General. . . .We have succeeded in acquiring an accurate Knowledge of all the sections of good Lands to be sold,” reported the agent in a letter marked “Private.” He called Jackson’s attention to four sections of land that “would form a most desirable establishment for your old age.”
Andrew Jackson was about to participate in the biggest real estate bubble in the history of the nation up to that time. His multiple plantations in the new country would considerably exceed the acreage of theHermitage. Some of his closest friends and allies would colonize the new country and be installed among its leading citizens. He was nation-building. On its face there was nothing wrong with this. But to make it happen, Andrew Jackson the real estate magnate first needed help from General Jackson the federal official. He had to get the former Creek land on the market. This proved to be complicated, because some of the most valuable land was found not to be Creek territory at all. He hadn’t really conquered it at Horseshoe Bend. He hadn’t even taken it at the Treaty of Fort Jackson.
Andrew Jackson had a problem. General Jackson solved it. What follows is an account of what he did and how he did it.
• • •
The prize was the Tennessee Valley. Through it ran one of the great highways of the region, the river that John Ross traveled in December 1812 during his journey to trade with the Cherokees in the West. The Tennessee cut its way out of the Appalachians and spilled into the plains, flowing east to west in the shape of a jagged smile. White settlers had long ago taken control of its upper reaches and tributaries. But farther downriver, the Indian map showed that much of the valley was still the domain of Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickasaws. This was especially true at the Big Bend of the Tennessee, where the channel dipped into present-day Alabama. It was here that the currents roared through theshallows known as Muscle Shoals, forty miles that were perilous to travel downstream and often impossible to travel up.
Andrew Jackson would have known about the shoals almost as long as he was a westerner. He likely heard about them soon after his arrival in Nashville in 1788. The Donelson family, with whom he boarded, had made it to Nashville on a route that included a terrifying descent through those rapids. The Donelsons’ story surely interested Jackson, because it involved the woman who became his wife.
Rachel was twelve years old in December 1779, when her father organized a convoy of settlers who started down the Tennessee. Thecurrent flowed westward, the direction they wanted to go, but everything else was against them. Boats ran aground on sandbars. Cherokees opened fire from the banks. The journal kept by Rachel’s father recorded a boat shot full of holes, an enslaved man drowned while fleeing an attack, and an infant dashed on the rocks. When the survivors reached Muscle Shoals, they intended to travel overland to the planned settlement on the Cumberland River, but failed to find a message from a guide who was to give them directions. They decided to continue by water, shooting the rapids directly ahead. “The water being high made a terrible roaring,” wrote Rachel’s father, John Donelson, “which could be heard at some distance among the drift-wood heaped frightfully upon the points of the islands, the current running in every possible direction. . . . Our boats frequently dragged on the bottom, and appeared constantly in danger of striking.” Emerging safely on the far side, the party drifted downriver to the Ohio—and then, half-starved, improvised sails to travel upriver on the Cumberland to what became Nashville.
Muscle Shoals gained a sinister reputation, as Jackson knew. He’d heard stories of a village near the bottom of the shoals, which Creeks had once used as a base for raids on white settlements, committing “ever kind of rapine & murder on our women & children.” The attacks
Andrew Jackson was about to participate in the biggest real estate bubble in the history of the nation up to that time. His multiple plantations in the new country would considerably exceed the acreage of theHermitage. Some of his closest friends and allies would colonize the new country and be installed among its leading citizens. He was nation-building. On its face there was nothing wrong with this. But to make it happen, Andrew Jackson the real estate magnate first needed help from General Jackson the federal official. He had to get the former Creek land on the market. This proved to be complicated, because some of the most valuable land was found not to be Creek territory at all. He hadn’t really conquered it at Horseshoe Bend. He hadn’t even taken it at the Treaty of Fort Jackson.
Andrew Jackson had a problem. General Jackson solved it. What follows is an account of what he did and how he did it.
• • •
The prize was the Tennessee Valley. Through it ran one of the great highways of the region, the river that John Ross traveled in December 1812 during his journey to trade with the Cherokees in the West. The Tennessee cut its way out of the Appalachians and spilled into the plains, flowing east to west in the shape of a jagged smile. White settlers had long ago taken control of its upper reaches and tributaries. But farther downriver, the Indian map showed that much of the valley was still the domain of Cherokees, Creeks, and Chickasaws. This was especially true at the Big Bend of the Tennessee, where the channel dipped into present-day Alabama. It was here that the currents roared through theshallows known as Muscle Shoals, forty miles that were perilous to travel downstream and often impossible to travel up.
Andrew Jackson would have known about the shoals almost as long as he was a westerner. He likely heard about them soon after his arrival in Nashville in 1788. The Donelson family, with whom he boarded, had made it to Nashville on a route that included a terrifying descent through those rapids. The Donelsons’ story surely interested Jackson, because it involved the woman who became his wife.
Rachel was twelve years old in December 1779, when her father organized a convoy of settlers who started down the Tennessee. Thecurrent flowed westward, the direction they wanted to go, but everything else was against them. Boats ran aground on sandbars. Cherokees opened fire from the banks. The journal kept by Rachel’s father recorded a boat shot full of holes, an enslaved man drowned while fleeing an attack, and an infant dashed on the rocks. When the survivors reached Muscle Shoals, they intended to travel overland to the planned settlement on the Cumberland River, but failed to find a message from a guide who was to give them directions. They decided to continue by water, shooting the rapids directly ahead. “The water being high made a terrible roaring,” wrote Rachel’s father, John Donelson, “which could be heard at some distance among the drift-wood heaped frightfully upon the points of the islands, the current running in every possible direction. . . . Our boats frequently dragged on the bottom, and appeared constantly in danger of striking.” Emerging safely on the far side, the party drifted downriver to the Ohio—and then, half-starved, improvised sails to travel upriver on the Cumberland to what became Nashville.
Muscle Shoals gained a sinister reputation, as Jackson knew. He’d heard stories of a village near the bottom of the shoals, which Creeks had once used as a base for raids on white settlements, committing “ever kind of rapine & murder on our women & children.” The attacks
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