The biography of Andrew Jackson (lifespan, 1767–1845; U.S. presidency, 1829–1837) is scant until he was 30 years old. In the words of one historian, "There is little that is actually known of his early life save the broad outline sketched by the General himself. Jackson was keenly interested in the presentation and interpretation of his political and military career and made an effort to furnish his biographers with the information he had, but his friends could get from him concerning his youth only brief stories and incidents. There is no connected narrative. For the most part he was content to refer would-be biographers to the work written by his friends, Major John S. Reid and Major John Henry Eaton, which was first published in 1817," when Jackson was 50 years old. Reid was a highly educated Virginia-born lawyer who served as Jackson's primary amaneusis during the Creek War and War of 1812. Eaton was a general-purpose henchman. Both were sons-in-law of longtime Jackson cronies and both were determined to promote Jackson on the national stage; their work, though foundational, is foremost political campaign propaganda, and the first of many Jackson biographies that "hewed to the interpretation of Jackson as nationalist hero."
The first major critical work on Jackson was James Parton's three-volume biography, which was published just before the beginning of the American Civil War. Parton did extensive original research but many of the principal figures of Jackson's early life were long dead by the time he began his interviews. Few of Jackson's allies wrote memoirs. Several key figures did leave behind valuable tranches of correspondence but most of these sources disclose little detail about Jackson's youth or young adulthood.
When examining Jackson's business dealings it may be helpful to know that currency on the frontier was a mixed bag, and constantly changing. In late 18th-century North America, British pounds commingled with Spanish reals, Continental "paper" had its day, there were state-issued notes, the embryonic U.S. dollar debuted in 1792, promissory notes of wildly varying reliability flowed from trading post to commercial port and back again, and there was a complex barter and credit system involving anything imaginable but especially horses, chattel slaves, real estate titles, pelts and furs, guns and ammunition, and distilled spirits. Young Jackson was in business at a time and place when "Money was scarce, and the interchange of goods was difficult and hazardous. Barter was still commonly employed in conducting commercial transactions." Also, as one historian summarized Hickory's entrepreneurial career in 2007: "Jackson was obsessive about his wealth; money seemed always in short supply, and loans were a way of life."
Education, early friends and acquaintances One investigation of Jackson's education concluded, "It is probable that Andrew Jackson attended such schools as were available in his time and in his community and that he attended none of them for any long period." Teachers and schools mentioned in biographies by Reid and Marquis James are William Humphries, Robert McCulloch, and "Francis Cummins's 'classical' boarding school in the New Acquisition." Jackson attended a dancing school in his youth. Jackson might (or might not) have spent some time at the short-lived Queen's College in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Jackson went to school with William Smith, future U.S. Senator from South Carolina and long-time Jackson confidant. They attended a school at Bullock's Creek, in the "District between Broad and Catawba Rivers," taught by Rev. Mr. Joseph Alexander, who also had a school in the Waxhaws. The curriculum included Greek, Latin, reading, and mathematics. One letter written in 1813 holds that Jackson and the author attended school with "old Mr. Stephenson on the Catabaw," meaning James White Stephenson, later a reverend of the Presbyterian Church. Jackson was also said to be childhood friends with Joshua Gordon (1765–1845), author of the 1784 Witchcraft Book, which was a 22-page treatise concerned with "cures and spells, and...treating sick livestock."
Clerking and lawyering in North Carolina and the Southwest Territory (1784–1798) Biographer James Parton wrote in 1861 that while Jackson had acquired "the little legal knowledge necessary" to practice frontier law "he never became, in any proper sense of the word, a lawyer." Historian C. Edward Skeen, in a review of The Legal Papers of Andrew Jackson (1987), stated, "Historians have written little about Andrew Jackson's law practice and career as judge of the Superior Court of Tennessee...this period of his life is largely a void...The editors are to be applauded for their considerable effort in producing this volume, but it would appear that all they have shown is that the documentary evidence of Jackson's legal career is too skimpy to be recovered."
Training Information about Jackson's legal education is "sketchy and uncertain." In December 1784 he went to Morgantown, North Carolina, and sought the tutelage of Waightstill Avery, "a Princeton graduate and former state attorney general who...declined to take him on as a student." He then studied with lawyer Charles Bruce in Martinville, which was named for its chief resident, Founding Father Alexander Martin. Local lore has it that he may have worked at the "mercantile establishment" of Thomas Henderson and Thomas Searcy during his time in Guilford County—or very possibly the three were simply acquaintances who raced horses and fought cocks together. Jackson read law in early 1786 at the Salisbury, North Carolina law office of Spruce Macay, a socially connected lawyer and later a North Carolina state judge and state legislator. In late 1786 Jackson moved to the Montgomery County, North Carolina, law office of John Stokes.
North Carolina lawyer In August 1787, Rowan County, North Carolina issued a warrant for the arrest of Jackson and two friends on charges of trespass. Jackson posted a recognizance bond, and "no further records exist, suggesting that the case was settled out of court or dismissed."
Jackson was tested by two judges, Samuel Ashe and John F. Williams, and admitted to the bar of North Carolina in September 1787. He then "drifted" through western North Carolina, handling cases in Randolph and Rockingham counties, but "it seems apparent...that Jackson found it difficult to attract clients." Among the cases Jackson handled at the Johnstonville courthouse in Randolph County was a dispute over beehives. Another surviving record from Randolph County states, "On motion of Andrew Jackson, Esquire, attorney for Absalom Tatum, it is ordered that Adam Tate, Coroner of Rockingham County, be fined 50 pounds nisi for failing to return fiere facias against John May, Sheriff of said county, at the instance of Absalom Tatum and that fiere facias issue accordingly."
Mero District attorney
Jackson was 21 years old when he arrived in "Nashboro" in October 1788. He was invited to the Mero District by his friend and fellow Macay law clerk John McNairy, judge of the Davidson County Superior Court, and was granted the unpaid position of county prosecutor and "acted as attorney-general for the state" at the November 1788 and May 1789 terms of the Superior Court. He was eventually granted a salary of £40. Jackson prosecuted 85 crimes "on behalf of North Carolina or the territorial government," predominantly assault and battery, some petty larceny, perjury, and horse thievery, as well as two felony murders, and one rape. He also "instituted more than thirty scire facias proceedings on behalf of the territorial government, presumably to collect fines for statutory offenses against court."
Private practice Jackson also developed a private practice, filing more than 400 suits for clients between 1788 and 1798, predominantly in the Davidson and Sumner county courts, and the Mero District Superior Court. Matters at issue included lame horses, chattel slaves, real estate, and 1,453 pounds of beaver pelts. In the telling of legal historian James Ely, "Jackson's service to his clients involved more than preparation of pleadings and arguments in court. He functioned partly as a collection official and land agent. One client, on the losing side of a lawsuit, requested Jackson to convey a portion of a tract 'to the use of Setling the Judgment...obtained against me.' He further instructed Jackson: 'Sell the Balance for any kind of Trade and we can Settle when I return in the Spring.' On at least two occasions Jackson signed as security on his client's prosecution bond." Other lawyers working the vicinity at the same time included Josiah Love, John Overton, Bennett Searcy, and Howell Tatum; between the five of them they handled almost all the litigation in middle Tennessee. Jackson's legal practice was at its zenith in 1794 and 1795, after which he became more concerned with commerce and politics. There are only scant records that might illuminate Jackson's legal arguments but all of the legal systems in the Cumberland showed a "degree of continuity with colonial and English legal roots." In both his public and profit work, debt recovery was one of his specialties and since "he was on the side of the creditors, merchants were pleased to make use of his services."
Reputation
With regard to his reputation as an attorney, biographer and first editor of his collected papers John Spencer Bassett wrote "He was, no doubt, but little versed in the law." There are multiple versions of how Jackson came to challenge Waightsill Avery to a duel in 1788, but one retold in a history of western North Carolina had it 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." In 1796, John Sevier referred to Jackson as a "poor, pitifull, petty fogging Lawyer" (but two years later saw fit to appoint him to the Tennessee state bench). When the Magnesses were tried in 1810 for the murder of Jackson's friend and occasional business partner Patton Anderson, Alfred Balch was the prosecutor, and Felix Grundy and Jenkin Whiteside were the defense attorneys; Jackson was not involved in the trial except as a witness—"he was licensed to practice law and had served as a judge, but he and Anderson's friends had no delusions about his legal abilities." Bettina Drew argued in her influential thesis Andrew Jackson: Indian Removal and the Culture of Slavery (2001) that "Jackson was a continual law-breaker whose conception of the law was deeply Southern in orientation...In the slave-holding worldview, the law was an instrument of the masterthe master was not, ideally, an instrument of the lawand it is this idea that Andrew Jackson lived by."
Ely states that Jackson was well-regarded: "Jackson experienced considerable success as a lawyer and enjoyed a favorable reputation. One litigant wrote to a friend: 'I wish you to put my Papers into the hands of an Attorney Lawyer Jackson if you can or into Mr. Overton or some good attorney...'...At the time of his death in 1793 [Josiah] Love had the largest case load [in the Mero District]. Second to Love at the latter's death, Jackson represented more clients than any other attorney for the period 1788–1796. Another measure of his standing in the profession is that Love and Searcy asked Jackson to represent them in private litigation."
Shopkeeping (1795–1807)