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General Jackson's Passports: Natural Rights and Sovereign Citizens in the Political Thought of Andrew Jackson, 1780s–1820s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2013

J.M. Opal
J.M. Opal*
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

This essay examines the development of Andrew Jackson's ideas about nationalism, citizenship, and sovereignty within the southern borderlands of the post-Revolutionary United States. It argues that he was in many respects a conventional borderlands leader—that is, someone with little sense of attachment to any particular polity, who speculated in Indian lands while pursuing commercial ventures through American, Spanish, and Native jurisdictions. But an especially devastating war between the settlers of Middle Tennessee and some Cherokee warriors during the 1790s forced Jackson and others to articulate their attachment to the United States in new ways. Bitterly rejecting a Federalist model of citizenship that assumed clear territorial limits, they invented a new “protection covenant,” whereby the people themselves, imagined within a brutal state of nature, retained full sovereignty to deploy violence. In addition to a fresh look at Jackson, the article demonstrates the importance of international as well as Constitutional law in the formation of early American nationalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , October 2013 , pp. 69 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank Peter Onuf, Jeffrey Selinger, Catherine Desbarats, Elizabeth Elbourne, Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, Melissa Gismondi, Eliza Wood, Katherine Wilson, and Nicolas Magnien for their help in reading and revising this manuscript, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial support.

References

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16. “Presentments of the Grand Jury of Adams County,” June 6, 1799, in TPUS, 5:65 and 63–66; I took the names of petitioners from “Petition to Congress by Committee of Inhabitants,” October 2, 1799, and “Presentments of the Grand Jury of Pickering County,” June 17, 1799, in TPUS, 5:83–85 and 5:66–68 (both of which explicitly mention the prohibition of slave importation) and matched them with Feldman, Anglo-Americans in Spanish Archives, 101–218. In his 1797 appraisal of the Illinois country for John Overton, one surveyor reportedthat “All [the settlers] who had Negroes have gone to the Spanish side.” See [?] Clark to John Overton, Oct. 18 1797, Box 4, Overton Papers, TSLA. For much larger petitions that never mention slavery, see “Memorial of Inhabitants of the Territory to the Land Commissioners,” [1810?], in TPUS, ed. Carter, vol. 14, Territory of Louisiana-Missouri, 1806–1814 (Washington, DC, 1949)Google Scholar, 383, 382-97; “Memorial to Congress by Citizens of the Territory,” Dec. 6, 1800, in TPUS, 5:110–17; “Petition to Congress by Citizens of the Territory,” August 25, 1802, in TPUS, 5:159–74.

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22. “A Return of Persons Killed, Wounded, and Taken Prisoner, from Miro District, since the 1st of January, 1791,” in American State Papers: Indian Affairs (Washington, DC, 1832), 1:329–32Google Scholar; “A List of the Names of Persons Killed, Murdered, and Captured since the 26th of February 1794” in KG, Oct. 11, 1794; KG, June 15, 1793 (notice of May attack on boat co-owned by Jackson).

23. Biographical Sketch [1860?], 7, Joseph Brown Papers, TSLA; William Hall Memoir [1853], 19, TSLA; William Blount to Henry Knox, April 11, 1793, in TPUS, 4:251.

24. Blount to Knox, May 5, 1792, in TPUS, 4:149; George Washington to Henry Knox, Aug. 5, 1792, in Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series, ed. Haggard, Robert F. and Mastromarino, Mark M., vol. 10, March-August 1792 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002)Google Scholar, 614. See also [Washington], “Extracts of Correspondence on Indian Affairs, [October 1792],” in Papers of George Washington: Presidential Series, ed. Patrick, Christine Sternberg, vol. 11, August 1792–January 1793 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 291–316Google Scholar; Nichols, Red Gentlemen and White Savages.

25. Blount to James Robertson, 1791 [two letters, no more specific date], Box 1, James Robertson Papers, 1784–1814, TSLA; Blount to Knox, Jan. 14, 1793, in TPUS, 4:232 (“killed or robbed”); Blount to Knox, May 28, 1793, in TPUS, 4:264 (“my situation”); Blount to Knox, May 5, 1792, in TPUS, 4:149 (passports).

26. “Knoxville,” KG, Sept. 14, 1793; Arnow, Seedtime on the Cumberland, 335, 335n.

27. Blount to Knox, Jan. 14, 1793, in TPUS, 4:228–34.

28. “Knoxville,” KG, Dec. 19, 1793; see also “Knoxville,” and “From a Savannah Paper,” KG, Dec. 29, 1792.

29. “[To] Mr. Roulston,” KG, August 13, 1793. This article directly responded to a defense of civil society and treaty obligation: “For the Knoxville Gazette,” KG, July 13, 1793.

30. “Grand Jury of Georgia District,” KG, July 27, 1793; “Address of the Grand Inquest of the District of Hamilton,” KG, Nov. 23, 1793; Silver, Peter, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008).Google Scholar

31. Andrew Jackson to John McKee, Jan. 30, 1793, in PAJ, 1:40 (corrections made to AJ's scribbled writing); Andrew Jackson to John McKee, May 16, 1794, in PAJ, 1:48.

32. William Blount to James Robertson, April 14, 1793, James Robertson Papers, 1784–1814, TSLA; Blount to Robertson, Nov. 29, 1793, TSLA; “Memorial of Legislative Council and House of Representatives, to the Congress of the United States,” Sept. 18, 1794, in Journal of the Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Territory of the USA (Nashville, 1852), 22–25Google Scholar; “A Return of Persons Killed, Wounded, and Taken Prisoner, from Miro District,” in American State Papers: Indian Affairs, 1:329–32; “Captivity of Jane Brown and her Family,” 151–56; John Haywood, The Civil and Political History of the State of Tennessee (1823; Knoxville, 1969), 405–12.

33. “Conference Held at Tellico Blockhouse, 7–8 November 1794,” Box 2, James Robertson Papers, 1784–1812, TSLA; “Proceedings with the Cherokee, Tellico Blockhouse, December-January 1794–95,” TSLA. The recovery of slaves may well have been a factor in the attack itself, given that one of its major organizers, James Logan of Kentucky, had lost five slaves.

34. Andrew Jackson to Nathaniel Macon, Oct. 4, 1795, in PAJ, 1:74; John Overton to Andrew Jackson, Dec. 20, 1796, in PAJ, 1:106 (Overton's investments); Cayton, “When Shall we Cease to Have Judases?”

35. Henry Dearborn to William C.C. Claiborne, Dec. 6, 1802, in The Official Letterbooks of William C.C. Claiborne, 1801–1816, ed. Rowland, Dunbar (Jackson, MS: State Department of Archives and History, 1917)Google Scholar, 1:258; [Jefferson], “To the Brothers of the Choctaw Nation,” Dec. 17, 1803, The Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jeffind3.asp (accessed 9 April 2013); Thomas Jefferson to Meriwether Lewis, Aug. 21, 1808, in TPUS, ed. Carter, Clarence Edwin, vol. 14, Territory of Louisiana-Missouri 1806–1814 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1949)Google Scholar, 220; Cotterill, “Federal Indian Management in the South.” See, more generally, Murrin, John M., “The Jeffersonian Triumph and American Exceptionalism,” Journal of the Early Republic 20 (Spring 2000): 1–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rothman, Adam, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).Google Scholar

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37. “Journal of the Proceedings of a Convention Begun and Held at Knoxville, January 11, 1796,” in Journal of the Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Territory of the United States of America, South of the River Ohio, Begun and Held at Knoxville, the 25th Day of August, 1794 (Nashville, 1852), pp. 8–9; Thomas Overton to John Overton, 24 April 1802, Box 3, Overton Papers, TSLA; Abernathy, From Frontier to Plantation.

38. Andrew Jackson to Willie Blount, Jan. 25, 1812, in PAJ, 2:277; Andrew Jackson Account Book Collection, 1804–1806, TSLA. For evidence of the Spanish checking passports and passes on the Mississippi, see Nasatir, Abraham P., Spanish War Vessels on the Mississippi, 1792–1796 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, 206. On the Burr conspiracy, see Isenberg, Nancy, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (London: Viking, 2007), 271–366.Google Scholar

39. Andrew Jackson to Rachel Jackson, April 6, 1804, in PAJ, 2:13; “Advertisement for Runaway Slave,” [Sept. 26, 1804], in PAJ, 2:40–41; Hay, Robert P., “‘And Ten Dollars Extra, for Every Hundred Lashes Any Person Will Give Him, to the Amount of Three Hundred’: A Note on Andrew Jackson's Runaway Slave Ad of 1804 and on the Historian's Use of Evidence,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 36 (Winter 1977): 468–78Google Scholar; Hadden, Sally E., Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 2003.Google Scholar

40. Bryan, “Passports Issued by Governors of Georgia,” 50–93; Hudson, Angela Pulley, Creek Paths and Federal Roads: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves and the Making of the South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. Silas Dinsmoor to Secretary of War [William Eustis], Nov. 13, 1811 (25 of 212 stopped) and Sept. 27, 1812 (“evil”) in “Passports Through Indian Country,” NWR, April 12, 1828, 110 and 111; Tilley, “The Jackson-Dinsmoor Duel”; Fortwendel, “Federal Agent Silas Dinsmoor and the Cherokee.”

42. Andrew Jackson to Willie Blount, Jan. 25, 1812, in PAJ, 2:278. In this letter, Jackson says that he did find some buyers for the slaves he had picked up, but that when he applied for a permit to sell the slaves within the Choctaw nation, the sitting governor refused. Jackson took this as proof of a “combination to compel me to take a passport.”

43. Passports for Labon Cason and William Ivy, in Bryan, “Passports Issued by Governors of Georgia,” 5 (these were signed on the same day, Sept. 12, 1803, and made out by the same four officials); [Enclosure], William Eustis to Silas Dinsmoor, March 23, 1812, in PAJ, 2:296. The absence of general complaints in the hundreds of legislative petitions to the Tennessee Assembly is especially noteworthy, given that they touch on a vast range of issues and grievances. See Tennessee Legislative Petitions, 1799–1801, and Tennessee Legislative Petitions, 1805–12, TSLA. On nuisances and public safety in early American legal thought, see Novak, William J., The People's Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).Google Scholar

44. Kanon, Tom, “The Kidnapping of Martha Crowley and Settler-Indian Relations Prior to the War of 1812,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 64 (Spring 2005): 3–23Google Scholar; Hudson, Creek Paths and Federal Roads; Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory's War.

45. Andrew Jackson to Willie Blount, Jan. 25, 1812, in PAJ, 2:279; [AJ], Resolutions of Second Division Officers, Jan. 16, 1809, in PAJ, 2:208. For accusations against the British: [Review of Brackenridge, Modern Chivalry], KG, August 13, 1793; “Knoxville,” KG, April 21, 1792. Protection certificates were essentially birth certificates, which in theory prevented British naval officers from impressing their holders. See Taylor, Civil War of 1812, 100–106. Proclamations for citizens during 1811 and 1812 stressed that the Republic had shown great forbearance in the face of repeated injuries and insults. See “From the Republican Citizens of Milledgeville [Ga.]”, June 13, 1812, in The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series, ed. J.C.A. Stagg, vol. 4, 5 November 1811–9 July 1812 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999), 479–81; and “From the Citizens of Charleston, South Carolina,” June 27, 1812, The Papers of James Madison, 4:515–16.

46. [Andrew Jackson], Democratic Clarion, “The Massacre at the Mouth of Duck River,” July 7–8, 1812, PAJ, 2:310; Andrew Jackson, “To the Second Division,” March 7, 1812, in PAJ, 2:290.

47. “Treaty with the Creeks, 1814,” in Indian Treaties, ed. Kappler, 107 and 107–110; Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory's War. For Jackson's negotiating tactics, see Johnson, Walter, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 25–34.Google Scholar

48. Andrew Jackson to Rachel Jackson, August 5, 1814, in PAJ, ed. Harold D. Moser, David R. Hoth, Sharon MacPherson, and John H. Reinbold, vol. 3, 1814–1815 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 105; Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory's War; Cayton, “When Shall We Cease to Have Judases?”

49. Willie Blount to Return Meigs, April 12, 1811, Box 3, George Edward Matthew Collection, TSLA; Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 2:391–97; Benjamin W. Crowinshield to Daniel T. Patterson, Jan. 22, 1816, in Letter from the Secretary of the Navy…Sundry Documents Relating to the Destruction of the Negro Fort in East Florida in the Month of July, 1816 (Washington, DC, 1819)Google Scholar; Patterson to Crowinshield, August 15, 1816, ibid.; “Negro Fort on Appalachicola,” NWR, Nov. 20, 1819; Barber, Eunice, Narrative of the Tragical Death of Darius Barber and his Seven Children (Boston, 1818)Google Scholar. For early complaints about Florida as a haven for runaway slaves, see Report of the Commons House of Assembly, May 16, 1749, in The Colonial Records of South Carolina: The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly, ed. J.H. Easterby (Columbia, SC, 1962), 8:105; John Reynolds to the Board of Trade, Dec. 5, 1754, in Colonial Records of the State of Georgia, ed. Kenneth Coleman and Milton Ready, vol. 27, Original Papers of Governor John Reynolds, 1754–1756 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), 33–34.Google Scholar

50. Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 2:475 and 2:544 (“pirates”) and generally 2:463-88; Memoirs of General Andrew Jackson, Together with the Letters of Mr. Secretary Adams, in Vindication of the Execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister, and other Public Acts of Gen. Andrew Jackson in Florida (Bridgeton, NJ, 1824)Google Scholar, 24, 36; Heidler and Heidler, Old Hickory's War. The extent to which President Monroe knew about and approved of Jackson's incursion into Florida has long been a point of debate, with the general claiming that he had received a letter authorizing aggressive measures through the intermediary of Tennessee Representative John Rea. For a recent review of the debate and a convincing argument against Monroe's approval, see Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands, 288–89n.

51. Providence Gazette, Dec. 19, 1818; Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands, esp. 27–31, 120–21, and 198–202. For fears of military ambition in Republican thought, see Opal, Beyond the Farm, 7–8.

52. Rep. Thomas Cobb (GA) in “Debate on the Seminole War,” NWR, Feb. 20, 1819, 113 ran this special edition to include all the debates from January and early February); Rep. Joseph Hopkinson (PA) in Abridgement of the Debates of Congress, From 1789 to 1856, ed. Benton, Thomas Hart (New York, 1858)Google Scholar, 6:290; Rep. Henry R. Storrs in Benson, ibid., 6:265; Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson, 2:532–56; Heidler, David S., “The Politics of National Aggression: Congress and the First Seminole War,” Journal of the Early Republic 13 (Winter 1993): 501–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53. Rep. James Tallmadge (NY) in “Debate on the Seminole War,” NWR, Feb. 20, 1819, 174 (“civilized savages”); Rep. John Rhea in “Debate on the Seminole War,” NWR, Feb. 20, 1819, 183 (“supreme law”); Rep. Alexander Smyth (VA) in “Debate on the Seminole War,” NWR, Feb. 20, 1819, 142-55; [John Overton], A Vindication of the Measures of the President and His Commanding Generals, in the Commencement and Termination of the Seminole War, By a Citizen of Tennessee (Nashville, 1818?), 19, 5, 21, 21n; Tatum, Edward Howland Jr., The United States and Europe, 1815-1823: A Study in the Background of the Monroe Doctrine (New York: Russell and Russell, 1936), 226–32Google Scholar (Adams' defense). At the outset of his congressional speech, Rep. Smyth declared that his whole purpose was to show that all of Jackson's actions were “justified by the law of nations.” See “Debate on the Seminole War,” NWR, Feb. 20, 1819, 142.

54. Sen. Philip Barbour (VA) quoted in Abridgment of the Debates of Congress, ed. Benton, 8:124, 114; “Indian Fur Trade,” Annals of the 18th Congress, 1st Session, 432-60 and 507, in A Century of Lawmaking, at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/lawhome.html (accessed 25 April 2013); “Jackson's Recorded Votes in the United States Senate, 1823–25,” in PAJ, ed. Moser, Harold D., Hoth, David R., and Hoemann, George H., vol. 5, 1821–1825 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996), 463–67.Google Scholar

55. Andrew Jackson to John McKee, May 16, 1794, in PAJ, 1:49.

56. Cornell, Saul, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 137–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar