While a number of American presidents have been known to drink whiskey, only three are documented to have made it. The first was George Washington whose distilling career has been widely described and his distillery reconstructed near Mount Vernon. The second was Andrew Jackson. By contrast with Washington, very little is found in the historical record about Jackson’s distilling activities. This has not deterred others in the liquor trade, however, from linking the Seventh President to their brands.
The year was 1796 when Jackson, age 29, bought a farm two miles from the Cumberland River outside Nashville called “Hunting Hill” and made a home there for himself and his wife, Rachel. His celebrity as the military hero of the Battle of New Orleans was almost two decades in the future. The past few years had been tumultuous ones. His marriage (and re-marriage) to Rachel, shown here, had engendered slurs on her character when it was discovered that her divorce from her first husband had not been concluded before their first wedding. Jackson would fight multiple duels over her honor, one in which he killed a man. From 1795 to 1798, he also had served without particular distinction as Tennessee’s first congressman and later as a senator.
My guess is that Jackson’s purchase of Hunter's Hill was an attempt at a quieter rural life where he and Rachel could be country gentry, largely insulated from public scrutiny. The move also opened the opportunity for Jackson to become a distiller. Although it is not clear if Jackson acquired the distillery with his purchase or built it himself, by 1799 he was operating two stills said to be capable of producing 197 gallons annually. One reputedly had capacity of 127 gallons; the other was a 70 gallon pot still.
Shown here is the entry for Jackson’s whiskey-making operation in the official ledger of John Overton, the collector in Tennessee of the whiskey tax. This first Federal excise tax was the revenue-generating plan of Washington's Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, to repay the bonded debt owed from the Revolutionary War and to establish the fiscal standing of the national government. Because it was done on the backs of farmers, many of whom distilled their corn into value-added whiskey, the excise was widely unpopular in rural areas, sparking the Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania (1891-1894).
Overton’s ledgers listed distillers in Tennessee by county, The record details those who manufactured spirits, the number of pots or stills, the annual production of distilled spirits in gallons, and the amount of tax owed. Jackson in Davidson County was recorded as paying his tax.
In June 1799, however, a devastating fire at Hunting Hill burned down Jackson’s stills, barrels and destroyed more than 300 gallons of aging whiskey. The future President was required to pay the whiskey tax even though the whiskey was gone. Authorities in Washington were all too aware that some distillers seeking to avoid the levy were hiding their whiskey, burning down their often ramshackle buildings, and then making claims for refunds. No evidence exists that Jackson was among them. In fact, he moved quickly to rebuild his plant.
Jackson subsequently made use of the one appeals process the U.S. government provided. Petitions and claims on the controversial tax could be submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives. There they were sent to a joint Committee on Claims, established in 1894, to be adjudicated. On February 12, 1803, Congress received the petition for a tax refund from Andrew Jackson. Shown right, he expressed concern, possibly based on his own experience in the House, that he was totally reliant on that body to satisfy his claim. Jackson said he had no doubt that: “A power to grant relief, in such Cases, was lodg’d in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, or in some other department of the Government; he could not believe that the United States would draw Money from the misfortunes of her Citizens.”
The Committee on Claims reviewed Jackson’s claim and voted to reject it. This may have been an indicator of Jackson’s lack of popularity among his former colleagues in Congress. One historian has speculated: “I like to think that Jackson was so furious about not receiving his money back that he decided to go into politics.”
While living at Hunting Hill, Jackson had purchased 640 acres of adjacent land. With his growing wealth from farming and land speculation, he sold this original homestead and built a new house there. He called it “The Hermitage,” the mansion home, shown here that has come to be identified with him.
The Hermitage was surrounded by a host of outbuildings. They included kitchens, spring houses, an icehouse, carriage garage, dwellings for the overseer and the slaves, blacksmith and carpenter’s shops, a cotton gin and press, stables, smokehouses, a sawmill and barns. Most important for purposes here, The Hermitage outbuildings included a whiskey distillery. Unfortunately, little has been written about this facility or Jackson’s involvement with it. He soon would be brought away from his Tennessee properties by his immersion in the military activities of the young Nation and ultimately by the American presidency.
That absence did not discourage future distillers, however, claiming Jackson as one of their own. Sometimes the claim was pure nonsense. Shown here are two ads for “Old Crow.” In both Jackson is depicted serving up that brand to two other American political figures who would eventually become President on the Democratic ticket, James K. Polk and Martin Van Buren. The ads are correct that both men were friends and allies of Jackson. Both ads claim, however, that according to an unnamed 19th century newspaper report, “Jackson favored Old Crow and praised it most highly.” Baloney. As a brand name, Old Crow emerged about 1855. Jackson died in 1845.
More legitimacy attaches to one of several American whiskeys that use Jackson’s nickname of “Old Hickory.” It was given to him by his troops for his tough-minded willingness to endure whatever his men were experiencing. The nickname was first associated with whiskey when Fayette County, Kentucky, distiller John Robb produced "Old Hickory Sour-Mash Kentucky Copper" whiskey. In 1868 the name gravitated to the E.R. Betterton Company of Chattanooga, Tennessee. [See my post on Betterton, August 10, 2013]. It later was used by other pre-Prohibition liquor houses to memorialize a national hero who was himself a distiller.
The tradition reaches down to today. In 2011 the R.S. Lipman Company, located in Nashville, Tennessee, revived the brand name. Shown here are bottles of “Old Hickory, Great American” blended and straight bourbons. They feature labels bearing Jackson’s picture. Primarily a wine importing company, Lipman markets these whiskey but they apparently were distilled in Lawrenceberg, Indiana.
Note: This post contains information and images drawn from a wide variety of Internet and other sources. The third President to operate a distillery was William Henry Harrison. See my post of October 16, 2022.
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