Andrew Jackson Donelson: Jacksonian and Unionist
448
Andrew Jackson Donelson: Jacksonian and Unionist
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Overview
As his uncle's secretary, he weathered Old Hickory's tumultuous presidency, including the notorious "Petticoat War." Building his own political career, he served as US chargé d'affaires to the Republic of Texas, where he struggled against an enigmatic President Sam Houston, British and French intrigues, and the threat of war by Mexico, to achieve annexation. As minister to Prussia, Donelson enjoyed a ringside seat to the revolutions of 1848 and the first attempts at German unification. A firm Unionist in the mold of his uncle, Donelson denounced the secessionists at the Nashville Convention of 1850. He attempted as editor of the Washington Union to reunite the Democratic party, and, when he failed, he was nominated as Millard Fillmore's vice-presidential running mate on the Know-Nothing party ticket in 1856. He lived to see the Civil War wreck the Union he loved, devastate his farms, and take the lives of two of his sons.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780826521637 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Vanderbilt University Press |
| Publication date: | 10/02/2017 |
| Series: | New Perspectives on Jacksonian America |
| Pages: | 448 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.40(w) x 10.30(h) x 1.40(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
New Lives in "that land of promise"
1716–July 1820
The Donelson family originated in Scotland, an offshoot of the clan whose name is more commonly spelled Donaldson. The first of the family in America were Patrick Donelson and his grown son, John, who settled in Maryland in 1716. John Donelson's son, also John, was born sometime between 1718 and 1725. This John Donelson "early gave promise of the energy, integrity and executive ability prominent in his after career."
In 1744 the young John Donelson brought his bride, Rachel Stockley, to southwestern Virginia not far behind the frontier of settlement, where they raised eleven children. Over the years he grew prosperous in land and slaves, became a surveyor, justice of the peace, vestryman, colonel of the militia. In 1767, when Pittsylvania County was organized, he was elected a delegate to the House of Burgesses. Nevertheless his attention was directed westward. He helped to negotiate a treaty with the Cherokees, then surveyed the treaty line to open Kentucky to settlement. When war broke out between Britain and the colonies, which ultimately declared their independence as the United States, Colonel Donelson led the Pittsylvania County militia to fight the Cherokees and Shawnees.
Donelson inspired respect and confidence, being described as "rather over the ordinary size of men, slightly inclined to be fleshy." An admiring daughter-in-law recalled him as being "large, noble, & dignified in his appearance — well fitted for embassies & negotiations." But with the long absences on the frontier and the economic dislocations wrought by the Revolutionary War, Donelson by 1779 was on the verge of financial ruin. With characteristic energy and fortitude, however, he resolved to rebuild his fortune in "that western world, that Land of promise[,] that Terrestrial Paradice and garden of Eden."
Donelson joined two other entrepreneurs, Richard Henderson and James Robertson, to settle the region along the Cumberland River west of North Carolina. Robertson led about two hundred men overland during one of the coldest winters on record to a place on the Cumberland River known as French Lick. Donelson had built an enormous flatboat, which he named Adventure, to carry his family and their possessions, including several slaves. The Adventure led a flotilla of some thirty vessels carrying nearly two hundred men, women, and children. They cast off down the Tennessee River in December 1779 and faced one difficulty after another — smallpox, the rapids of the Muscle Shoals, and harassing Indian attacks that killed some thirty voyagers. Only in April 1780 did the bedraggled survivors reach French Lick, but under the cool leadership of Colonel John Donelson, they had succeeded at what an early historian pronounced "as one of the great achievements in the settlement of the West."
The main settlement at French Lick was named Nashborough. The Donelsons built a stockade ten miles upriver at Clover Bottom. The Cumberland settlers, however, were isolated two hundred miles west of the main line of settlement. Indians raided crops and stock, and killed several people. In 1781 Donelson moved his family to comparatively peaceful Kentucky. Eventually, with the coming of peace and the rudiments of civilization to the Cumberland Valley, North Carolina organized the region as Davidson County. Nashborough became Nashville. Donelson decided to return his family to his Clover Bottom property. In the spring of 1786, he returned from a winter of business in Virginia and North Carolina to find that his family had already departed for the Cumberland under the care of his son John. He set off after them, but along the way he was shot by unknown assailants in the woods. The mystery of who killed him, whether Indians or renegade whites, remained unsolved. Nevertheless, his legacy was clear. As a soldier, surveyor, peacemaker, and pioneer, John Donelson helped to open a continent.
After the colonel's death, the Widow Donelson, as she became known, established the family at the Clover Bottom stockade. Most of the children, even those who were grown and married, stayed close, although Rachel remained in Kentucky with her husband, Lewis Robards. By 1788, the Cumberland Valley boasted three counties. Considering their distance from the main body of North Carolina inhabitants, the State Assembly that year grouped them into the District of Mero and established a separate court district for them. Appointed attorney general for the Mero District was a tall, wiry, hawk-faced young lawyer with a shock of reddish hair and piercing blue eyes — Andrew Jackson.
Born on March 15, 1767, in the frontier Waxhaws settlement straddling North and South Carolina, Jackson was the posthumous son of an immigrant from Ulster. His life was hard from the start, and his combative nature developed early. Cornwallis's army swept through South Carolina in 1781, leaving Andrew orphaned, with his mother and two brothers dead, and Andrew scarred by a British officer's sword. Jackson grew up without control and developed into a power unto himself. At age twenty, he was licensed to practice law in North Carolina. The next year, he was dispatched to the new Mero District. Life on the Cumberland would never be the same.
The young attorney lodged at the Widow Donelson's stockade, rooming with another young lawyer, John Overton, in a cabin near the main blockhouse. Jackson fit right in with the large, boisterous Donelson clan, and in no time he was one of the household. Complications arose, however, when the widow's daughter Rachel arrived from Kentucky. Her husband, Lewis Robards, had proved to be "a cruel, tyrannical husband." Rachel and Jackson soon fell in love. Subsequent events became, and remain, controversial. Word soon arrived in the Cumberland Valley that Robards had obtained a divorce. Jackson and Rachel married in the autumn of 1791, or so they claimed. Then in December 1793, the shocking news reached the Jacksons that Robards had been granted a divorce from Rachel only in September, on the grounds that she "hath and doth Still live in adultery with another man." Overton persuaded Jackson that a second wedding was necessary. The Donelsons and indeed all Nashville society took the episode in stride. Far from becoming social outcasts, the Jacksons became pillars of the Cumberland community. On the personal side, the episode haunted them. Jackson became overly sensitive to any slight on Rachel's honor, which led him to kill a man in a duel. Rachel steadily withdrew into a pious solemnity with only her husband, her family, a few close friends, and her Bible for comfort.
Meanwhile, Rachel's brother Samuel Donelson began to take a position in Cumberland society that was to be expected of a son of Colonel John Donelson. Inspired also by his rising brother-in-law Andrew Jackson, Samuel was licensed to practice law in 1794. They purchased land together and even operated a general store, at least until their creditor in Philadelphia defaulted on his notes. The brothers-in-law took a considerable financial beating, but their public stars continued to rise. When Tennessee achieved statehood in June 1796, Jackson was elected as the new state's congressman and then, for a brief term, senator. Samuel Donelson was also a coming man. Joseph Anderson, a territorial judge and a man whose good opinion was worth having, considered him to be "one of the cleverest young fellows I ever was acquainted with, and whose principles and Mental Virtues do Honor to human nature." Best of all, Samuel soon fell in love. Her name was Mary Ann Michie Smith, but everyone called her Polly.
Her father, Daniel Smith, was a Virginian who was schooled in a little of everything from medicine to law. Like Colonel John Donelson, Smith rose to prominence as a surveyor and militia officer, serving with distinction in Dunmore's War and surveying the western extension of the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. In 1783 he moved his family to the Cumberland Valley and settled in what became Sumner County. There he built an imposing five-level house whose name, Rock Castle, is all the description needed. In 1790 President George Washington appointed Smith secretary of the Territory South of the River Ohio. Smith drew the first map of the new state of Tennessee and published a book describing its government.
When Samuel Donelson met Polly Smith, she was fifteen, fair with blue eyes. They were soon very much in love, but unfortunately, her father objected to the romance. Jackson attempted to intercede on their behalf, but got nowhere. On the night of June 20, 1796, Polly opened her window at a prearranged signal. Samuel waited below with Jackson and a ladder. They rushed to the Jackson home, Hunter's Hill, where Rachel had arranged for a parson to be present. Jackson begged forgiveness for Polly's sake, but Smith refused. Others gave the newlyweds their best wishes. Judge Anderson predicted "that a Grand Son, will put a period to the old General[']s pouting." Indeed, the birth of a boy, John Samuel Donelson, the next year, 1797, worked wonders on Smith's attitude. He gave several slaves to Polly, and to Samuel and Polly together a farm in Sumner County, provided they would move there. This Samuel agreed to do, although he already had a 600-acre tract in Davidson County on which he had intended to settle his new family. He set about clearing the Sumner County land, building a cabin and a mill, and planting an orchard.
*
These improvements took time, however, and Samuel and Polly Donelson were still living in the cabin on his Davidson County tract, not far from Hunter's Hill, when, on August 25, 1799, a second son was born. In honor of Samuel's brother-in-law, neighbor, occasional business partner, and best friend, the boy was named Andrew Jackson Donelson. He gained, thereby, among other things, the distinction of being the first of countless men who would be named after Andrew Jackson.
The master of Rock Castle eventually saw a grandson named Daniel Smith Donelson, born on June 23, 1801. Samuel's affairs prospered as his family grew, but he speculated in land purchases beyond his ability to pay for them properly. His debts grew larger, as did the consequent problems. No doubt he trusted that he could untie his knotted affairs, but in July 1804, while visiting the Jacksons at Hunter's Hill, he fell ill. On July 9, 1804, as can best be guessed, Samuel Donelson died, at about the age of thirty-four.
Polly was left a widow at twenty-three to care for three young boys. Both her father and the large Donelson clan were prepared to do whatever was needed, but ultimately she turned to her husband's most trusted friend. As Samuel lay on his deathbed at Hunter's Hill, Jackson promised to look after the boys, and he was appointed executor of the estate. What help Daniel Smith could provide diminished when he departed for Washington, DC, in 1805 as senator from Tennessee. "The beneficent disposition you have shown Mr. Donelson's children gives me very grateful impressions and hopes at some time to make some remuneration," he wrote Jackson in February 1806. "I acknowledge your friendship and benevolence to my daughter and her children," he repeated that spring in regard to selling some of Samuel's property to raise funds. Some parts of Samuel's affairs were never sorted out completely, and Jackson himself took a great financial loss.
John, called "Jacky" by the family, Andrew, and Daniel became Jackson's wards, and he and Rachel assumed the major duties of raising them, despite their own financial difficulties. In the fall of 1804, Jackson had to sell Hunter's Hill and moved to the undeveloped Hermitage property, where he built a two-story blockhouse. He was already or soon became the guardian of the four children of his deceased friend General Edward Butler and the three minor children of Edward's brother, Thomas. It was clear by now that the Jacksons would never have children of their own. Ultimately, they became parents by adoption. On December 4, 1808, Elizabeth Rucker Donelson, wife of Rachel's brother Severn, gave birth to twin boys, but she was unable to nurse both babies. Severn and Elizabeth turned one of them over to the Jacksons, who christened the baby Andrew Jackson Jr. All these children were welcomed into the Jackson home, but save for their own Andrew Jr., none more warmly than Samuel Donelson's. Some of little Andrew Donelson's earliest memories were of being "stowed away for the night in a corner trundle-bed, a pet cat and dog dozing on the hearth," listening to the affectionate Jacksons. Rachel "sang sweetly, and took great delight in playing on a piano ... which Jackson had obtained on one of his Eastern trips. He had a flute and violin, and playing duets was a favorite evening recreation." Little Andrew would drift to sleep listening to "an enjoyable if not artistic concert," whose repertoire included the ever popular "Money Musk" and "The Campbells Are Coming."
In keeping with the usual practice of frontier society, Polly Smith Donelson did not long remain a widow. On February 26, 1806, she married James Sanders, a prominent widower of Sumner County. Polly's sons took an instant dislike to their stepfather. According to a family story, Sanders had acquired a nickname, Jimmy Dry, which he detested. One day, young Andrew cut the stirrups of Sanders's saddle. When caught, he "sassed" Sanders and called him Jimmy Dry to his face. Sanders thrashed him. The tragedy of Polly's marriage to a man whom her sons disliked was that she became increasingly estranged from them. The Donelson boys came to spend most of their time at the Hermitage. This led Sanders once to complain that "Jackeye," as he spelled the nickname of the oldest boy, "had been for Several Weaks from home contrary to his mother[']s Orders[.]" When Polly "Scholded him for Disobeying hur he replied that it was [by] your Orders," Sanders lectured Jackson, "Was it prudent to order a Child to Disobey its mother[?]"
Schooling began for Jacky and Andrew in the spring of 1807 at a local school taught by William Ballard, but in January 1808, Jackson sent them to a school in Nashville. George M. Deaderick, a Nashville merchant and banker, assured Jackson that he was happy to board "your little sons" — a revealing mistake. Jacky's, Andrew's, and later Daniel's schooling evidently proceeded on a normal course, aside from the disputes between their possessive uncle and officious stepfather. Jackson remained on good terms with their grandfather, however. In a typical letter, he assured Smith that "your little grandsons are learning well, and, often speak of you." When staying at Rock Castle, the boys enjoyed the use of Smith's library, one of the best in the West.
All this time, relations between the United States and Great Britain were deteriorating. Finally, in June 1812, "Warhawks" in Congress goaded President James Madison into asking for a declaration of war. Like thousands of Westerners, Jackson had been waiting years for war. Forty-five now, his shock of red hair was fading to gray, but he was still scarecrow-thin and ramrod-straight. As major general of the Tennessee state militia, he filled mail pouches to Washington with promises to march his force anytime, anywhere, to fight the British, the Indians, or the Spanish. Finally, the secretary of war ordered Jackson, now as major general of the United States Volunteers, with 1,500 men to assist in the defense of New Orleans.
A considerable number of them were Donelsons, or related to them by blood or marriage. Lieutenant Stockley Donelson Hays, son of Rachel's sister Jane and her husband Robert Hays, was quartermaster general. In command of the cavalry regiment was Colonel John Coffee, who in 1809 had married Mary, a daughter of Captain John and Mary Purnell Donelson. Over six feet tall with a robust physique, Coffee was quiet, modest, and dependable. He was in many ways the antithesis of the volatile Jackson, who fully appreciated his qualities and reposed a special confidence in him. Coffee's steadying influence grew to become, in Jackson's life, second only to Rachel's. There were others in Jackson's command worthy of notice. William B. Lewis, a neighbor, served as quartermaster. William Carroll was brigade inspector. Thomas Hart Benton, whose rough, burly exterior disguised a sharp intellect, was aide-decamp.
Jackson's command got no farther than Natchez in January 1813 when orders curtly ended his mission, but his admiring soldiers observed that he was as tough as hickory wood, and thus they bestowed on him an everlasting nickname — Old Hickory. The reputation that he had gained was soon tarnished by his involvement in a quarrel between William Carroll, Thomas Hart Benton, and Benton's brother, Jesse. In Nashville one day accompanied by Coffee and Stockley Donelson Hays, Jackson happened upon the Bentons. A bloody brawl erupted. Jesse shot Jackson in his left arm and shoulder. Hays stabbed Jesse seriously, and Coffee pistol-whipped Thomas. Jackson was still on his sickbed when shocking news reached Nashville. The Creek Indians had massacred the settlers at Fort Mims, Mississippi Territory. Still weak with his arm in a sling, Jackson led his troops out to crush the Creek Nation. The climax came on March 27, 1814. In the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Jackson's troops annihilated the Creeks. The Madison administration, happy to find a general who could win battles, promoted Jackson to major general in the US Army.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, ix,
PREFACE, xi,
Prologue: A Pleasant Stop in Memphis, 1,
1. New Lives in "that land of promise" 1716 — July 1820, 3,
2. Emily — and a Triumph and a Tragedy August 1820 — December 1828, 20,
3. The Petticoat War January 1829-August 1831, 35,
4. The Rising Politician September 1831 — December 1835, 61,
5. "Death could not extinguish the light of her spirit" December 1835 — August 1841, 81,
6. Elizabeth — and Polk and Texas! September 1841 — August 1844, 100,
7. "The most important mission" September 1844-March 1845, 118,
8. "Donelson will have the honor of this important deed" March 1845-July 1845, 138,
9. The Fruits of Annexation July 1845 — February 1848, 156,
10. Mdrztage February 1848 — November 1849, 177,
11. "If A. J. Donelson does not please the Democratic Party, [who can ...?" December 1849 — December 1851, 199,
12. An Obstacle to Harmony December 1851 — May 1855, 219,
13. Fillmore and Donelson! June 1855-November 1856, 234,
14. Bitter Twilight November 1856 — June 1871, 254,
Epilogue: The Family and the Legacy, 277,
ILLUSTRATION GALLERY, 285,
ABBREVIATIONS, 293,
NOTES, 295,
BIBLIOGRAPHY, 401,
INDEX, 421,