jackson in the 1811–1812 season are known because they were the last before the War of 1812 disrupted the U.S. market and changed the course of Jackson's life, and because they were resurfaced as part of the electoral combat of the 1828 election. 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.—"^[61]

We have, with astonishment, observed the attempt in Nashville to brow-beat and bully the most respectable gentlemen from asserting publicly what is the absolute truth: that Gen. Andrew Jackson was, in the year 1811, a dealer in Negroes: and, believing it to be our duty to expose falsehoods and to aid the truth, we do now assure all men, whether the friends or the opponents of Gen. Jackson, far and near: That in the fall of the year 1811, Gen. Jackson and John Hutchings did descend the river Mississippi and land at Bruinsburg at the mouth of the Bayou Pierre in this county, with from twenty to thirty negroes: that a number of those negroes were brought to this immediate neighborhood, and afterwards encamped for weeks at Mr. Moore's in the McCaleb settlement, ten miles from this town; that on the 27th of December, 1811, Gen. Jackson sold three negroes, "a woman named Kissiah, with her two children, Reuben, about three years old, and a female child at the breast called Elsay, in and for consideration of the sum of $650."-that on the 28th of Dec. 1811, the very day after the former sale, and while at the same encampment, he sold to Mr. James McCaleb, of this county, two other negroes, named Candis and Lucinda, for the sum of $1000:—that he sold other negroes in this county during that trip;—that he sold some at or in the neighborhood of Bayou Sarah;—that after the belief became general in this country that war would be declared against Great Britain, the planters were indisposed to buy negroes, as the market for their cotton would be closed, Gen. Jackson resolved to return to Tennessee, with the remnant of his drove; that while he had his negroes encamped near Mr. James McCaleb's, and was making his preparations to pass through the Indian nation, he was informed by one of the most respectable citizens of this county, now living in it, of the law requiring passports for slaves; of the resolute character of Mr. Dinsmore, and of his punctilious execution of the duties of his office as Indian Agent: These things we do most unequivocally and unhesitatingly charge and assert. We do so on the best of authority,—the notoriety of the facts; the declarations gentlemen of whose truth no doubt can or will be entertained; from written documents, of various kinds, in the hand writing of Gen. Jackson himself: as also from the affidavit of Mr. William Miller of this county, who came down on board the boat with Gen. Jackson and his negroes; all of which we have heard and read. These things Gen. Jackson cannot, dare not, and will not, himself deny; whatever he may suffer others to do."^[61]

In 1812, while returning with this same troupe of prisoners, Jackson got into a dispute with a Choctaw agent named Silas Dinsmoor, who was determined to enforce a regulation requiring every enslaved person crossing through the Choctaw Nation to bear a document identifying their legal owner and the purpose of their travel. The intention was to prevent runaway slaves 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 message 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.^[62] 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."^[63] Jackson's ire seemed to stand out, even on a frontier road regularly traveled by quarrelsome "Kaintucks",^[64] horse-stealing Indians,^[65] and gangs of homicidal highwaymen.^[66] Historian J. M. Opal found "no evidence of any general uproar against the Indian agent. Indeed, the very existence of so many passports suggests a rough consensus between most settlers and a Jeffersonian regime eager to oblige them. Once again, men like Jackson had interests and ambitions that made exceptional demands upon the various authorities around them."^[67] An American military officer named Maj. A. McIllhenny who had been stationed at "Washington Cantonment" in Mississippi Territory said as much in a letter to the newspaper in 1828: "...the general, having sent forward his negroes, had mounted his horse, and laying his hand upon his pistols, significantly replied, 'These are General Jackson's passports!!!' I have often thought of this anecdote of Mr. Dinsmore's whenever the Constitution, laws, or the orders of government, have thwarted the arbitrary will of this man. Shall weapons of war, be his passport to our suffrage, and to the Chair of State?"^[68]

Remarkably, there are two surviving letters from Jackson himself about this specific troupe of slaves for sale. In the first letter, dated December 17, 1811 and sent to his wife Rachel, Jackson wrote "on tomorrow I shall set out from here homewards, on the Biopierre [recte Bayou Pierre] I expect to be detained Some days preparing the negroes for the wilderness My trusty friend John Hutchings, on the recpt of my letter had come down to this place recd. all the negroes on hand and had carried them up to his farm—I have Just seen Mr. [Horace] Green last evening this morning he was to have Seen me, but as yet, he has not appeared as to the State of the business I can give you no account—untill I have a Settlement with him or have an account of the appropriation of the amount of sales from him I shall bring home with me from twelve to Twenty—I hope to be able to sell some of them on the way at good prices—but many of them I Shall be obliged to bring home and as most of that number will be females I leave you to point out to Mr John Fields [Hermitage overseer] where to have the house built for them."^[69] On February 8, 1812, Jackson wrote to Mary Donelson Caffrey, his wife's sister and mother-in-law to Abraham Green: "The negro fellows that I brought thro with me owing to their exposure in the wilderness have all been sick and were the well neither of them is such that I could recommend to you—nor could I think of selling such to you..."^[70] He also advised her that the ongoing 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes had disrupted Mississippi River traffic to such an extent that she would be better off acquiring a person already in lower Mississippi region.^[70]

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 Jackson's own account amounted to 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."^[72]

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."^[73] A transcript reprinted in a Rhode Island paper had the date of this sale as December 27, 1800.^[73][f] The cost to purchase the mother and daughter was $550.^[73] 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."^[74] At the bottom of the receipt for Kessiah and her children is a notation "one Negro Wench named Faney $280."^[73] Abraham Green was a brother of Abner Green and former delegate to Congress for the Mississippi Territory Thomas M. Green Jr.^[75] Abraham Green died in late 1826,^[76] and his estate was still being settled as of 1828.^[77] One of the executors of Abraham Green's estate had the bill of sale notarized before showing it to the Ariel.^[74] Jackson also had kinship ties to the Green family; by extension, he would have been connected to the Green–Hutchins–West–Hinds political alliance in Mississippi Territory.^[78] (Abraham Green's mother-in-law and Andrew Jackson's wife were sisters.)^[75]

Another sale documented by the Correspondent was the sale of Malinda and Candis on December 28, 1811.^[79] 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."^[79] Malinda was described as being "about fourteen years old of a yellow complecion."^[79] Candis was said to be "about 20 years old of a black complection formerly owned by Mary Coffery."^[79] The buyer, James McCaleb, paid $1,000 for the pair.^[79] 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."^[80] McCaleb also operated a "gin" near Bayou Pierre circa 1814.^[81]

Also, according to the Erwin pamphlet, Jackson bought an enslaved man from a Dr. Rollings in Gallatin, Tennessee in 1805 or 1806, with the intent to resell him in the "lower country," and later sued the doctor over the man's health condition.^[82][g]

The close examination in 1828 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 historian 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."^[85] Erwin was related to Henry Clay by marriage.^[86] Among other efforts, Erwin convinced Nashville Bank director Boyd McNairy to publicly disclose relevant transactions in Jackson's accounts.^[87]

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.^[88] Moreover, allies of Jackson were recruited to swear it was not true. The editorial page of The Ariel newspaper of Natchez, Mississippi wrote:^[74]

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.^[74]

As retold by Eron Rowland in a Mississippi history article of 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."^[90]

Abolitionists Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké, and Sarah Moore Grimké, under the banner of the American Anti-Slavery Society, wrote in American Slavery As It Is (1839) that "It is well known that President Jackson was a soul driver..."^[91] Lewis Tappan wrote in the margins of his copy, now held in the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, that Weld had told him the statement about Jackson was the only thing in the book that anyone had ever denied or claimed was incorrect, and noted "Mr. Weld informs me (Nov 23|49) that the above was stated to him by J. G. Birney who received it from Mr. Kingsbury, missionary among the Choctaws."^[92]

Two of Jackson's interpersonal conflicts may have had ties to the slave trade. Erwin, primary author of the Gen. Jackson's Negro Speculations pamphlet, was mentioned in Weld and the Grimkés' American Slavery As It Is: "It is known in Alabama, that Mr. Erwin, son-in-law of the Hon. Henry Clay, and brother of J. P. Erwin, formerly postmaster, and late mayor of the city of Nashville, laid the foundation of a princely fortune in the slave-trade, carried on from the Northern Slave States to the Planting South."^[91] Similarly, in a preserved early letter about the duel that killed Charles Dickinson (which later came to be another point of attack on Jackson's character), the correspondent (Jackson himself?) wrote, "...for the present it will only be observed that the deceased, could not be called a Citizen of this state—that he was engaged in the humane persuit of purchasing Negroes in Maryland and carrying them to Natchez & Louisa and thus making a fortune of speculating on human flesh—can it be that because he was engaged in this human trafic, he commands this unusual respect from his honour the Judge, the two Doctors, and the petyfoging lawyer..."^[93]

Andrew Jackson's business model and actions as met the definition of "slave trader" as understood by abolitionists. Still, as a campaign issue, it fell flat. According to historian Robert Gudmestad, this was 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."^[95] This privileged denial of the reality of the American interregional slave trade continued well into the 20th century. For example, in 1915, a local historian and plantation heir named James T. Flint wrote in the Nashville Banner that "Andrew Jackson, who owned a few slaves in Tennessee, brought them down, with others belonging to friends, over the old Natchez trace to sell to well-to-do neighbors of his wife's former home near Greenville and Natchez, Miss., and for this reason he was accused by his political enemies in after years of being a 'nigger trader'." Flint explained that his ancestor, a memoirist who knew the Greens and stayed at their home, had denied the charges against Jackson, but a few lines later, Flint recorded that while visiting in the vicinity of Greenville, his forebears "talked with one of the negroes brought from Tennessee and one from Kentucky by Andrew Jackson on one of his trips to see Mrs. Robards."^[96]

Further to the point, some Jacksonian scholars have argued that it was Jackson's status as a wealthy slave owner and slave trader that made him politically attractive to certain voters.^[97] If nothing else, according to biographer Remini, Jackson and his allies "believed that 'slaveholding was as American as capitalism, nationalism, or democracy'."^[98] In 1841, the Mississippi Free Trader of Natchez, while writing about local politics, defended the slave trade as the profession of a number of esteemed Southern gentlemen, listing John Armfield, Rice Ballard, Isaac Franklin, John L. Harris, Eli Odom, Thomas Rowan, and Sowell Woolfolk, as icons of genteel American prosperity—"A desperate set of ruffians these, with old Andrew Jackson at their head!"^[99]

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• Matthews, Dylan (April 20, 2016). "Andrew Jackson was a Slaver, Ethnic Cleanser, and Tyrant. He Deserves No Place on Our Money". Vox.
• Opal, J. M. (2017). Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-975170-9. LCCN 2016044301. OCLC 960030315.
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• WikiSource: Gen. Jackson's Negro Speculations, and His Traffic in Human Flesh, Examined and Established by Positive Proof