Jackson’s image has undergone significant transformation since James Parton, a professional writer, penned his three-volume Life of Andrew Jackson on the eve of the Civil War. Parton created a dynamic portrait of the Hero of New Orleans that remains influential today. Rarely is a Jackson biographer able to resist quoting, in some way, Parton’s assessment of the Tennessee president.
Parton based his interpretation of Jackson and his presidency, which he called “a mistake on the part of the people of the United States,” on several caches of private letters held by Jackson family members and close confidantes. Supplementing this voluminous correspondence were extensive personal interviews with men and women close to Jackson, compiled as the biographer traveled across the United States in the late 1850s. During a trip to Nashville in early 1859, he interviewed one of his most interesting subjects, an African-American woman named Hannah. She had been one of Jackson’s slaves and now belonged to Andrew Jackson Jr.
During Parton’s visit, Hannah gave him a tour of Jackson’s Nashville home, The Hermitage, which had fallen into disrepair. Parton recorded in his research notebook that Hannah thought highly of her former owner. He “was more a father to us than a master,” Parton recorded her saying, “and many’s the time we’ve wished him back again, to help us out of our troubles.” Hannah became “fired up” when she believed that Jackson was being spoken about “disrespectfully.”
“We black folks is bound to speak high for old Mawster,” she reportedly said. “He was good to us. You know what he was to you, and must speak accordin’. But we is bound to speak high for him.”
In addition to being a source for Parton’s biography, Hannah was the subject of two other interviews following the Civil War. In these newspaper interviews, one with the Cincinnati Commercial in 1880, the second with the Nashville Daily American in 1894, she covered a number of different subjects: Andrew Jackson’s treatment of her and other slaves, Andrew and Rachel Jackson’s deaths, and other anecdotes about life at The Hermitage.