“A good judiciary lends much to the dignity of a state and the happiness of a people. When on the contrary a bad judiciary involved in party business is the greatest curse that can befall a country.”[1]

— Andrew Jackson

These words are just as relevant today as they were during Jackson’s lifetime. And he spoke with more knowledge of courts than one might suspect. Jackson is, of course, best remembered for his mighty military exploits and his eventful presidency from 1829 to 1837. He is a key figure in American and Tennessee history who still evokes strong emotions both positive and negative. Nevertheless, he came to symbolize the democratization of society and the rise of the West to political prominence.

Although the period of his life is overshadowed by his later career, Jackson spent six years on Tennessee’s Supreme Court. These years were critical not only to the advancement of his career, but also to the development of our state’s infant judiciary.

Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina. During the Revolution he and his family supported the patriot cause. After his capture by the British at the age of 13 while serving as a courier, he almost died from starvation and smallpox and was scarred across his hand and head by the stroke of a British officer’s saber after refusing to clean his boots. Orphaned at 14, he became fiercely self-reliant. He was also ambitious and determined to become a lawyer.

After three years of study in Salisbury law offices, Jackson was admitted to the North Carolina bar in September of 1787. His bar examination consisted of questioning by a panel of two judges. Ironically, a month later he was arrested for criminal trespass, but the charge was dismissed, and in 1788 he fought a duel with a lawyer for questioning his legal knowledge during court, but both fired their pistols into the air and reconciled.

Jackson was subsequently appointed prosecutor in the state’s Western District (now Tennessee) by Judge John McNairy. It was as a prosecutor that Jackson smashed a piece of wood over a defendant’s head when the accused deliberately stomped on Jackson’s foot. His conviction rate was 60 percent, average for the time. While part-time prosecuting, Jackson developed his solo law practice over the next nine years. From 1788 to 1798, he tried about 400 cases, usually representing plaintiffs in collection disputes and won twice as many as he lost. He argued eight jury trials in one day in 1793, winning five.[2]

Jackson entered politics in alliance with the powerful William Blount, governor of the Southwest Territory. Hence Jackson represented Davidson County in the Tennessee Constitutional Convention of 1796, won election as Tennessee’s first member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving from 1796 to 1797, and was selected by the General Assembly to be one of Tennessee’s U.S. Senators in 1797, replacing Blount, who had been expelled from the Senate. Yet he resigned from the Senate in 1798 because he was unhappy with legislative duties at the nation’s capital of Philadelphia and longed to return to Nashville to manage his ever-growing land holdings and, more importantly, be with his beloved wife, Rachel.[3]

He had wed in 1791 at Natchez, Miss., believing Rachel was divorced from her abusive first husband. They quietly remarried in 1794 upon learning that the divorce was not finalized at the time of their first marriage. Forever after, Jackson was sensitive about the controversy and protective of his wife’s reputation.[4]

A few months after his return, Jackson received a letter from Gov. John Sevier appointing him to “The Superior Court of Law and Equity,” often called “The Supreme Court” because when sitting together its judges comprised the state’s highest appellate tribunal,[5] hearing appeals of the decisions of the judges sitting individually as the Superior Court and from the county courts. Jackson enthusiastically accepted the post paying a modest $600 annually.[6] Why Sevier appointed him is a mystery, especially since Jackson was a rival and Sevier led the camp opposed to Blount’s faction. Perhaps Sevier vainly hoped to remove Jackson from the political scene by placing him on the bench.[7] Jackson’s interim commission was signed on Sept. 20, 1798, and the General Assembly elected him, at the age of 31, on Dec. 20,[8] to serve “during good behavior,”[9] which was effectively a life appointment.

Jackson, looking “every bit a judge,”[10] became an extremely popular[11] and hardworking jurist, who “kept the dockets clean”[12] and came to represent law and order and was “rectitude embodied.”[13] In 15 days he handled 50 cases,[14] sat on seven jury trials in one day and regularly worked late into the night.15 Although swift in dealing with judicial business and happy to socialize with the lawyers in the evenings in the local taverns,[16] he required that courtroom decorum and procedural rules be strictly followed, a policy the judges felt necessary in a new court on a rough-and-tumble frontier.[17]

Although not a legal scholar, he brought a fine collection of law books from Philadelphia[18] and was considered the most knowledgeable of the judges.[19] An early biographer praised him for “maintaining the dignity and authority of the bench”[20] and rendering decisions that “were short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes ungrammatical, and generally right.”[21] There are no surviving written opinions by Jackson, only those signed by all the judges. As for his many trials, he charged juries: “Do what is right between the parties. That is what the law always means.”[22] He was “a hard judge”[23] but compassionate. In 1801, for instance, he joined a jury and the other judges in successfully petitioning the governor to pardon a boy convicted of horse theft.[24]

One of Jackson’s trials was interrupted by a town’s drunken bully, Russell Bean,[25] who was indicted for cutting the ears off his wife’s baby fathered by another man.[26] Carrying a knife and waving a pistol, Bean threatened to kill Jackson, the jury and everyone else in the courtroom, and then he stormed out. Jackson ordered his arrest for contempt. The sheriff found Bean in front of the courthouse haranguing a crowd. Thoroughly intimidated, the sheriff returned reporting that Bean was too violent to apprehend. Jackson ordered the sheriff to form a posse, but Bean frightened the posse away. Jackson then ordered that he — Jackson — be summoned as a posse member. The sheriff did so and Jackson announced a 10-minute recess. He took off his robe, picked up his pistol and found Bean still causing a ruckus in the street.[27] Pointing his gun at Bean, Judge Jackson commanded: “Surrender, you infernal villain, this very instant, or I’ll blow you through.”[28] Bean instantly complied, later saying: “Why, when he came up, I looked him in the eyes and I saw shoot. There wasn’t shoot in nary other eye in the crowd. So I says to myself, says I: Hoss, it’s about time to sing small, and so I did.”[29]

Jackson’s trial duties required arduous circuit riding to various towns, with Supreme Court sessions at Knoxville, Jonesborough and Nashville,[30] but it did permit time to handle investments.[31] He wrote a friend, “I am in possession of a very independent office, but I sink money — the salary is too low. … The Judiciary scarcely bears my expense.”[32] He often contemplated resignation, but supporters pleaded with him to stay. The Tennessee House once sent a message urging him to remain. He replied: “Retirement to private life has been, for some time, to me a very desirable event. But you have said my further services as a judge would be useful. When my services are thus called for, they belong to my country, and your voice is obeyed.”[33]

In 1801, and brushing aside separation of powers concerns,[34] Jackson decided that he could keep his judgeship and run for and serve as Major General of the Tennessee Militia. His opponent was former Gov. Sevier, whom Jackson had recently tried to implicate in land fraud.[35] The voting officers tied 17 to 17 with Gov. Archibald Roane, a close Jackson friend and member of the Blount faction, breaking the tie in Jackson’s favor.[36] Despite his generalship, Jackson still preferred the title of judge,[37] for he “cherished” his judgeship.[38]

On Oct. 1, 1803, Jackson was leaving the Knoxville courthouse when he confronted Sevier, who was governor once again, addressing a crowd. Sevier, seeing Jackson, alluded to Jackson’s sparse military qualifications and Jackson replied by referencing his service to Tennessee. “Services?” Sevier responded. “I know of no great services you have rendered the country, except taking a trip to Natchez with another man’s wife!” “Great God!” Jackson yelled. “Do you mention her sacred name?”[39]

Silence fell upon the scene, and then pandemonium ensued with Jackson going for Sevier with his walking stick and Sevier drawing his sword. Shots were fired through the crowd and Jackson and Sevier were forcibly separated. The next day, Jackson wrote Sevier a letter filled with insults and challenging him to a duel. Sevier replied with equal insults and agreed to duel, but not within the state since dueling was outlawed in Tennessee. Jackson, nonetheless, demanded that he face him in Knoxville where the injury was done.[40] He even placed a notice in the newspaper calling the governor “a base coward and poltroon.”[41]

The antagonists eventually agreed to meet on the field of honor in Virginia, but when the governor was delayed, Jackson and his party returned to Knoxville. Soon after, they came upon each other by chance near Kingston, Tenn. Accounts differ, but some sort of ridiculous episode took place with pistols drawn and curses shouted. Some said Sevier’s horse was frightened away by Sevier drawing his sword and the governor eventually hid behind a tree while alleging an assassination plot, but, whatever happened, the blood feud was ended. The two men, however, remained bitter political enemies, which fanned the flames of Tennessee’s sectional rivalry with Sevier’s supporters centered in the east and Jackson’s in the west.

Yet despite the trouble with Sevier, as one biographer recognized, “Certainly no one did more to inculcate a sentiment of respect for courts which in a border society often matures slowly.”[42]

Andrew Jackson resigned from the bench in 1804 for financial reasons and to spend more time with his wife.[43] However, the position brought him close to the people of Tennessee unlike any other, and “he continued to trade on his judicial reputation for years to come.”[44] He would also proceed to kill a man in a duel for publically insulting Rachel.[45] He would furthermore go on to meet his destiny as the victor at the Battle of New Orleans and as the occupant of the White House.

Notes

1. America’s Lawyer-Presidents: From Law Office to Oval Office 54-61 (Norman Gross, ed., 2004).
2. Id.
3. Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson, 42 (1977).
4. See Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House 25 (2008).
5. Marquis James, “Andrew Jackson, The Border Captain” 89 (1933); Remini at 42.
6. Remini at 42.
7. See H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson, His Life and Times 100 (2005).
8. Remini at 42.
9. Id. at 102.
10. James C. Curtis, Andrew Jackson and the Search for Vindication 31 (1976).
11. James at 90.
12. Curtis at 31.
13. James at 94.
14. Remini at 43 (1977).
15. A History of the Tennessee Supreme Court 10 (James W. Ely Jr., ed., 2002).
16. See James at 91.
17. See Remini at 43.
18. America’s Lawyer-Presidents at 62-63.
19. Brands at 102.
20. America’s Lawyer-Presidents at 62.
21. Id.
22. Id.
23. Id.at 63.
24. Id.
25. Brands at 101.
26. See James at 92.
27. See Brands at 101.
28. Id.
29. Id.
30. See Remini at 42.
31. Brands at 102.
32. Id.
33. Id. at 102-3.
34. America’s Lawyer-Presidents at 62; Brands at 104.
35. See Remini at 44.
36. See Brands at 105.
37. James at 96.
38. Curtis at 31.
39. See James at 92.
40. See Brands at 107-8.
41. Id. at 108.
42. Id.
43. Brands at 104.
44. Curtis at 32.
45. Meacham at 25.

RUSSELL FOWLER is associate director of Legal Aid of East Tennessee (LAET) and since 1999 has been adjunct professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He served as the law clerk to Chancellor C. Neal Small in Memphis and earned his law degree at the University of Memphis in 1987. Fowler has more than 50 publications on law and legal history, including several in this Journal.