List of violent incidents involving Andrew Jackson

File:Black and white square crop of General Andrew Jackson MET DT233622.jpg (Metropolitan Museum of Art object 06.197) ]]

File:Duel between Gen. Jackson and Charles Dickinson, Esq. woodcut from one of the 1828 Coffin Handbills TSLA 42992.jpg

File:Andrew Jackson cane-sword Samuel Jackson 1807.jpg

Andrew Jackson, later seventh president of the United States, was involved in a series of altercations in his personal and professional life. Jackson killed a man, was shot in a duel (in 1806), was shot in a tavern brawl (in 1813), and was charged, in separate incidents, with assault and battery (convicted), and assault with intent to kill (acquitted).

According to historian J. M. Opal, "[Jackson's] willingness to kill, assault, or threaten people was a constant theme in his adult life and a central component of the reputation he cultivated."{{cite journal |last=Opal |first=J. M. |date=October 2013 |title=General Jackson's Passports: Natural Rights and Sovereign Citizens in the Political Thought of Andrew Jackson, 1780s–1820s |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0898588X13000060/type/journal_article |journal=Studies in American Political Development |language=en |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=69–85 |doi=10.1017/S0898588X13000060 |issn=0898-588X}}{{Rp|page=70}} One writer who investigated Jackson's brief residence circa 1788–89 in what is now East Tennessee reported, "He was recognized from the first as a man who 'would fight at the drop of a hat, and drop the hat himself.'"{{Cite web |last=Allison |first=John |date=1897 |title=Dropped stitches in Tennessee history |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t9h41n556&seq=26 |access-date=2024-12-19 |website=HathiTrust |pages=14, 117–118, 120 |language=en}} Per biographer Robert V. Remini, Jackson had a "vicious temper that frequently exploded into ugly language and acts,"{{cite book |last=Remini |first=Robert V. |author-link=Robert V. Remini |title=Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 |publisher=Harper & Row |year=1977 |isbn=978-0-8018-5912-0 |location=New York |lccn=77003766 |oclc=1145801830}}{{Rp|page=7}} and such a temper tantrum, "so furious and startlingly sudden, intimidated his victims by its abruptness and its noisiness."{{Rp|page=162}} Horse trainer and Congressman Baylie Peyton wrote that "nobody ever 'jawed back' at Old Hickory when he was in one of his ways."{{Cite web |title=Old times in Tennessee, with historical, personal, and political scraps and sketches. By Jo. C. Guild |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081844098&seq=261&q1=Patton |access-date=2025-04-28 |website=HathiTrust |page=253 |language=en}}

One historian wrote of his pre-war years, "By his mingled tact and daring he soon became a power in the sparsely settled community. His temper was nothing less than volcanic. His oaths were varied, numerous, and highly effective. Yet after he reached middle life both were less frequently in evidence, and except upon extraordinary occasions were more moderate than in youth."{{Cite book |last=Stevenson |first=Richard Taylor |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KOsNAAAAIAAJ&dq=blount+jackson+%22offenders+will+be+punished%22&pg=PA231 |title=The Growth of the Nation, 1809 to 1837: From the Beginning of Madison's Administration to that of Van Buren |date=1905 |publisher= Subscribers only|isbn= 978-0-7222-7822-2|language=en}} A Methodist chaplain{{Mdash}}who correctly intuited Jackson's inability to live in egalitarian humility, or to admit to any fault whatsoever{{Mdash}}wrote in his journal of the Natchez Expedition, "I find the Gen. cannot bare{{sic}} much opposition. He is a good General but a very incorrect divine."{{Cite journal |last=Phelps |first=Dawson A. |date=1953 |title=The Diary of a Chaplain in Andrew Jackson's Army: The Journal of the Reverend Mr. Learner Blackman—December 28, 1812-April 4, 1813 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42621154 |journal=Tennessee Historical Quarterly |volume=12 |issue=3 |pages=264–281 |jstor=42621154 |issn=0040-3261}} In 1820 after British subjects in Upper Canada destroyed a wax effigy of Jackson to protest the executions of Ambrister and Arbuthnot, a wag reportedly commented, "It was well Old Hickory did not appear in the heat of the action or he would have made you know the difference between the man of whacks, and the man of wax."{{Cite news |date=1820-08-10 |title=General Jackson and his peerless conquerors |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/western-spy-and-literary-cadet-general/168859174/ |access-date=2025-03-26 |work=Western Spy, and Literary Cadet |pages=4}}

Jackson's nickname Old Hickory, or Ol' Hickory, may have been a play on words hinting at his predilection for violence. The Oxford English Dictionary definition for hickory oil (sense 2) is "U.S. figurative corporal punishment using a hickory switch or similar instrument, viewed as a treatment for bad behaviour (now rare); During the first half of the nineteenth cent., the phrase was also used to refer to the administration of U.S. President Andrew Jackson, nicknamed Old Hickory (see Old Hickory n.), which may have influenced the development of sense (b)."Oxford English Dictionary, “hickory oil (n.),” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8427399957. The "hickory oil" treatment was sarcastically "celebrated for its efficacy in removing idleness."{{Cite news |date=1829-07-14 |title=Hickory Oil |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/york-gazette-hickory-oil/168860640/ |access-date=2025-03-26 |work=York Gazette |pages=3}} In November 1815, Jackson's adjutant Robert Butler wrote him with an update about the enslaved community at the Hermitage: "Your wenches as usual commenced open war and they have been brought to order by Hickory oil."{{Cite journal |last=Jackson |first=Andrew |date=1991 |title=The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume III, 1814–1815 |url=https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_jackson/4/ |journal=The Papers of Andrew Jackson |pages=390}} A banquet toast made in Pennsylvania during the 1828 election saluted, "Hickory oil, an infallible remedy for the Quincy epidemic."{{Cite news |date=1828-07-07 |title=Volunteers |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/harrisburg-chronicle-volunteers/168860382/ |access-date=2025-03-26 |work=Harrisburg Chronicle |pages=3}}

It has been hyperbolically claimed that Jackson "participated in more than 100 duels over his lifetime" but that is not correct.{{Cite web |title=Andrew Jackson was in more than 100 duels! And he killed a man... |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/03/andrew-jackson-was-in-more-than-100-duels-and-he-killed-a-guy/ |website=washingtonpost.com}} That said, in 1828 a man named Dr. James L. Armstrong, who had been a surgeon in Jackson's militia in the War of 1812,{{Cite news |date=1812-12-16 |title=Tennessee militia |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-nashville-whig-tennessee-militia/161153159/ |access-date=2024-12-18 |work=The Nashville Whig |pages=3}} claimed that he had started making a list of altercations involving Jackson and the final list "accumulated to nearly ONE HUNDRED FIGHTS or violent and abusive quarrels." Armstrong's published index, issued under the title General Jackson's "juvenile indiscretions" between the ages of 23 and 60, listed 14 notable instances.{{Cite book |last=Armstrong |first=James L. |url=https://archive.org/details/reminiscencesore00arms/page/7/mode/1up |title=Reminiscences, or, An extract from the catalogue of General Jackson's "juvenile indiscretions" between the ages of 23 and 60 / [James L. Armstrong] |publisher=s.n. |others=State Library of Pennsylvania |pages=8}} Shortly after the publication of this negative-campaign material, a Kentucky newspaper claimed that four men, including Archibald Yell and his law partner, stopped by to "assassinate" (beat the shit out of) Dr. Armstrong in Bedford County for writing anti-Jackson columns, chasing him down and clubbing him. A comment from another correspondent was appended to the report: "This is Jacksonism in its true colors such as the Hero in early times has often acted himself!"{{Cite news |date=1828-07-30 |title=Assassination Attempted |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/lexington-weekly-press-assassination-att/161151937/ |access-date=2024-12-18 |work=Lexington Weekly Press |pages=3}} Nashville papers claimed that beating was because Armstrong had insultingly called Gilchrist's father a Tory, reported that Malcolm Gilchrist beat Armstrong with a hickory stick, and stated that while Yell and another man, Jesse Taylor, had not struck Armstrong they did hold pistols at the ready.{{Cite journal |last=Meek |first=Melinda |date=1967 |title=The Life of Archibald Yell, Part I: Early Years |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40018963 |journal=The Arkansas Historical Quarterly |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=11–23 [16–17] |doi=10.2307/40018963 |issn=0004-1823}} (In 1831 President Jackson appointed Yell to be United States Receiver of Public Moneys at the government land office in Little Rock, Arkansas.)

Similarly, during the 1824 presidential election, Jesse Benton, brother of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton (and very much an interested party in questions of Jacksonian violence, as he was the one who shot Jackson in 1813), published a pamphlet that stated, "...it is a notorious fact, that he was scarce ever known to leave a [horse racing] round without having participated in an affray or riot, or at least a quarrel."{{Cite web |last=Benton |first=Jesse |date=September 1824 |title=Supplement to the Public Advertiser, Louisville, Kentucky |url=https://cdm.bostonathenaeum.org/digital/collection/p16057coll37/id/611/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |website=bostonathenaeum.org}}

Jackson's apparent propensity for physical violence was very much an issue for the anti-Jacksonians in the 1824 and 1828 presidential elections. News reports about Jackson's history of violence seem to have at least caught the attention of the voting public. In Natchez, Mississippi, which was at times the center of "an almost blind hero-worship" of Jackson, "based more on his many local acquaintances and his military record than on his position in national politics," a group of nabobs published an anti-Jackson broadside in 1828. The signatories, including Stephen Duncan, Francis Surget, Alvarez Fisk, Felix Huston, and Adam L. Bingaman, indicated that they supported Adams, attesting that they dreaded Jackson's election "as much (if possible) on account of the violence of his many adherents, as of his own peculiar unfitness for the station."{{Cite book |last=James |first=D. Clayton |title=Antebellum Natchez |date=1993 |publisher=Louisiana State Univ. Press |isbn=978-0-8071-1860-3 |location=Baton Rouge, Louisiana |pages=279–280}} One Delaware voter wrote his local newspaper to this effect:

{{blockquote|text=They do not deny, that Andrew Jackson has often been engaged in the most disgraceful broils and riots in the streets and taverns of Nashville, shooting with pistols and stabbing with dirks on all hands of him. But they tell you that we have no right to investigate his private character, and that his quarrels, duels, adulteries and murders, furnish no arguments against his fitness for an office, where patience, ability and virtuous principles are indispensable requisites to the continuance of the good Government and liberties of our country.}}

Similarly, Thomas E. Waggaman of Washington, D.C. wrote Felix Robertson in November 1828 that he had received a letter from a "corresponding committee in Harrisburg Pa. requesting me to give them a history of the Genl's 'trading in negroes cutting off ears' and other acts of violence ascribed to him by the tools of corruption."Thomas E. Waggaman, Washington, to Felix Robertson, 1828 November 29, id128670, Box: 1. Tyler Family Papers, Group H, 01/Mss. 65 T97 Group H. Special Collections Research Center. College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia Jackson was a interstate slave trader active for 20–25 years ({{circa|1789}}–{{circa|1814}});{{Cite journal |date=2008 |title=Slave Owner, Slave Trader, Gentleman: Slavery and the Rise of Andrew Jackson |url=https://teachtnhistory.org/file/Slave%20Owner,%20Slave%20Trader,%20Gentleman-%20Slavery%20&%20the%20Rise%20of%20Andrew%20Jackson%20(Snow).pdf |journal=Journal of East Tennessee History |location=Knoxville, Tennessee |publisher=East Tennessee Historical Society |volume=80 |pages=47–59 |issn=1058-2126 |oclc=23044540 |author-last1=Snow |author-first1=Whitney Adrienne}} whether or not he ever cut off anyone's ears is unrecorded by history, although he repeatedly threatened it. In 1827 an anti-Jacksonian pamphleteer nodded to the ear-cropping hearsay when he wrote, "Andrew Jackson, and John Quincy Adams, have placed themselves before a court of enquiry, the nation is the tribunal, every citizen is a member of the court, I am one of them. I will speak therefore, although I jeopardize my ears, or my life."{{Cite book |last=Clement |first=Samuel |url=https://da.mdah.ms.gov/series/books/detail/525009 |title=Truth Is No Slander |publisher=Printed at the Ariel Office |year=1827 |location=Natchez, Mississippi |pages=38 |id=McMurtrie MS Imprints No. 219, Shoemaker 28519 |via=Mississippi Department of Archives and History}} In the United States this practice, called ear cropping, was one of a number of livestock-management practices{{Mdash}}including branding, castration, chaining, and whipping{{Mdash}}that were used against the enslaved.Chapter 5: Slaves by Nature? Domestic Animals and Human Slaves by Karl Jacoby The Atlantic Slave Trade: Volume IV Nineteenth Century. (2022). United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis. p. 92 Ear cropping, toe removal, and castration were amongst the most extreme measures used to enforce subservience.{{Cite book |last=Morgan |first=Philip D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aPTGDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22cropped+ears%22+slavery&pg=PA394 |title=Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry |date=2012 |publisher=UNC Press Books |isbn=978-0-8078-3853-2 |pages=394 |language=en}}{{Cite book |last=Schlotterbeck |first=John |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=chTHEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22cropped+ears%22+colonial&pg=PA233 |title=Daily Life in the Colonial South |date=2013 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-57356-743-5 |pages=250 |language=en}} The intent behind ear-cropping specifically was permanent, visible mutilation, and thus implied ongoing shaming and contempt of the person so mutilated.{{Cite book |last=Will |first=George F. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2Z9xDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22cropped+ears%22+colonial&pg=PT201 |title=The Conservative Sensibility |date=2019 |publisher=Grand Central Publishing |isbn=978-0-316-48091-8 |language=en}} Evidence that Tennessee slave owners practiced ear-cropping appears first in an issue of the Knoxville Gazette from 1796.{{Cite book |last=Carey |first=Bill |title=Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls: A History of Slavery in Tennessee |publisher=Clearbrook Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-0-9725680-4-3 |page=8 |location=Nashville, Tennessee |language=en-us |lccn=2018903570 |oclc=1045068878}} In addition to "cutting off ears," another threat Jackson deployed on more than one occasion was the burning of peoples' houses: he wrote a U.S. Senator that the "the wrath and indignation of our citizens will...involve Silas Dinsmore in the flames of his agency house," and during Indian removal he told Secretary of War Eaton to tell the Chicksaw agent to tell squatters on Chickasaw land that their houses would be burned down if they did not wait to claim land until the U.S. government signaled it was time.{{Cn|date=April 2025}}

File:Pilaklikaha.png; Peliklakaha was one of the Black towns in Florida{{Citation |last=Barba |first=Paul |title=Bringing the Florida Fight to Indian Territory: The Expansion of Marronage Across the Borderlands |date=2025 |work=Gulf South Rebels, Insurgents, and Revolutionaries, 1700–1860: Bonds of Rebellion |pages=205–239 |editor-last=Barba |editor-first=Paul |url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-82365-7_8 |access-date=2025-04-30 |place=Cham |publisher=Springer Nature Switzerland |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-031-82365-7_8 |isbn=978-3-031-82365-7}}{{Cite web |last=Curtis |first=Marcus |date=2023-09-14 |title=Pilaklikaha |url=https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/421b855f73be4cf2b3a6cd77131e8192 |access-date=2025-04-30 |website=ArcGIS StoryMaps |language=en}} ]]

Despite Jackson's presence in the Southern theater of the American Revolutionary War, close association with American commanders of the Cherokee–American wars, and leadership of militia in the War of 1812, the Creek War, and the Seminole War, historians have found that "there is no explicit account of his actually firing at an enemy in standard battle." Nonetheless, the violence of military personnel under his command (not currently included on this list) "was considerable."{{Cite journal |last=Roots |first=Roger |date=November 2001 |title=When Lawyers Were Serial Killers: Nineteenth Century Visions of Good Moral Character |url=https://huskiecommons.lib.niu.edu/niulr/vol22/iss1/7/ |journal=Northern Illinois University Law Review |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=19–35 |issn=0734-1490}}{{Rp|page=30}}

Fights, duels, beatdowns, and attempts at same

Duel with Waightstill Avery, 1788; the challenge from Jackson read "Sir, when amans feelings & charector are injured...it is consistant with the charector of agentleman when he Injures aman to make aspedy reparation."{{Cite web |last=Neufeld |first=Rob |title=Visiting Our Past: Waightstill Avery top patrician in 18th century WNC |url=https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2018/02/11/visiting-our-past-waightstill-avery-top-patrician-18th-century-wnc/321023002/ |access-date=2025-03-31 |website=The Asheville Citizen Times |language=en-US}} Both men fired into the air.{{Cite web |title=Duels |url=https://thehermitage.com/duels#:~:text=Many%20people%20think%20Andrew%20Jackson,when%20he%20killed%20Charles%20Dickinson. |access-date=2024-09-04 |website=Andrew Jackson's Hermitage }} the cause seems to have been Avery ridiculing a legal argument made by Jackson in court, with one variation being "that Jackson had ridiculed Avery's pet authority{{mdash}}Bacon's Abridgment, and Avery's reply was "sarcastic...intimating that Jackson had much to learn before he would be competent to criticize any law book whatever." Avery reportedly gave Jackson a fatherly lecture after the duel was over and kept the written challenge filed amongst his myriad papers as "Challenge from Andrew Jackson." John Adair was Avery's second.{{Cite book |title=Western North Carolina: A History from 1730–1913 |first=John Preston |last=Arthur |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002001027359&seq=373&q1=Jackson |access-date=2024-12-24 |via=HathiTrust |pages=357–359 |language=en}}
Duel with unidentified opponent near Jonesboro, Tennessee, probably 1789, but sometime before November 1790, "'in the long meadow,' as it was then called (formerly the 'hollow'), on the north side of town, and they all asserted that the duel with Avery was fought on the hill on the south side...He said that Jackson hit his man, but he was not seriously wounded, and soon recovered and left the community; that Jackson was not touched."
Allegedly, in approximately 1797, while Jackson was serving as a Representative to Congress, Founding Father, former North Carolina governor, and U.S. Senator Alexander Martin mentioned Jackson's brother-in-law Stockley Donelson's connection to North Carolina's Glasgow land frauds (just for one thing Donelson was married to a daughter of James Glasgow), in response to which Jackson "charged the Legislature, Executive and Citizens of North-Carolina, at a public dining table, with being a set of Rogues and Rascals, and challenged the Governor to a duel." Martin verbally deescalated the situation.{{Cite news |date=1828-09-27 |title=Facts Generally Not Known |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-newbernian-facts-generally-not-known/164032505/ |access-date=2025-01-27 |work=The Newbernian |pages=3}}
Allegedly, according to an Adams-aligned paper in 1826, while Jackson was a judge (between 1798 and 1804), "it so happened that a man, with whom he had previously been at variance, and who had insulted him, made his appearance in the Court Room. The Judge, on recognising him, threw off his coat, assailed him with a cow-hide, and whipped him to his heart's satisfaction!"{{Cite news |date=1826-10-07 |title=Portraits of the Opposition, Vol. VIII, Andrew Jackson, Part 1 of 3 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/literary-cadet-and-rhode-island-statesma/162371573/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |work=Literary Cadet and Rhode-Island Statesman |pages=1}}
Roadside standoff in 1803 between Jackson and John Sevier, pistols and a sword were drawn;{{Cite book |last=Burstein |first=Andrew |title=The Passions of Andrew Jackson |date=2003 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=978-0-375-41428-2 |edition= |location=New York |language=en-us |lccn=2002016258 |oclc=49385944}} Remini speculated that "with all this dallying it is possible that neither man really wanted to risk his life and career on a duel but that both wished to stigmatize the other with a refusal to fight. Perhaps it should be pointed out that Sevier had eighteen children."{{Sfnp|Remini|1977|p=422 n. 32}}
{{dts|1804|02|13}} - "Assaulted John C. Henderson"{{Cite journal |last=Jackson |first=Andrew |date=1984 |title=The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, 1804-1813 |url=https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_jackson/5/ |journal=The Papers of Andrew Jackson}}
{{dts|1806|01|13}} - Jackson beat Virginia attorney Thomas Swann with a cane at a tavern, part of the long lead-up to the fatal-for-Dickinson Jackson–Dickinson duel.{{cite book |last=Cheathem |first=Mark R. |title=Andrew Jackson, Southerner |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-8071-5099-3 |location=Baton Rouge, Louisiana |pages=42 |lccn=2012049695 |oclc=858995561 |id={{Project MUSE|26506|type=book}}}}
{{dts|1806|01|27}} - "Found guilty of assault and battery upon Thomas Baird"
{{dts|1806|05|30}} - Duel with Charles Dickinson, Jackson killed Dickinson;{{Cite web |last=Brammer |first=Robert |date=2015-04-15 |title=Frontier Racing and Injured Pride: The Duel Between Andrew Jackson and Charles Dickinson {{!}} In Custodia Legis |url=https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2015/04/frontier-racing-and-injured-pride-the-duel-between-andrew-jackson-and-charles-dickinson/ |access-date=2024-09-04 |website=The Library of Congress}} Dickinson hit Jackson first, and Jackson may have later suffered lead poisoning as a result of the unremoved bullet, but "concealed his own injury from Dickinson's associates to spite Dickinson in his death."{{Rp|page=31}}
{{dts|1807|03|06}} - Jackson chased down fellow land speculator Samuel Dorsey Jackson in the street over an unpaid debt, S. Jackson was evidently unarmed but reached for a rock to defend himself, and A. Jackson deployed a knife hidden inside a cane. Jackson was tried and acquitted on charges of assault with intent to kill against Samuel Jackson (no relation, as far as historians can tell). S. Jackson was not seriously injured, if at all, and the pair later did business with one another.{{Cite news |last=Onion |first=Rebecca |date=2014-03-05 |title=The "Coffin Handbill" Andrew Jackson's Enemies Used to Circulate Word of His "Bloody Deeds" |url=https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/03/andrew-jackson-the-coffin-handbill-distributed-by-opponents-in-the-1828-election.html |access-date=2024-11-18 |work=Slate |language=en-US |issn=1091-2339}} The indictment, written by future U.S. Senator Jenkin Whiteside, stated that the stab wound was {{Convert|.5|in|abbr=off|sp=us}} across and {{Convert|4|in|abbr=off|sp=us|adj=off}} deep.{{Cite book |last1=Various |url=https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_jackson/5 |title=The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, 1804–1813 |last2=Jackson |first2=Andrew |date=1984 |publisher=University of Tennessee Press |isbn=978-0-8704-9441-3 |editor-last1=Moser |editor-first1=Harold D. |pages=172–174 |editor-last2=MacPherson |editor-first2=Sharon}} The exact language was that Andrew Jackson "an assault did make in & upon one Samuel Jackson, in the peace of the State then and there being, and that the said Andrew Jackson, with a certain drawn Sword which he said Andrew Jackson in his right hand then & there had & held in and upon the Left side of him the said Samuel Jackson above the Short ribs of him the said Samuel did Strike & thrust, giving to the Said Samuel Jackson then & there with the Sword aforesaid in & upon the aforesaid left side of him the said Samuel above the short ribs of him the said Samuel a wound of the breadth of half an Inch and of the depth of four inches with an Intent him the said Samuel Jackson then & there feloniously wilfully and of his malice aforethought, to kill & murder, and other wrongs & enormities to Said Samuel Jackson then and there did to the great damage of the said Samuel Jackson and against the peace & dignity of the State."
According to various reliable sources, threatened a federal agent in 1812. One description has it that "when he approached the Agency, he armed his negroes with axes, hired some half breed Indians with their arms—marched by the agency in military order, himself at their head with the cap of his holsters thrown back, and his rifle cocked",{{Cite news |date=1828-08-23 |title=Gen. Jackson and Silas Dinsmore |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-weekly-natchez-courier-gen-jackson/159653387/ |access-date=2024-11-28 |work=The Weekly Natchez Courier |pages=3}} and later successfully campaigned to have the agent's boss, Silas Dismoor, fired from his job.{{cite book |last=Kennedy |first=Roger G. |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/10709 |title=Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character |year=2000 |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780199848775 |oclc=181840559 |lccn=99022453 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195140552.001.0001 |pages=317–325 }}
In 1813 Jackson participated in a brawl at Nashville tavern with Thomas Hart Benton (great-great-uncle of the painter), Jesse Benton, John Coffee, Stockley Hays, and Alexander Donelson. The men deployed knives, and whips, and shot each other with pistols; Jesse Benton shot Jackson in the shoulder or arm and Jackson was seriously injured.{{Cite web |title="Now Defend Yourself, You Damned Rascal!" |url=https://www.americanheritage.com/now-defend-yourself-you-damned-rascal |access-date=2024-11-17 |website=AMERICAN HERITAGE |language=en}} At age 46, this was Jackson's last gunfight. According to Remini in 1977, "Like the others, there was something petty about it. None of Jackson's quarrels did him credit; all diminished him."{{Rp|page=186}} As of 1826, there were still two bullets from this fight embedded in the wall of the tavern "to which some of the hot headed Tennesseans daily offer repeated and hearty libations."{{Cite news |date=1826-09-30 |title=Portraits of the Opposition, No. VII |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/literary-cadet-and-rhode-island-statesma/162370255/ |access-date=2025-01-06 |work=Literary Cadet and Rhode-Island Statesman |pages=2}}

File:Bell_Tavern_976.819_A955p_Memphis_and_Shelby_County_Room,_Memphis_Public_Library_&_Information_Center.jpg

Date unclear (1810s?), Jackson allegedly caned a man who suggested that he was the father of a girl called Sally Meagher who lived near the Third Chickasaw Bluff (now Memphis) and what is now called President's Island; "the account published of this caning by his enemies, some fifteen years later, was very prejudicial to Jackson. It was even stated that several of his friends stood by with cocked pistols, threatening to kill the fellow if he moved. The General gave some grounds for this charge by his excessive fondness for Sally, and the common opinion was that he would either adopt her or do something handsome for her."{{Cite web |last=Davis |first=James D. |date=1873 |title=History of Memphis : The history of the city of Memphis, being a compilation of the most important documents and historical events connected with the purchase ... |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uva.x000086596&seq=144&q1=Benton |access-date=2025-01-11 |website=HathiTrust |pages=125–130 |language=en}} Paddy Meagher was some kind of vassal to Jackson, although no one entirely understood the arrangement. As for Sally, "Jackson once thrashed a fellow for talking about Sally. Sally was short and thick, and had red hair and a ready wit, all of which she inherited from Paddy. She had talented legs as well as a talented tongue, and could outdance the rest of the young women of the neighborhood. She drew custom to Paddy's bar, where a free and easy manner reigned."{{Cite news |date=1914-10-11 |title=Old Bell Tavern Pays Debt to Time |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal-old-bell-tavern-pa/162765842/ |access-date=2025-01-11 |work=The Commercial Appeal |pages=7}} In 1822, either the first or second property deed ever registered in Memphis (a town that began as a land speculation of Jackson, John Overton, and James Winchester) was lot 43, recorded in the name of Sally Meagher.{{Cite news |date=1932-05-02 |title=Buying Property Here In 1820 Was No Profitable Job |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-commercial-appeal-buying-property-he/162765358/ |access-date=2025-01-11 |work=The Commercial Appeal |pages=7}} Both Paddy Meagher and Sally Meagher eventually died of alcohol dependence-related illnesses.
In 1828, Jackson and Jesse Benton had a sequel to their 1813 Nashville tavern brawl, only this time the venue was the Bell Tavern in Memphis. The second time around Jesse Benton was beaten.

Self-defense

In 1833, Robert Beverly Randolph, a U.S. Navy purser who had been fired for "rendering a false financial account," came up to President Jackson at a party in Virginia and "tried to pull his nose." Jackson immediately grabbed his trusty cane and yelled that his age would not prevent him from "punishing a dozen cowardly assassins." Randolph ran off; when he was later caught and charged with assault Jackson told Van Buren to pardon him, apparently because in Jackson's mind, according to historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "only physical reprisal was the proper response to insult."{{Cite journal |last=Wyatt-Brown |first=Bertram |date=1997 |title=Andrew Jackson's Honor |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3124641 |journal=Journal of the Early Republic |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=1–36 [34–35] |doi=10.2307/3124641 |issn=0275-1275}}
During an assassination attempt while he was president, at age 68, Jackson "armed only with a cane, he had valiantly charged forth to do battle with an assassin carrying two pistols."{{Cite journal |last=Somit |first=Albert |date=1948 |title=Andrew Jackson: Legend and Reality |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42620991 |journal=Tennessee Historical Quarterly |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=291–313 |jstor=42620991 |issn=0040-3261}}{{Rp|page=211}}

Threats

Sometime between 1788 and 1794, Jackson reportedly promised to "cut the ears out of [Robards's] head," meaning Lewis Robards. This was in the course of their conflict over the future Mrs. Jackson.{{cite journal |last=Remini |first=Robert V. |author-link=Robert V. Remini |date=Summer 1991 |title=Andrew Jackson's Adventures on the Natchez Trace |journal=Southern Quarterly |location=Hattiesburg, Mississippi |publisher=University of Southern Mississippi |volume=29 |issue=4 |pages=35–42 |issn=0038-4496 |oclc=1644229}}{{Rp|page=36}}

File:Russell Bean surrendering to Judge Jackson (conjectural illustration published 1844).jpg

The highest and best use of Jackson's propensity for threatening people was probably in 1798, the first year of his service as a state judge. A man named Russell Bean had returned from an extended trip to the Natchez District, found his wife nursing a child he could not have fathered, and cut the baby's ears off.{{Cite book |last=Wolfe |first=Margaret Ripley |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ceQzEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT112 |title=Daughters Of Canaan: A Saga of Southern Women |year=2021 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0-8131-8983-3 |pages=112–113}} Despite repeated attempts, the local sheriff failed to successfully execute the arrest warrant for Bean, a hulking and evidently well-armed master gunsmith. Jackson, on hearing this, armed himself with two pistols, found Bean and said something to the effect of "surrender, you infernal villain...or I'll blow you through."{{Rp|page=115}} In reply, Bean reportedly "called out, 'I'll surrender to you, Mr. Devil!' and laid down his arms."
Allegedly threatened to hang attorney Jonathan Thompson "to the first tree, or highest tree" for pursuing legal action regarding Aaron Burr and/or Harman Blennerhassett's debts.{{Cite web |title=A brief and impartial history of the life and actions of Andrew Jackson / By a free man |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015020833607&seq=28&q1=Highest |access-date=2024-12-11 |website=HathiTrust |page=20 |language=en}}{{Cite news |date=1826-04-22 |title=The undersigned Commissioners |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/natchez-gazette-the-undersigned-commissi/171169443/ |access-date=2025-04-27 |work=Natchez Gazette |pages=4}}
Allegedly "swore by god he would shoot all his prisoners" if served a writ of habeas corpus for people detained under his declaration of martial law in New Orleans in 1814–15.{{Cite news |date=1827-09-21 |title=To the Voters of Delaware & Reasons I will not support Andrew Jackson for President |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/delaware-state-journal-advertiser-and-s/161744033/ |access-date=2024-12-28 |work=Delaware State Journal, Advertiser and Star |pages=2}}
According to the slave narrative of James Robinson, after Jackson used slaves and free people of color to fight and win the Battle of New Orleans, he made a speech recanting promises to free the slaves who had worked and fought under his command and added, "Before a slave of mine should go free, I would put him in a barn and burn him alive."{{Cite web |title=The Narrative of James Roberts, a Soldier Under Gen. Washington in the Revolutionary War, and Under Gen. Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812: "a Battle Which Cost Me a Limb, Some Blood, and Almost My Life" |url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/roberts/roberts.html |access-date=2024-08-24 |website=docsouth.unc.edu |page=18}}
Allegedly "threatened personal violence to several of our senators" who were investigating or criticizing his illegal seizure of Florida, an invasion generally known as the First Seminole War. To be specific, in January 1819 he apparently raged to his advisors that he should challenge Congressman Henry Clay to a duel for speaking out against him on the floor of the house and that he would "cut off [Abner] Lacock's ears" for heading the Senate select committee that "methodically gathered and sifted evidence" in the matter.{{Cite book |last=Belko |first=William S. |url=http://florida.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.5744/florida/9780813035253.001.0001/upso-9780813035253 |title=America's Hundred Years' War |date=2011-01-23 |publisher=University Press of Florida |isbn=978-0-8130-3525-3 |pages=117 |doi=10.5744/florida/9780813035253.003.0005}}
In 1827, while on his way to New Orleans for an electioneering trip, the steamboat Pocahontas on which he was a passenger was playfully "buzzed" by another steamer. According to James Alexander Hamilton (son of Alexander Hamilton), who had invited himself along on the trip to benefit Martin Van Buren, this made Jackson furious, and Jackson "sent for his rifle" and "shouted to the other steamboat that he would shoot the pilot if he continued to show such disrespect." Mrs. Jackson, who was along for the trip, ably defused the situation.{{Cite book |last1=Heidler |first1=David Stephen |title=The rise of Andrew Jackson: myth, manipulation, and the making of modern politics |last2=Heidler |first2=Jeanne T. |date=2018 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0-465-09756-2 |location=New York}}{{Rp|page=337}}
Date unclear: Threatened to kill two men who called him "ambitious"
Date unclear: Threatened to kill a "Secretary of War for advising him, accurately, about rumors that connected him with Aaron Burr."

Other quarrels, evidently non-violent

File:Major Genl. Winfield Scott - Wood pinxt. ; Edwin sc. LCCN2012645312 (cropped).tif

In 1817, Jackson "challenged" Winfield Scott, after Scott confirmed that he considered Jackson to have "committed an act of mutiny" when he "ordered disobedience by his troops" to War Department orders. Apparently they did not fight but Jackson called Scott a "hectoring bully" and one of the War Department's "intermeddling pimps and spies."{{Cite book |last=Pessen |date=1985 |first=Edward |author-link=Edward Pessen |title=Jacksonian America: Society, Personality, and Politics |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=978-0-252-01237-2 |edition=Rev. |page=321 |location=Urbana |orig-year=1969 |lccn=85001100 |oclc=11783430 }}
According to one capsule biography of federal judge John McNairy, McNairy supported the removal of James Robertson as U.S. agent to the Chickasaws, and Jackson opposed it, and "Jackson became so enraged at the attitude of his former friend and fellow student and used such 'unparliamentary language' in regard to him that a breach occurred that time never healed."{{cite journal |last=Green |first=John W. |date=1943 |title=Six Judges of the United States District Court for Tennessee (1797–1908) |journal=Tennessee Law Review |volume=17 |issue=8.1 |url=https://ir.law.utk.edu/tennesseelawreview/vol17/iss8/1 |location=Knoxville, Tennessee |publisher=University of Tennessee Law School |pages=889–898 }}{{rp|890}}

List of violent incidents involving Andrew Jackson

Fights, duels, beatdowns, and attempts at same

Self-defense

Threats

Other quarrels, evidently non-violent

See also

References

Further reading