Part 16

This memorandum of agreement between Andrew Jackson and Andrew J. Donelson of the one part and Graves Steele of the other part, both of the county of Davidson and State of Tennessee, Witnesseth, that the said Andrew Jackson and Andrew J. Donelson have employed the said Steele to oversee their negroes and manage the affairs of their plantations during the year 1829, and as such have placed him in possession of the working tools, the horses and stock of every description, and whatsoever else appertains to the land as necessary to its cultivation and protection, with obligations to bestow upon them the attention and care usually expected from the most faithful, diligent and industrious overseers. And further the said Steele is left in charge of their dwelling houses and the buildings attached to them, and is obligated to devote to them the care necessary to their preservation, and the furniture within them; and to do whatever else the said Andrew Jackson and Andrew J. Donelson may point out relating to the correct disposition and management of their interests on their plantations. And in consideration of these services the said Andrew Jackson and Andrew J. Donelson are obligated to pay to the said Graves Steele at the end of the year the just and lawful sum of six hundred dollars.

Within six months Jackson was writing to his adopted son expressing apprehension lest Steele was not giving the negroes proper attention; and before the year was out was again writing to the son at Nashville to investigate the cause for "the great loss of horses and oxen." Evidently conditions did not improve, for in November the General wrote a sharp letter to Steele in which he took him severely to task for "the great losses in stock and negroes I have lost since I left my plantation under your charge and management." In blunt terms he said: "I have been truly astonished to hear my bacon was nearly gone. This to me was unaccountable, because I stood by and saw a large supply as usual for my white and black family salted in my smoke house. In your statement I have asked you to forward I shall expect you to furnish me with an explanation of how this happened. I have been advised by some not to continue you, by others to try you another year. The latter I have concluded to do so, as I am aware the injury it would be to you to leave the business under present rumors. But when I say I have concluded to retain you another year, it is with the express condition that you treat my negroes with humanity and attention when sick and not work them too hard when well, that you feed and clothe them well, and that you carefully attend to my stock of all kinds. This I have a right to expect of you for the wages I give you. I have been offered here a first-rate overseer for $350 a year. I have been offered in Tennessee a well experienced and well recommended overseer for $400. I give you $500, which is equal to $1000 when cotton was at 14 cents a pound."

Steele evidently did not accept this rebuke in very good spirit, for in January Colonel Love wrote Jackson that "Steele said he wrote you as he could not please you you had better look out for some other person." Colonel Love volunteered the view, however, that "He in my opinion has not the least intention of going away. I am confident your last letter will make him the more particular and attentive to your orders." Colonel Love proved to be a good prophet, for Steele held on to his job through 1832; but at the beginning of 1833 he was succeeded by Burnard W. Holtzclaw. Holtzclaw was only a fairly satisfactory overseer, and gave frequent cause for complaint from his absentee employer; but the Jackson letter files reveal some communications from him which stamp him as one of the earliest converts to the cause of simplified spelling. On March 6, 1833, he wrote the General:

D'r Sir, I Recived you letter March 2d. I now inform you that your famley ar well at presenes and we ar doing well but Samson is ded, your mares and colts all looks well but the colte wich Andrew bought of Mr. Robson is ded. The caze I can not Tel. he live 9 days after he came Home. I Cut hym open and on his side I fond a not or a lompe and by looking I found Two of his Ribes Broke but wase well and on this not was a corde, went from his Harte to this corde as bige as his win pipe colte was solde to save his life. I Git alongue with you Negrows Verer will indeede. I hav not woold to giv all a sute. March 2d we had a snow and verry cold. I hav a bout one 100 and 50 acres of land plowg for corn and cotton. last year you made 36 Bales of Cotton but ship 41 Bales.

His brief and unadorned announcement of the death of Samson, one of the slaves, and his careful recital of all the gory details of his post-mortem dissection of the colt afford a very good index of Mr. Holtzclaw's character and capacity for the position he held. Another example of his Chaucerian English is found in his letter of October 21, when he wrote to the General as follows:

I recived your Letter on the 20 of October. I am glade to Say we are all well at Presant. your Family are all in good Halth at this time and are gitting alongue as well as I can. you wish to know abought your crope of Cotton how moch I have Out. I will Tell you. I have One Hundred Thoson and I Think we have out in the field yet 60 or 70 Thosan or 90. I was plaged a gratele abought Our gin, I jist beginning to gin. dont be unesy I will do the best I Can.

Deare Sir your Mares and Colts and work Horses and Mules and cows and Ox and Hogs and Sheeps and Caffs and Stud all are well and fate. I have 86 hogs to kill only. I have 7 Beffes to kill. we have now wete and cold wether. This day we Hale and Snow cole. I have all of my Shoes and Socks and Stockings made and Nit and making up the Winter Close. Andrew has not rich the Hermitage yet but I have all Things Redy to Recive him and are Looking for him daly and also will be glade to see him at Home.

Sur I have cut a new Rode on the Line betwin you and Warde and want to Turn the Rode arown on the Line and fence in all the woods. Next to woods I will feed my Hogs In hole and think I git water in this woods late. water Stands after a Rain for 2 weeks. by feding all winter on the Place can git water to Stand 6 or 8 month in the yeare. cut out all the under groth.

Mr. Holtzclaw's performance as an overseer may have left something to be desired; but there must have been a spark of genius in one who could stumble upon "gratele" as the right way to spell "great deal."

Holtzclaw was also shrewd enough to meet the complaints against the quality of his services with the suggestion of increased remuneration when his contract expired at the end of 1833; but General Jackson sternly wrote Andrew (his adopted son), then married and residing at the Hermitage, that he had written the ambitious overseer that he could not expect to receive more money--"that no farm in Davidson will justify it; that better to abandon farming than to keep it up for the benefit of an overseer, bringing me in debt, as it has for two years past." Jackson, however, in line with his policy of encouraging Andrew to assume a man's responsibility, told him that he could use his own judgment about reëngaging Holtzclaw.

The upshot of this matter was that Holtzclaw passed on and a new overseer, Williams, was engaged; but he lasted only one year. The General, writing to Andrew in November, 1834, said: "I knew, the moment I saw the cultivation of the farm, that Mr. Williams was of no account; that you would have been better off without him; that he was only a screen to the negroes; know nothing about cultivation and was beholden to the negroes for instruction what to do. I am happy you will soon be clear of him." Further in his letter he grumbled about "the worthlessness of our overseers for the last three years" and urged that in engaging a successor to Mr. Williams there be set down in writing an understanding of what the overseer should do. "Let him fully understand what he is to do, viz, to attend not only to the farm but to the spinning and weaving, to the feeding of the hands, to weighing out the meat, and to having them clothed in due season and the clothing well made by our own seamstresses; to attend to all the stock, and particularly to see that our blooded stock is taken good care of when you are absent. These things should all be enumerated in your agreement, or he may saye hereafter that nothing but what was enumerated was he bound to take the superintendence of. Remember the old adage: 'Deal with all men as though they were rogues'; if honest you are safe, but if not then your written agreement speaks for itself."

The next man to take up the overseer's duties was Edward Hobbs, recommended by Colonel Love as "a first-rate man." Jackson, however, was not entirely reassured by his recommendation for in April, 1935, he wrote his son: "I fear from the weather we experience here that Mr. Hobbs has run a great risque by planting his cotton so early, as he writes me he has planted the church field in cotton and on the 13th would begin to plant the balance." But it was not long before the General was writing: "The progress Mr. Hobbs has made shows him to be a man of judgment; that he has reduced the hands to good subordination and in doing this he has gained their confidence and attachment. Say to him that I am thus far delighted with his course and proceedings."

Overseer Hobbs seemed to have a very good grasp of conditions on the plantation, as evidenced by an intelligent, straight-forward letter he wrote to Andrew, junior, in August while the latter was spending the summer vacation with the General at the Rip Raps. This letter, reflecting the manifold and variegated duties of an overseer of that time, reads:

Yours and your father's of the 6th and 7th was duly received last Sunday and your directions concerning the purchase of some mares shall be attended to. I will of course get them on as good terms as possible, and I will not purchase at all without I can get suitable ones. I will also use my best exertions in selling your riding horses. I could of sold your grey horse long since had it not of been for his eye, as also the bay colt.

As respects the tap for the screw (of the gin), I have written you on the subject long since. I had the pattern made at home by Ned, with the assistance of Sharp 3 or 4 days to instruct him, and it is now at the furnace. Col. Armstrong and Col. Love were both here last Saturday and they informed me the casting would be ready in a few days. I have the timbers all ready, and so soon as I can get the casting I will put the press up again. I have the shingles nearly ready for the covering of the gin house. I shall put them on the side next the cotton scaffold this week, and should be detained by other jobs with the other side of the covering it will not interfere with the sunning of the cotton. We have a great many jobs to do, I fear more than we can possibly get through with, such as fixing our corn houses so they can be locked up, repairing lot fences, and one or two of the negro houses wants new shingles. Ned lost two or three weeks piddling at the pattern, which put us back at our jobs very much.

We have all our winter cloth for the negroes done but two pieces to weave. We will soon be done with that job. Our shoes I have not yet began. I have been trying my best to get the leather for three weeks and have not yet got it; however, I suppose it will be ready this week and I will then soon have them made.

I shall finish gathering of fodder this week and I think when I come to stack I shall have a fine chance. I hope you will not have to buy fodder, corn and oats next year.

Our neighbors are becoming a little alarmed about our cotton crops on account of the very cold rainy weather. All of our neighbors planted their cotton 3 foot and 3½ foot distance and it is now very thick, locked up very close. If this weather holds it is impossible it can make a crop. Most of our cotton is planted 4½ foot, and that is also locked but not so much. I do not think I have ever seen as cool weather in August as the past week. Two blankets was hardly sufficient to sleep under. However, I am glad to see it turning warm again.

I was at Mr. Pool's a few days since and saw the colts gallop. They appear to be doing finely. Pool makes some considerable calculations on the black colt and Major Donelson's horse Mombrino. He feels very confident of taking the four-mile day with him this fall. He has made a little brush with him and a horse of Squire Robertson's that was trained with Anville last season and his heels is nothing to Mombrino. Robertson's horse was faster a little ways than Anville's.

As respects health, the people generally are sickly. Some sickness amongst us, but nothing serious I believe. Aaron the blacksmith and Tom Franklin was both taken sick yesterday; very hot fever all night. I gave them a large dose of calomel and jalap this morning and they are much better to-night.

I have nothing pleasing to write you about the house. Nothing much adoing. Two hands at work. I believe the brickwork to the wings not quite finished. The principal building is covered, and that is all I can say. Col. Armstrong and Col. Love is both doing their best with the firm I believe. I think Rieff needs an overseer.

Hobbs's gloomy forebodings about the cotton crop were discounted by Colonel Armstrong in a letter to Jackson in which he said: "I expect that you have not had so large and so good a crop for several years"; but within a few weeks an unseasonably early frost had destroyed these sanguine expectations and in November Colonel Armstrong was writing sadly: "Some plantations will make half a crop, some a third. I am sorry to say that yours is very near a loss."

This crop failure, coming right in the midst of the heavy expense occasioned by the burning of the Hermitage and most of its furniture, filled Jackson with misgivings, and he promptly wrote to Andrew urging him to exercise economy in the management of the farm and suggesting that one or two of the three-year-old stud colts might be bartered for work mares in order to avoid the necessity for a cash outlay for the mares.

At the end of the year Mr. Hobbs was reëngaged to serve during 1836, but it was not long before the reports received from the farm convinced the General that proper attention was not being given the livestock. His keen insight into what was going on a thousand miles away from him is strikingly shown in a letter he wrote Andrew in March:

My son: I inclose you a letter received to-day from Mr. Hobbs from which I infer he pays but little attention to the stock.

When I was at home, when I was engaged both in building, clearing and farming, I always kept my oxen in good order although I had them in their yokes daily; but this was done by always attending and seeing them regularly fed and watered. When I found the driver had neglected feeding regularly, I ordered him upon small allowance as well as chastising him for it, and thus with attention Mr. Parsons kept his 12 oxen as fat as his horses; but when I see Mr. Hobbs say in his letters that the young colts look badly notwithstanding that they have enough of corn, oats and fodder and a dry stable to go into, I want no better proof of the want of regularity in feeding. They are overfed one day and starved the next. The hand that attends to them filled their troughs one morning and perhaps does not see them again in two. It is the overseer's business to see all the stock daily in the winter season, sometimes in the morning and again sometimes in the evening; and when he finds the stock neglected at once punish the hand charged with their keeping. We lost a great many last year, and when I hear of their bad condition this, and a plenty to give them, why there must be sheer neglect of them. For this neglect the overseer is answerable, and I wish to enquire and tell him frankly that he will be held responsible. That oxen, where there is plenty of food, at this season of the year are poor and broke down shows that carelessness in an overseer for which he ought to be dismissed. We have lost more in stock than two such crops would pay for--this is truly pulling out the bung and driving in the spigot. If I live to get home I will shew you and all overseers how easy it is to keep oxen fat and doing more business than when neglected and broken down. We must make better crops and preserve our stock better or we will be soon in a state of want and poverty.

If there was any unforgivable sin with General Jackson it was neglecting his live stock. Mr. Hobb's doom was sealed. A Mr. Holliday was engaged for the year 1837--and that was the year when Andrew Jackson stepped down from the President's chair and came back to the Hermitage to live the rest of his days. Early in January, looking forward to his return home, he wrote Mr. Holliday instructing him to be sure and plant a good vegetable garden; and, he added, "I want to have my stock so that I can do something with them when I reach home." And immediately following the inauguration of President Van Buren he set out for home and on March 25th he was back at the Hermitage he loved so well.

During the latter months of his administration at Washington his health had been particularly bad, so bad in fact that when he started back to Nashville in March, President Van Buren insisted on sending his own personal physician, Dr. Lawson, to accompany him on the trip home. Back at the Hermitage he wrote his political protege and successor to thank him for this attention, and in the course of his letter he said: "I hope rest in due time may restore my health so as to be able to ride over my farm, and to visit my good neighbors. This will be a source of amusement and much pleasure to me."

Gradually his health improved sufficiently for him to assume active charge of the operation of the farm; and this was a time when the ablest management was needed to make any enterprise successful. The country was in the throes of a financial panic, prices of farm products were depressed, and, as Jackson wrote in one of his letters early in 1837, negroes that had cost from $1,000 to $1,800 were being sold at sheriff's sales for $300 for women and $500 for men.

"The rest of my life is retirement and ease" he wrote to a friend when he laid down his Presidential cares and went back to the Hermitage; but, unfortunately for his peace of mind, things did not work out that way. There was but little ease for the old General during his remaining eight years at home. The very first year he was there an unseasonably late spring delayed the germination of the cotton seed, and during the ensuing summer he was consumed with apprehension concerning the outcome of the crop.

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It is interesting to observe that in Jackson's time the principal "money crop" of the Hermitage, as well as of the neighboring plantations, was cotton. Nashville at that time was a cotton market of major importance, and the number of gins in the county then shows that there was a large quantity of cotton grown every year in this vicinity. Today there is not a stalk of cotton grown in the county; and the nearest gin to Nashville is a small one located fifteen miles south of the city in an adjoining county where some of the agricultural die-hards still cultivate the old crop. The growing season between frosts is really too short in Davidson County to encourage cotton planting; but the first settlers got started to growing it, and since farmers are traditionally opposed to change in their habits they continued to plant it even after experience demonstrated that it was not a profitable year-after-year crop. As early as 1838 Jackson sensed this fact and wrote to one of his friends: "I will soon have to quit making cotton here"--but he never did quit.

In spite of the difficulty of raising cotton in a climate not entirely suited to it, it is noticeable that the Hermitage plantation had the reputation of making good crops of high-grade staple. In 1832 there was an article in _Niles' Register_ commenting on the fact that fifty-four bales of the Hermitage cotton had sold in New Orleans at 11½ cents a pound, which was called "an extraordinary price;" and the article stated further that it was the best cotton that had come to New Orleans from Tennessee. In 1826 Jackson's New Orleans factor, Maunsel White, wrote to him that he had sold the Hermitage cotton at "the very top of the market," the net proceeds for the crop that year being $3,477.51.

Checking over the references to the sales of the cotton crops in the Jackson papers it is to be seen that there was a great fluctuation in the price obtained. The 1844 crop, for instance, brought only 4½ cents a pound, the price ranging from that low mark up to 15 cents for the crop of 1825 and even higher than that during the boom in cotton following the end of the War of 1812.

In Maunsel White, General Jackson had at New Orleans a factor who stood high in the cotton trade and who could be depended on to protect the Tennessee planter in marketing his crops to the best advantage. Captain White was not only Jackson's factor but his friend and a former comrade at arms in the New Orleans campaign, and he took great pride in getting the highest possible price for the Hermitage crops.

In January, 1831, White wrote to Jackson, then in the White House, that the flatboats had arrived from the Hermitage with their cargo of fifty-nine bales and that the overseer was to be congratulated on its quality and condition as it was "without blemish." The best offer he had got at that time, he wrote, was 9 cents; but he expressed a determination to hold for 10 cents "which it is fully worth" he added, "unless we receive worse news from the unsettled state of politics." He mentioned the popular belief that a general war in Europe was perhaps impending, and slyly added: "On this subject, however, you must be better advised than anyone else in these states; and if it were not asking too much, or what were improper for me to ask, I would ask your opinion on that subject." An inside tip from the President on an impending war would be worth a fortune to a New Orleans cotton broker; but there is no evidence that Jackson gave Captain White any information on the subject. This was before the day of White House "leaks."

The following year White wrote Jackson that he had sold part of his crop for 11½ cents in New Orleans and shipped part of it to Liverpool where it commanded 8½d sterling, stating that "your cotton this year has brought the highest price both at home and abroad."