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Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, owned more than 300 African Americans during his adult life. A fierce advocate of White supremacy, Jackson supported and participated in the institution of slavery, while opposing the abolitionist movement, which grew stronger in his second term, believing it to be a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. Jackson strongly favored the annexation of Texas, a feat he had been unable to accomplish during his own presidency. While he still feared that annexation would stir up anti-slavery sentiment, his belief that the British would use Texas as a base to threaten the United States overrode his other concerns.

In addition to his legal and political career, Jackson prospered as a planter and merchant. He built a home and the first general store in Gallatin, Tennessee, in 1803. The next year, he acquired The Hermitage, a 640 acre plantation in Davidson County, near Nashville. He later added 360 acre to the plantation, which eventually totaled 1050 acres. The primary crop was cotton. Like most successful American planters at the time, Jackson's plantation depended on slave labor. The cotton cultivated at the Hermitage was planted and picked by slaves. The Hermitage was quite profitable; Jackson began with nine slaves, owned as many as 44 by 1820, and later up to 150, placing him among the planter elite. Jackson also co-owned with his son Andrew Jackson Jr. the Halcyon plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi, which housed 51 slaves at the time of his death..

When President-elect Jackson left Tennessee for the White House, he brought some of his slaves from The Hermitage with him. The 1830 census listed fourteen enslaved individuals in Jackson’s household – eight women and six men – and many scholars suggest that his household grew during the course of his presidency. Jackson also made significant improvements to the White House during his administration, including the construction of the North Portico and a new stable, as well as the addition of running water to the house, projects that almost certainly made use of enslaved labor, either from Jackson’s own household or hired out from other slave-owners in Washington, D.C..

Unlike some other slave-owning presidents, Jackson did not leave behind many public statements or writings on the morality of slavery. He never explicitly defended the institution, but he also never questioned it or displayed any qualms about his own role as a slave owner. However, he did believe in a paternalistic idea of slavery, which claimed that slave ownership was morally acceptable as long as owners served as paternal figures for slaves, offering food, shelter, and other necessities.

During his lifetime, Jackson went from poverty to wealth because he personally embraced the institution of slavery. Enslaved workers grew his crops, built and tended his house and helped him gain a social foothold in Southern society. In his will, Jackson left his entire estate to Andrew Jackson Jr., along with his 110 remaining slaves, except for two boys whom he gave to his grandsons and four female slaves whom he left to his daughter-in-law, Sarah. Jackson never freed any of his slaves before or after his death.

Slavery at The Hermitage
Men, women, and child slaves were owned by Jackson on three sections of the Hermitage plantation. Slaves lived in extended family units of between five and ten persons and were quartered in 400 sqft cabins made either of brick or logs. The size and quality of the Hermitage slave quarters exceeded the standards of the time. To help slaves acquire food, Jackson supplied them with guns, knives, and fishing equipment. At times he paid his slaves with money and coins to trade in local markets. Jackson permitted slaves to be whipped if he believed his slaves' offenses were severe enough. At various times he posted advertisements for fugitive slaves who had escaped from his plantation. In an 1804 advertisement, Jackson offered "ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred".

Jackson expressed concern for the slaves' treatment, attempted to keep slave families together, and urged his overseers to treat them with humanity. He believed in a paternalistic idea of slavery, which claimed that slave ownership was morally acceptable as long as owners served as paternal figures for slaves, offering food, shelter, and other necessities.