between Gen. Jackson and Charles Dickinson, Esq. in 1806 – woodcut from one of the 1828 Coffin Handbills ]]
Andrew Jackson, later seventh president of the United States, was involved in a series of altercations in his personal and professional life. Jackson killed a man and was shot in a duel (in 1806); was shot in a tavern brawl (in 1813); and was charged, in separate incidents, with assault and battery (1806; convicted), and assault with intent to kill (1807; acquitted). In multiple incidents over several decades Jackson and his underlings reportedly brandished or deployed a wide array of weapons against their opponents, including horsewhips, knives secreted in canes, canes used as melee weapons, clubs, axes, pistols, and rifles. In the words of biographer Mark R. Cheathem, "Jackson's propensity toward violence was a lifelong characteristic. Borne partly out of his cultural ancestry, partly out of his personality, and partly out of his childhood in the Waxhaws, the expectations of the southern gentry accentuated this tendency. Jackson used violence during these years to establish his reputation as an honorable gentleman. These affairs of honor ignited not from the flamboyant chest pounding of a wild frontiersman but from the deliberate calculation of an aspiring southern planter determined to force recognition of his place among the elite."
Physical violence of Andrew Jackson According to historian J. M. Opal, "[Jackson's] willingness to kill, assault, or threaten people was a constant theme in his adult life and a central component of the reputation he cultivated." One writer who investigated Jackson's brief residence circa 1788–89 in what is now East Tennessee reported, "He was recognized from the first as a man who 'would fight at the drop of a hat, and drop the hat himself.'" Donald B. Cole wrote that Jackson's "violent personality emerged early and dominated his life." Per biographer Robert V. Remini, Jackson had a "vicious temper that frequently exploded into ugly language and acts," and such a temper tantrum, "so furious and startlingly sudden, intimidated his victims by its abruptness and its noisiness." Horse trainer and Congressman Baylie Peyton wrote that "nobody ever 'jawed back' at Old Hickory when he was in one of his ways." One historian wrote of his pre-war years, "His temper was nothing less than volcanic. His oaths were varied, numerous, and highly effective. Yet after he reached middle life both were less frequently in evidence, and except upon extraordinary occasions were more moderate than in youth." A Methodist chaplain wrote in his journal of the Natchez Expedition, "I find the Gen. cannot bare much opposition. He is a good General but a very incorrect divine." In 1820, after British subjects in Upper Canada destroyed a wax effigy of Jackson to protest the executions of Ambrister and Arbuthnot, a wag reportedly commented, "It was well Old Hickory did not appear in the heat of the action or he would have made you know the difference between the man of whacks, and the man of wax." In 1824, Thomas Jefferson visited with Daniel Webster, who wrote up a memorandum of topics they had discussed. According to Webster's notes, Jefferson said of Jackson, "His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate he was a Senator; and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage. His passions are no doubt cooler now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man." When Jackson died in 1845, anti-Jacksonian Whig editor Parson Brownlow uncharitably (but with characteristic vituperative flair) eulogized the former President as having led "a life of eighty long years spent in the indulgence of the most bitter and vindictive passions which disgrace human nature, and distract the human mind."
It has been claimed that Jackson "participated in more than 100 duels over his lifetime". In 1828, Dr. James L. Armstrong, who had been a surgeon in Jackson's militia in the War of 1812, claimed that he had started making a list of altercations involving Jackson and the final list "accumulated to nearly ONE HUNDRED FIGHTS or violent and abusive quarrels." Armstrong's published index, issued under the title General Jackson's "juvenile indiscretions" between the ages of 23 and 60, listed 14 notable instances. Shortly after the publication of this negative-campaign material, a Kentucky newspaper claimed that four men, including Archibald Yell and his law partner William Gilchrist, stopped by to "assassinate" (assault) Dr. Armstrong in Bedford County for writing anti-Jackson columns, chasing him down and clubbing him. A comment from another correspondent was appended to the report: "This is Jacksonism in its true colors such as the Hero in early times has often acted himself!" Nashville papers claimed that the beating was because Armstrong had insulted Gilchrist's father by calling him a Tory, and reported that Malcolm Gilchrist beat Armstrong with a hickory stick, while Yell and another man, Jesse Taylor, did not strike Armstrong but did hold pistols at the ready. (In 1831, President Jackson appointed Yell to be receiver of public monies at the United States General Land Office in Little Rock, Arkansas Territory.)
Jackson's use of violence against other wealthy White men (and foreign colonial powers) may also be informative about his personal use of violence against slaves: "Jackson [had] rage to spare as he considered dueling Thomas Hart Benton, John Sevier, Henry Clay, and others whom society viewed as his equals. It is difficult to believe that he would interact with an insolent enslaved man or woman on better terms than he would these esteemed gentlemen. It is also inconceivable that he would allow anyone to beat any of the horses he owned 300 times." His typical histrionics were, of course, present in his dealings with the Indigenous peoples of southeastern North America ("Andrew Jackson's Indian-hating is beyond question...When Big Warrior insisted on compensation for property losses, the enraged General threatened to put him in chains.") That Jackson was a bully by both avocation and by occupationfor fun and for profithas been the conclusion of more than one historian.
Jackson's apparent propensity for physical violence was very much an issue for the anti-Jacksonians in the 1824 and 1828 presidential elections. During the 1824 presidential election, Jesse Benton, brother of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton (and certainly an interested party in questions of Jacksonian violence, as he was the one who shot Jackson in 1813), published a pamphlet that stated, "...it is a notorious fact, that he was scarce ever known to leave a [horse racing] round without having participated in an affray or riot, or at least a quarrel." News reports about Jackson's history of violence seem to have at least caught the attention of the voting public. In Natchez, Mississippi, which was at times the center of "an almost blind hero-worship" of Jackson ("based more on his many local acquaintances and his military record than on his position in national politics"), a group of nabobs published an anti-Jackson broadside in 1828. The signatories, including Stephen Duncan, Francis Surget, Alvarez Fisk, Felix Huston, and Adam L. Bingaman, indicated that they supported Adams, attesting that they dreaded Jackson's election "as much (if possible) on account of the violence of his many adherents, as of his own peculiar unfitness for the station." One Delaware voter wrote his local newspaper to this effect:
Similarly, Thomas E. Waggaman, of Washington, D.C., wrote Felix Robertson in November 1828 that he had received a letter from a "corresponding committee in Harrisburg Pa. requesting me to give them a history of the Genl's 'trading in negroes cutting off ears' and other acts of violence ascribed to him by the tools of corruption."Thomas E. Waggaman, Washington, to Felix Robertson, 1828 November 29, id128670, Box: 1. Tyler Family Papers, Group H, 01/Mss. 65 T97 Group H. Special Collections Research Center. College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia Jackson was an interstate slave trader active for 20–25 years (–). Whether or not he ever cut off anyone's ears is unrecorded by history, although he repeatedly threatened it. In 1827 an anti-Jacksonian pamphleteer nodded to the ear-cropping hearsay when he wrote (emphasis added), "Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams, have placed themselves before a court of enquiry, the nation is the tribunal, every citizen is a member of the court, I am one of them. I will speak therefore, although I jeopardize my ears, or my life."
In addition to threatening to cut off peoples' ears, Jackson also repeatedly menaced peoples' houses with fire. For instance, during Indian removal he told Secretary of War Eaton to tell the Chickasaw agent to tell squatters on Chickasaw land that their houses would be burned down if they did not wait to claim land until the U.S. government signaled it was time.
Hickory
Jackson's nickname Old Hickory, or Ol' Hickory, may have been a play on words hinting at his predilection for violence. The Oxford English Dictionary definition for hickory oil (sense 2) is "U.S. figurative corporal punishment using a hickory switch or similar instrument, viewed as a treatment for bad behaviour (now rare); During the first half of the nineteenth cent., the phrase was also used to refer to the administration of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, nicknamed Old Hickory (see Old Hickory n.), which may have influenced the development of sense (b)." The "hickory oil" treatment was sarcastically "celebrated for its efficacy in removing idleness." In November 1815, Jackson's adjutant Robert Butler wrote him with an update about the enslaved community at the Hermitage: "Your wenches as usual commenced open war and they have been brought to order by Hickory oil." A banquet toast made in Pennsylvania during the 1828 election saluted, "Hickory oil, an infallible remedy for the Quincy epidemic."
Fights, duels, beatdowns, and attempts Duel with Waightstill Avery, 1788; the challenge from Jackson read "Sir, when amans feelings & charector are injured...it is consistant with the charector of agentleman when he Injures aman to make aspedy reparation." Both men fired into the air. The cause seems to have been Avery ridiculing a legal argument made by Jackson in court, with one variation being "that Jackson had ridiculed Avery's pet authorityBacon's Abridgment," and Avery's reply was "sarcastic...intimating that Jackson had much to learn before he would be competent to criticize any law book whatever." Avery reportedly gave Jackson a fatherly lecture after the duel was over and kept the written challenge filed amongst his myriad papers as "Challenge from Andrew Jackson." John Adair was Avery's second. Duel with unidentified opponent near Jonesboro, Tennessee, probably 1789, but sometime before November 1790, "'in the long meadow,' as it was then called (formerly the 'hollow'), on the north side of town, and they all asserted that the duel with Avery was fought on the hill on the south side...He said that Jackson hit his man, but he was not seriously wounded, and soon recovered and left the community; that Jackson was not touched." Allegedly, in 1790, Jackson "horsewhipped a certain Grayson who molested" an enslaved man named Ephraim.