Andrew Jackson, who became the seventh U.S. president in 1828, was personally involved in land speculation in Tennessee and Alabama. His military expeditions and presidential policies led to the dispossession and expulsion of Indigenous people from the southeastern United States, which in some cases benefitted land speculators.
According to biographer Robert V. Remini, Jackson's engagement with real estate investment started early in his life and continued "almost to the moment of his death," although historians have no clear insight into how profitable it was for him or even the full extent of his involvement. [1]
His most momentous early speculation was a partnership with a North Carolinian named David Allison, which failed, leaving Jackson with years of substantial debts. [1] [2] Decades after the fact, a frustrated third party to the deal, Andrew Erwin, became a leading opponent of Jackson's 1828 presidential run. [3]
Jackson was a partner with John Overton in developing what was called the Fourth Chickasaw Bluff and laying out a town called Memphis, Tennessee. [1] He sold his most of his stake to James Winchester and John Christmas McLemore, and sold his remaining 1/8th interest in 1823, in anticipation of his first presidential run. [1] Another investment was the Cypress Land Company development of the town of Florence, Alabama in partnership with John Coffee and James Jackson. [1] According to the American Guide to Alabama published by the Federal Writers' Project in 1941, Jackson was also involved in a laying out a place called York's Bluff near what is now Sheffield: "Andrew Jackson and his 'right hand,' John Coffee, with time heavy on their hands after the defeat of the Creek Confederacy and the British at New Orleans, started the speculative history of the town in 1816 by buying much of the land here. In 1820 General Coffee surveyed and promoted a town called York Bluff. A few houses were built, but the place was soon abandoned in favor of Tuscumbia." [4]
Indigeous people who signed removal treaties with Jackson's government found themselves subject to the depredations of land speculators, as dying animals exposed to vultures lying in wait. Creek people legally dispossessed but not yet expelled from their lands found themselves inundated with "speculators who rushed to possess native farms before the hearths had cooled and who preyed on starving families during their final desperate months in the South." [5]
