Visiting Melton’s Bluff again in September 1817, Jackson contemplated acquiring more land. He sent a letter to John Coffee, who had been appointed the federal surveyor just as Jackson recommended. “Let me see you as I pass,” Jackson wrote, “and I would be glad [if] you could bring with you the survey of the 3rd. Township & 8th. range—and that including cold water or spring creak—I have but little doubt, but something can be done at the sales—on which subject I wish to see you.” Federal land offices divided territory into a grid; the “3rd. Township & 8th. range” would have been near Melton’s Bluff, while “cold water or spring creak” was the area he had urged Coffee to make sure was included when he “ran the line” to define the Creek land cession.
In 1818 he stopped by Melton’s Bluff again to watch the harvest of another crop of cotton; prices late that year climbed a few cents higher than the year before, so the harvest meant another $35,000 if not far more. The slaves had to hurry to gather in the crop, because surveyors were busy dividing the property into city blocks for a new town. The town never amounted to much, but the land boom was only beginning.
The very best place for a town, Jackson believed, was at the foot of Muscle Shoals: the head of easy navigation, and the place where Jackson’s military road crossed the river, and where he had urged the government to locate an arsenal. He had written his friend John Coffee back in 1817 to help spread the word. He urged the federal surveyor to send on advice to the president about possible new town sites. There should be a town at Muscle Shoals; it “will become one of the largest towns in the western country—here will capital concentrate itself—and it will become the Nashville of the Tennessee.”
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Up until that time there was only one significant white settlement in northern Alabama: Huntsville, upstream from Muscle Shoals. It was built around the Big Spring, a scenic source of fresh water, but was still a rude frontier town. John Coffee, pausing there during the war, dismissed it with a single sentence to his wife: “I am yet confined at this loathsome place.”
In early 1818 Coffee rode again to that loathsome place. He found conditions even less appealing. Hundreds of men were converging on the town, overloading the local taverns—log cabins that were part bar, part restaurant, and part hotel. Food was so scarce that prices soared, and some could not find it at any price. Yet the threat of starvation could not keep men away, for Huntsville was to be the location of a federal land sale. The register of deeds noted that “many gentlemen from the Eastern States (very considerable capitalists too) have arrivd. in this Country,” some accompanied by slaves.
The land office for northern Alabama occupied a log cabin in Huntsville. Until this year only a little Tennessee Valley land had gone on the market, commanding ordinary frontier prices of about $2 an acre on average. February 1818 promised to be different. The auctioneer was about to begin selling close to a million acres. Witnesses recorded signs of excitement they had never experienced before. Buyers formed coalitions to avoid bidding against each other, but when the auctions began, their efforts collapsed. Prices for some tracts soared from the minimum $2 an acre up to $50. And then $70 an acre. And then $78.
Returning from a land sale, Coffee wrote Jackson: “The prices have surpassed any ever known in the U.S. heretofore.” He believed the prices also surpassed reason, and Coffee bought no property at first. In later rounds of auctions, prices subsided. The quality of land varied, the cartels regrouped to limit competition, and each new round of land sales increased the supply of available property. Yet prime land continued to sell for many times its price before the bubble, spurred by easy terms of payment and the incredible price of cotton. Millions of dollars poured into the land office. The madness for real estate even infected the receiver of public money. He was supposed to be forwarding the land payments to Washington, but fell months behind, until his superiors slowly realized he had failed to forward some $80,000. He had been making bogus sales to himself, recording phantom down payments for land in his own name.
John Coffee waited patiently through the frenzy, and settled in to steady buying when he judged the price was right. In the years that followed, the federal surveyor’s name appeared on federal patents for more than fifteen thousand acres. Sometimes his name appeared alone, and sometimes with those of other men who appeared to be joint investors. Sometimes in the crowds at the auction, or in the taverns and houses around town, he did business with a familiar face from Nashville—James Jackson, long-standing associate of both Coffee and Andrew Jackson and apparently richer than either. James Jackson’s name would eventually appear, singly or with others, on federal patents for twenty-two thousand acres. These were the two men who in 1816 had moved to quash rumors that they, along with Andrew Jackson, were planning to speculate in the newly won Indian lands.
Andrew Jackson’s friends purchased some of their acreage with Andrew Jackson. Often one man would be recorded as the “assignee” of others, typically meaning that he was designated to purchase the land on behalf of a partner or partners. Presumably when Jackson was “assignee,” he was taking a portion of land for himself as he had said back in 1816 that he would. From early 1818 onward, Coffee, James Jackson, and Andrew Jackson were all members of a business partnership “to purchase or enter lands in the Alabama Territory.” Other partners included John Donelson, Andrew Jackson’s brother-in-law, and a group of Philadelphia investors. It is difficult to determine exactly how much land the men bought or sold together, but an analysis of federal records suggests that an absolute minimum of 6,700 acres was bought for the partnership, and possibly much more.
Sometimes too Jackson acted on his own. When another round of sales began in November, cheers echoed through Huntsville: Jackson himself was standing in the crowd, his unmistakable figure the shape of his cane, with his mass of hair making him loom even higher over his fellow men. He was planning to bid on property around Coldwater Creek at Muscle Shoals: “Section 33, Township 3 south, Range 11 west.” It was, as Andrew Jackson noted in a letter, “on the military road” that General Jackson had built. When the plot came up for sale, Jackson entered the minimum bid, and out of respect for the national hero, no one else raised his hand.
This section I bought at two dollars per acre, no person bidding against me and as soon as I bid off, hailed by the unanimous shouts of a numerous & mixed multitude—This on the eve of my retireing from all Public appointment, I am compelled to say was gratifying as it was an approval of my official acts.
Given the range of land values at the time, the square mile was instantly worth thousands of dollars more than Jackson paid for it—probably tens of thousands. He used it for some years as a farm, known as the Big Spring plantation, and sometimes lived there for a month at a time. “I am determined to push that farm for a livelihood,” he wrote in 1822, while giving instructions to install a cotton gin. That same year he advertised a $50 reward for a slave who escaped from there. In 1823 he personally led the effort to capture three more escaped slaves, and had to put two of the men in irons, a step he said he regretted.
His square mile on the south side of the river was eventually expanded to include adjoining property. Jackson also bought land on the north side of the river—land under his own name at a place called Evans Spring, as well as three additional tracts in the name of Andrew Jackson Hutchings, an orphaned relative of Rachel’s who had come to live at the Hermitage alongside the adopted son Andrew Jackson Jr., as well as the adopted Indian Lyncoya. Hutchings was a minor at the time of the land purchases in his name. At least one of those tracts became Jackson’s third plantation in the valley, while others may have been used for farming or speculation or both.
It is hard to prove what role, if any, Jackson played in the land purchases by another relative. More than twenty-two hundred acres were purchased under the name of William Donelson, Rachel Jackson’s nephew. William Donelson was also the registered name for the purchaser of thirteen town lots in Coldwater, the former Indian village at the
bottom of Muscle Shoals.
Not only were Jackson and his friends and relations buying land near Muscle Shoals, his friends were colonizing it. John Coffee moved from Nashville to a new plantation just north of the Tennessee River, which he would call Hickory Hill. James Jackson relocated from Nashville to a plantation near Coffee’s, which he called the Forks of Cypress. James Jackson’s property became the apotheosis of southern plantation life, with a grandeur that can still be sensed amid its ruins today. His house stood on high ground, surrounded on all four sides by colonnades some thirty feet high. From the colonnades he could look down on his fields and horse track. The slaves who worked the plantation over the years included an ancestor of Alex Haley, the twentieth-century author of Roots, a famous narrative of slavery.
James Jackson and John Coffee also realized the potential for founding a city at Muscle Shoals. Early in 1818 they were among a group of businessmen who formed the Cypress Land Company, which purchased land near their future plantations. John Coffee arranged to lay out a street grid, which quickly became the city of Florence. The key for land speculators was to buy land from the government at an affordable price, often by collaborating with other bidders to reduce competition, and then quickly resell the land at a profit. The Cypress Land Company succeeded: it paid $85,000 for the land and quickly resold it (in half-acre town lots) for $229,000. Florence included a ferry across the Tennessee River, and it straddled Andrew Jackson’s military road. In this venture Andrew Jackson was no more than a minor stockholder, but he obtained his share of tribute—buying five town lots in his own name at what appeared to be bargain prices, and gaining shares of quite a few more town lots. He remained involved in Alabama real estate for at least a decade: as late as 1829, when Jackson was about to take office as president, a document showed John Coffee acting as Jackson’s “attorney in fact” in Florence, receiving security on an overdue debt by taking the title of a Florence man’s home.
Having added to his fortune and his friends’ fortunes while pursuing his national security goals, Jackson then relied on his friends while attending to further matters of national security. In the fall of 1818—the same year he bought Muscle Shoals land—Jackson negotiated a treaty with the Chickasaws to buy West Tennessee and the western end of Kentucky. He concluded the treaty by promising to pay a massive bribe. The payoff could not be made without proper financing, so the general’s friend James Jackson provided what was necessary: he advanced $20,000 to buy a strip of land from a Chickasaw leader, hoping to keep the land for himself. A journal written by the federal negotiators described the massive payment as a “doceur,” or sweetener. In the end the federal government took the land and repaid James Jackson’s $20,000, but the Irish immigrant seemed to take it all in stride. He later bought some of the land yet again from the government. Once established at Florence, James Jackson was elected to the Alabama legislature, and was among the leaders throwing the new state’s early and crucial support to a presidential candidate in the election of 1824: Andrew Jackson.
Jackson and his beneficiaries probably did not imagine they were doing anything more unseemly than using their resources and connections. In fairness it must be said that they paid for their land, and risked their money on the purchases. Their land lost some of its value after cotton prices crashed in 1819. But no one person had done more to create the land bubble than General Jackson, and when the sales began, no one could have had more inside information about the best land to buy than his friend and partner John Coffee, who had it surveyed at federal expense.
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A surprising aspect of Jackson’s real estate dealings is that he had time for them at all. His life was accelerating. A biography authored by his former military aides was published in 1817, deepening his fame. He was also continuing to direct military operations in the South, including some that led to land acquisitions even grander than those in Alabama. In 1818—in between Alabama land transactions—Jackson assembled the latest of his improvised armies and sent it southward. Its instructions were to cross outside the legal boundaries of the United States, and chastise marauding Indians who were based in Spanish Florida—“chastise” in the way that Jackson sometimes used the word, to mean killing. His targets were Seminoles, a mix of Florida natives and refugees from the Red Stick rebellion. Jackson entered West Florida in March. Then he conquered it. Ignoring written orders to concentrate on Indians and stay away from Spanish forts, Jackson captured Pensacola, ran up the American flag, installed a governor, and started collecting taxes.
Fearing that the invasion could cause war with Spain, President James Monroe ordered Jackson to withdraw. Congress investigated the general for usurping the constitutional power of Congress to declare war, but Jackson’s adventure worked out brilliantly. Concerned though they were about trampling the Constitution—“to the support of which,” the Founding Father in the White House gently reminded Jackson, “my public life has been devoted”—Americans really wanted Florida. Jackson’s invasion helpfully demonstrated that Spain could not defend it. Within a year the Spanish government agreed to sell the entire future state. Not wanting Jackson’s adventure to interfere with this purchase, President Monroe doctored the official record. The president wrote Jackson a remarkable letter, warning that the general’s official reports of his invasion could be politically damaging. He instructed Jackson to “correct” his reports, retroactively changing his reasons for taking Pensacola so that it would seem the Spanish were to blame. “Your letters [to Washington] were written in haste, under the pressure of fatigue & infirmity,” Monroe said, feeding Jackson the necessary excuse for making corrections.
Monroe could not protect Jackson from all criticism. A familiar rumor spread—that Jackson and his friends were profiting from real estate he conquered. Once again, there were facts behind the rumor. A collection of Jackson’s associates—friends, relatives, former soldiers—had banded together to buy Pensacola real estate in the winter of 1818. They managed to buy Florida land just before Jackson invaded, which was just in time to see if its value might soar after an American conquest. Senate investigators heard this story, and their official report included a veiled reference to it. Andrew Jackson was furious, describing one of his critics in the Senate as a “hypocritical lying puppy,” and his anger was likely justified. The Senate produced no evidence that Jackson’s motive for taking Florida was real estate speculation. He had seized Pensacola because he wanted it, as many Americans had for years. But if it was unlikely that General Jackson took Pensacola for his friends’ real estate consortium, a subtly different scenario was plausible. It was possible that Jackson’s friends knew in advance of his intention to take Florida, and adroitly positioned themselves to profit. They were certainly close enough to Jackson to learn his plans. A leader of the Pensacola enterprise was John Donelson, Andrew Jackson’s business partner and brother-in-law. Donelson went to Florida to make his marvelously timed real estate investments while carrying a letter of introduction from Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s friends and relations never denied what they called their “Pensacola speculation,” nor did they deny that Jackson helped them. They denied only that Jackson had any financial interest in the partnership. They said he helped out of “friendly motives.”
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In his abiding interest in land, Andrew Jackson was a reflection of his country as well as his time. The settlement of land quite literally underlay the entire project of building the United States. But Jackson’s acute sensitivity to rumors about his real estate business revealed another layer of the story. While the speculator was not necessarily immoral or corrupt—the risks he took spurred development, and left behind prosperous and lovely cities like Florence—speculation was a morally fraught enterprise. The speculator obtained land cheaply and sold it more expensively to common people. That was what made rumors about Jackson’s land dealings dangerous: they threatened his developing political persona as the champion of the common man. Had all the facts been known, the
public would have seen that Jackson selectively obeyed orders, pushed laws to the limit, trafficked in inside information, and took advantage of his official position and connections. He shaped his real estate investments to complement his official duties, and performed his official duties in a way that benefited his real estate interests. Jackson, with his naturally suspicious cast of mind, would have had no trouble perceiving something corrupt had he seen any rival conducting business the way he did with his friends.
Once he began running for president, Jackson’s political enemies began questioning his land deals, but they never got the goods. A pamphlet during the 1828 campaign proposed to investigate the 1818 Chickasaw treaty and the $20,000 bribe, but failed to report damning evidence. Of other transactions there was no longer an original record to investigate. It was inherently hazardous to store paper records in wooden buildings on a frontier lit by fire. On December 14, 1827, just before the start of the presidential election year, fire consumed the building containing the offices of the Cypress Land Company, which built the city of Florence. Although Jackson’s friends later reconstructed what they believed the accounts to be, all the original records in the office were destroyed.
Jacksonland: A Great American Land Grab Page 10