Stockley D. Hays

Stockley Donelson Hays
Born	December 1788
Died	September 8, 1831(1831-09-08) (aged 42) Madison County, Tennessee
Other names	Stokely Hays, S. D. Hays, Col. Hays
Occupation	Lawyer
Relatives	Robert Hays (father), Andrew Jackson (uncle), Samuel J. Hays (brother)

Stockley Donelson Hays (December 1788 – September 8, 1831) was a 19th-century American lawyer, military officer, and nephew of U.S. president Andrew Jackson. He was involved in historically significant events from an early day, accompanying Aaron Burr down the Mississippi during the Burr conspiracy when he was a teenager, aiding Jackson in a famous tavern brawl in 1813, and serving in Jackson's army during the Creek War. Hays served as a quartermaster of the U.S. Army in the southwestern theater of the War of 1812, and then as a judge advocate of the Southern Division of the U.S. Army at the pay level of a major from 1816 to 1821. Stockley D. Hays and several siblings married Butlers who had become wards of Andrew Jackson on their father's death; the Hays and Butler families remained close to Jackson through his military and political campaigns. In the 1820s, the Hays family and their Butler connections were among the founding settlers of Jackson, Tennessee, which was established shortly after the land was ceded under a Jackson-negotiated treaty with the Chickasaw people.

In 1831, following the ratification of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, President Jackson sought to appoint Hays to the high office of U.S. surveyor general south of Tennessee, which triggered a political conflict involving U.S. Representative Davy Crockett and U.S. Senator George Poindexter. Crockett, a fellow early settler of west Tennessee, described Hays as an ill-equipped alcoholic, but as a compromise between Poindexter and Jackson, Hays was appointed to be register for the land office at Clinton, Mississippi. Hays died of bilious fever shortly after being granted the post and never carried out any of the duties of the office.

Early life

Old Haysborough, on the Cumberland River (Nashville Banner, 1912)

Hays was born in December 1788, the oldest of Robert Hays and Jane Donelson's eight children. Jane Donelson Hays was a daughter of Nashville pioneer John Donelson and his wife Rachel Stockley. Hays' grandfather Donelson was shot and killed the year he was born, by persons unknown, possibly Indians. S. D. Hays grew up at Haysborough, a frontier settlement founded by his father on what was called the McSpadden Bend of the Cumberland River, in what was then the Mero District of North Carolina and is now called Middle Tennessee. Robert Hays was a well-liked American Revolutionary War veteran, originally from North Carolina, who worked as a land surveyor and a plantation owner. In his capacity as both a justice of the peace and a brother-in-law, the older Hays officiated Andrew Jackson's marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards in 1794. In 1797 Robert Hays was appointed to the government office of U.S. marshal of Tennessee by George Washington by influence of then-Congressman Andrew Jackson. Little is known about Hays' childhood specifically but he would have lived in a log-built defensive blockhouse, he would have grown up with dozens of cousins living in the neighborhood, his family owned some number of slaves, and he would have known some danger of being killed in attacks by the Cherokee. His aunt Mary's 1848 obituary told of arriving at the future site of Nashville and finding "the whole surrounding country exhibited the appearance of a dreary wilderness. No marks of a reclaiming cultivation or of manual improvements could be seen. Nothing presented to the eye but a rough region of wood was and cane, inhabited only by wild animals suited to the climate...For many years thereafter the Indians continued to commit depredations upon the almost defenceless settlements on the Cumberland, which rendered them almost continually in danger. Nor were these savage incursions their only causes of distress and suffering; painful privations and actual wants were added many to their other grievances." The frontier settlement was geographically and politically isolated from the rest of the United States but there were comings and goings as well; his uncles John Donelson and John Caffery moved to the Natchez, one temporarily and one permanently, and his uncle Jackson traveled back east to Pennsylvania and Maryland for work. An obituary of S. D. Hays' grandson claimed that he worked as a private secretary to Jackson during the era when he lived at the Hunter's Hill property, between 1798 and 1804. In June 1806, when he was 17, the Davidson County sheriff listed for sale two pieces of property for unpaid taxes, 640 acres owned by Robert Hays, and 1280 acres owned by Stokely D. Hays, both on the Caney Fork of the Cumberland.

Burr conspiracy

Later in 1806, when he was perhaps "preparing to enter school in New Orleans", young Stockley Hays was a part of Aaron Burr's 1806 Mississippi River expedition, known to history as the Burr conspiracy. Hays was reportedly recruited to serve on the journey by Patton Anderson, brother of Jackson's aide-de-camp W. P. Anderson. According to a profile of the Hays family read to the Madison County Historical Society and republished in the Jackson Sun in 1944, "Stokely Hays consulted his great adviser. Jackson gave his permission for the boy to go. The somewhat nebulous light in which Aaron Burr's plans appear at this day seemed, doubtless, clearer to Jackson. According to Parton, Col. Hays, father of the boy, was still alive. If so, the father, as well as Jackson, was probably consulted. Jackson took the precaution to write a letter in behalf of Hays to Governor Claiborne. Parton found a letter from the boy also, stating that he had been instructed if anything inimical to the United States were intended, he was to return or place himself under the care of the governor." In 1828 one article claimed that Hays was sent along as an "aid" to Burr. A recent profile of Hays suggests that he was used by Jackson "to spy on Aaron Burr during the incident in Louisiana for which Burr was later indicted for treason." Other accounts have it that Hays was going to be a private secretary to Claiborne. Claiborne's previous private secretary, his brother-in-law Micajah Green Lewis, had been killed in a New Orleans duel in February 1805. (Another brother-in-law, William Berkeley Lewis, would go on to be a leading utensil in Jackson's presidential Kitchen Cabinet.) In December 1806, Burr used Hays to deliver a message for Harman Blennerhassett, informing him they should meet at the confluence of the Cumberland and the Ohio River on December 28, 1806.

Conjectural image of Burr's expedition (Scribner's Popular History of the United States, 1896)

A letter sent by Hays to his cousin Mary's husband John Coffee in April 1807 referred back to December 1806: "Four months have now, with the setting of this days sun, elapsed since I parted with you at Clover Bottom. when you and all friends were doubtfull of my impending fate—when all was doubt, the question whether to go or not to go, you on whom I called as a friend and whose advise as such I received." According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, after the Burr party landed at Bayou Pierre, Hays connected with governor Claiborne's brother Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne and Cowles Mead at Washington, Mississippi Territory. On the same day he wrote to Coffee from then-young Old Greenville, Hays wrote to Jackson, expressing that he was experiencing what would now be called depression, and writing:

I have lately been to Mr. A[braham] Greens, where I saw Uncle [John] Calfrey who has given me the History in detail of my friends since I left home; he mentioned the settlement of several of my fathers most unwise most distressing debts, which would in my fathers unhappy situations, have been inevitable distruction, had it not have been for your most friendly nay parental aid, which is ever ready in impending danger to ward off the theatning blow, from the inocent and ungarded; and for which you deservedly merit the esteem of every good citizen; (and as a party relieved permit me Sir to offer you my un feigned thanks, and ever gratefull services, too inconsiderable.)"

Uncle John Caffrey was married to another Donelson sister, Mary, and according to descendants, he worked for Jackson in the "mercantile business" in the lower Mississippi River valley. According to Knoxville mayor and local historian S. G. Heiskell this business amounted to selling "slaves and whiskey" to the yeomen and gentry of the Natchez District.

In 1828, John Overton of the Nashville Central Committee, a group dedicated to the election of Andrew Jackson to be U.S. president, solicited a letter from Hays about the expedition and submitted it for publication. Hays claimed at that time that Burr was an "intimate friend and brother officer" of his father's from the Revolutionary War, and that Burr had told Hays to consider him as another father. Hays wrote, "I observed to him that I must see and consult my friends before I gave my final consent. On advising with them some doubt of Mr. Burr's object was suggested, but he with having pledged his word of honor, that he bad nothing in view hostile to the best interests of the United States, I determined to go with him." Hays said that he parted ways with Burr when he turned himself in at Bruinsburg and "saw him no more except at a ball in Washington, Miss., and on his trial there before the court." He appeared as "Stokely L. Hays Tennessee" on a list created May 1807 of "List of Witnesses to be Summond against Aaron Burr."

During the 1828 presidential election, opponents of Andrew Jackson published a document said to have been found in the papers of Harman Blennerhassett, showing "Aaron Burr in account with Andrew Jackson"; W. P. Anderson was Jackson's aide-de-camp, Donelson Caffery was a first cousin of Stockley D. Hays, and W. & J. Jackson were Washington Jackson and James Jackson, merchants of Nashville and Natchez

Around the same time and through the same venue (Overton to the newspapers in 1828), Dr. Felix Robertson, who was a founding member of the Nashville Central Committee to elect Jackson and whose father had pioneered the Cumberland with the Donelsons in the 1780s, "I know of no circumstance, in this matter which could point suspicion to General Jackson in preference to any other prominent man, unless it be that Col. S. D. Hays, [a nephew of Mrs. Jackson] accompanied Burr to the lower country, and with those who knew the young man, this could have no weight. I always understood that Mr. Hays went against the advice and wishes of General Jackson. I have been intimately acquainted with Col. Hays from his infancy, and know he has always been in the habit of relying on his own judgment, and disposed to execute its decisions, independent of the opinions of others. I saw General Coffee a few days after Burr's departure, who told me he went off complaining of the treatment he had received from General Jackson, and most of his other acquaintance of the country. [Burr] had become so extremely peevish, that General Coffee said he could do nothing which seemed to please him. I never have understood, that Col. Hays' trip with Burr had injured him in the public estimation. He is at this time, a highly respectable citizen of this State." Meanwhile, Jackson's business partner-turned-enemy Andrew Erwin characterized Hays' role as an escort "by General Jackson's favorite nephew by marriage". Another dedicated anti-Jacksonian claimed in 1828 that "in 1823, John J. Bell Esquire lawyer from Pennsylvania, now of Franklin county Alabama, informed me that at the time Stokely D. Hays was in Natchez 1807, he told Bell that Jackson was to have had the command of 2000 men under Burr." James Wilkinson's great-grandson, New Orleans lawyer James Wilkinson, argued to history in defense of his ancestor in 1935:

Stockley D. Hays, age 19, kept a brief journal record of his trip back home via the Natchez Trace in the summer of 1807 (hdl:loc.mss/maj.06158_0265_0271)

"Jackson was as close to Burr as David was to Jonathan. He was fifty times closer to Burr than Wilkinson was. Jackson had entertained Burr royally and given him three magnificent receptions. Burr sent Jackson thirty-five hundred dollars to build his barges. He never sent Wilkinson thirty cents. Burr got Jackson's retainer, Patten Anderson, to raise a military company for him. Jackson sent Burr a list of officers for two regiments. In Burr's party was Stockley Hays, a nephew of Mrs. Jackson...Stockley Hays was young when he went with Burr but he surely had the making of a peaceful colonizer in him. Jackson knew twenty times as much about Burr's future intentions and movements as Wilkinson did, and yet, after the most careful study, I do not believe that either Jackson knew, before November 10th, 1806, or Wilkinson knew before October 9th, 1806, that Burr planned to divide the Union as revealed by Swartout to both Wilkinson and Fort, and revealed by the latter November 10th, 1806, to Jackson. It is impossible to escape the conclusion, from the proven facts, that Jackson knew Burr was setting on foot an expedition in violation of the criminal laws of the United States...This statute was drawn by Alexander Hamilton and was adopted on June 5th, 1794, the vote being so close that in the Senate the Vice-President cast the deciding vote. This law made it a criminal offense to fit out or arm or prepare an expedition to invade a country with which this country was at peace. Burr knew of this law and so did Jackson, as they were both members of Congress shortly afterwards. Why was Patten Anderson, Jackson's Fidus Achates, raising a military company? The answer is contained in Jackson's letter to Claiborne, 'I would delight to see the Dons reduced.' Jackson was an expansionist, and there is no question he had a large part in conquering and acquiring Florida and in getting Texas admitted as a State. It is remarkable that some writers who adopt Jackson's denunciation to Secretary of War Dearborn in January, 1807, that Wilkinson was 'a traitor to a traitor,' see nothing strange for Jackson to have travelled later to Richmond to declare on every corner that Burr was no traitor at all, and that Jefferson and Wilkinson were persecuting a good man."

An oblique conclusion by a 20th-century Jackson scholar was that Burr "proposed to plant a colony of 2,000 Kentuckians and Tennesseans on a 40,000-acre tract on the [Ouachita] River, in northern Louisiana...He tried to convince them that war [with Spain] was imminent" and "that the missing link in unraveling the true aims of Burr is to be found in the traitorous conduct of Wilkinson." One of Mississippi's federal judges, Thomas Rodney, wrote his brother, Founding Father Caesar Rodney, that "...the existence of a plot was universally credited by all sorts of people...The Design of the Conspiracy is said to be to unite Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, The Floridas and part at least of Mexico into an Independent Empire." The truth may never be known. In the words of historian Thomas P. Abernethy, "The whole trouble with the Burr Conspiracy is that there were too many liars mixed up in it."

Legal career, tavern brawl, Creek War

In 1810, Hays and young Thomas Hart Benton served as junior counsel to Jenkin Whiteside at the trial of the Magnesses for killing Patton Anderson. Hays married Lydia Butler in Davidson County, Tennessee in the spring of 1811. Lydia Butler was a daughter of Thomas Butler, one of the five "battlin' Butler brothers" of the American Revolutionary War. She was educated at the Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When Lydia Butler's father died, Andrew Jackson became her guardian. Three of the Hays siblings married three of the Butler siblings who became wards of Andrew Jackson: Stockley married Lydia, Robert Butler married Rachel Hays, and Dr. William E. Butler married Martha Hays. Lydia's brother and S. D. Hays' brother-in-law Robert Butler became one of Jackson's closest associates during the push into Florida in the 1810s and 1820s. Hays was admitted to the bar of Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1812.

As they appeared in 1831, Nashville Inn, Davidson County Courthouse, and the City Hotel (as Talbot's Tavern, the site of the 1813 brawl with the Benton brothers); diagram of Nashville's courthouse square from the "Duels and Quarrels" chapter of C. T. Brady's The True Andrew Jackson, 1906; map detail of Nashville in 1854, showing the hotels and location of the courthouse square on the Cumberland River

Hays was commissioned a quartermaster in the Tennessee militia from October 1, 1812, to April 1, 1814, serving as paymaster of Tennessee Volunteers, and quartermaster general of Jackson's army for the Creek War in 1813–14. During a lull in hostilities that fell between the Natchez Expedition and the Fort Mims massacre, Hays participated in a fight in a downtown Nashville tavern, wherein Thomas Hart Benton's brother Jesse Benton shot Andrew Jackson, and Hays "nearly killed" Jesse Benton. The Nashville Inn had been founded by William Terrell Lewis and was patronized by Jackson, his business associate and friend of long acquaintance, so Jackson opponents (such as the latter-day Whigs), typically stayed at the City Hotel (earlier known as Talbot's Tavern) across the town square. On a visit to central Nashville the Bentons had deliberately stayed at Talbot's Tavern to avoid encountering Jackson, but "Jackson unhesitatingly assumed the role of aggressor by following Jesse into the hotel," horsewhip in hand, since he had promised to horsewhip Thomas Hart Benton for a perceived insult. Jesse Benton got the better of Jackson, slipping around the back and shooting him in the arm while Jackson had held a gun to his brother's head. One succinct recent summary, including casualty statistics, is provided in the footnotes of Tom Kanon's history of Tennessee military in the War of 1812, and states, "Four other pistols were fired in quick succession—one by Jackson at Benton, two by Benton at Jackson, and one by John Coffee at Thomas Benton—but Jackson was the only one hit. Then daggers were drawn." John Coffee and cousin Alexander "Sandy" Donelson jumped in and stabbed the future Senator five times. Hays' contribution was stabbing Jesse Benton with a knife concealed within a cane, while Captain Eli Hammond beat J. Benton about the head, but "a large and strong button which broke Hays' blade saved Jesse from being perforated. Jesse placed the muzzle of his remaining pistol against Hays' chest and pulled the trigger, but in a fair exchange of mishaps the charge failed to explode." James Sumner then intervened on behalf on the Bentons, aiding them in driving off Hays and Donelson. Eventually Jackson's urgent need for medical attention wrapped up the fight; T. H. Benton "sealed the victory by breaking Jackson's sword across his knee in the public square" and later pamphleteered about the brawl, explaining his side of the story.

On November 22, 1813, Jackson ordered quartermaster Hays to procure more pack horses. Cousin Sandy who had fought the Bentons alongside Stockley Hays was killed by warriors of the Red Stick faction of the Muscogee Nation in January 1814, shot in the head at the battle of Emuckfau. Hays drew $1,000 for contingent expenses on June 20, 1814, the same day Jackson drew $2,000. Hays served as lieutenant and brigade inspector to Coffee's mounted gunmen from September 11 to November 17, 1814. Hays makes no appearance in standard histories of the conflict—such Old Hickory's War by the Heidlers (1996) and Kanon's Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815—beyond accounts of the brawl at Talbot's Tavern, so it is impossible to describe his combat experience or lack thereof.

Slave ownership

Over the course of their lives, Sam, Nuncanna, and Luck were trafficked from Africa, to Augusta, Georgia, to Nashville, where they escaped Stokely D. Hays and his business partner Francis Sanders in November 1815

In November 1815 Hays placed a runaway slave ad offering $20 each for the recovery of Sam, Nuncanna, and Luck, African-born enslaved men ranging in age from 25 to 40, who had been brought to Nashville over the summer from Augusta, Georgia, by Richard Tullus and Sam. S. Starns. Two of three fugitives were recaptured near Knoxville in east Tennessee in February 1816 but then escaped again, with Hays renewing the reward offer in June 1816. The description of Nuncanna suggests that his community of origin practiced ritual scarification and human tooth sharpening—akuha, known in Cameroon, Congo, DRC, Guinea, and Uganda, is a body modification where teeth were filed to look like those of the crocodile. Hays' partner Francis Sanders was killed in 1826 by an employee who confessed and was hanged for the crime.

U.S. Army Judge Advocate

On September 10, 1816, or 1818 (sources conflict), Hays was appointed to the rank of judge advocate of the U.S. Army, with "brevet rank, pay, &c. of a major of cavalry". These were the "pay and emoluments of a topographical engineer". Hays and his brother-in-law Robert E. Butler are believed to have made a "prospecting journey" to the lands ceded under the 1818 Chickasaw treaty in 1819. Also in 1819 Hays endorsed the racing ability of a horse named Oscar. Stockley Hays' father Robert Hays died in 1819, leaving a widow and six surviving offspring who ranged in age from 31 (Stockley D. Hays) to 19 (Samuel J. Hays). All of Stockley's siblings would marry and have families of their own except for Narcissa Hays, who in her youth sometimes served as a traveling companion for her Aunt Jackson, and in later life, as Aunt Nar, raised her grandnephew and taught him how to fish.

Hays continued to serve as a judge advocate in the U.S. Army's Division of the South until at least 1820, during which time Jackson was Major General of the same division. He was judge advocate for the court martial of William King at Montpelier, Alabama in November 1819. The Congress reduced funding for the military and made no appropriation for Army lawyers, so Hays was the "last judge advocate of the Southern Division...honorably discharged on June 1, 1821, and the Army did not have a full-time statutory judge advocate again until 1849."

West Tennessee

Hays was licensed to practice law in the "Western District" in June 1822

As of January 1822 Hays was living on a Tennessee farm called Greenvale, formerly owned by merchant banker James Jackson. Greenvale was located "on the main road from Nashville to Haysboro and two miles from the former place". Later that year, apparently in the first week of May 1822, six weeks after the birth of his son, Hays was one of the cofounders of Jackson, Tennessee, originally known as Alexandria. He and five others, Thomas Taylor, Austin Miller, William Stoddert, William Arnold, Archibald Hall, and James Wilson, were authorized to practice law in Madison County, Tennessee, on June 17, 1822. Hays was on the board of the Jackson Male Academy, and the Madison County board of commissioners, and worked as a lawyer, and was remembered "as the finest looking man in Jackson in the early days of the town". He suffered financially, possibly struggling to pay debts after the Panic of 1819, reportedly as a consequence of being "land poor". In January 1823, a newspaper notice announced the dissolution of the business partnership of S. D. Hays and James F. Theobald. In May 1824 Hays and Robert Hughes announced the establishment of a legal partnership based in Jackson, Tennessee.

During the 1828 U.S. presidential election, opponents of Jackson resurfaced the fact that his nephew, Stockley D. Hays, had accompanied Burr to the lower country in 1806. Hays released a statement explaining himself.

Jackson administration

Andrew Jackson by William James Hubard, painted sometime from 1832 to 1835

In September 1830 Samuel J. Hays, the youngest sibling of Stockley Hays, wrote President Jackson a newsy letter reporting that his own firstborn son had been born healthy and "with very black hair", that the drought was going to diminish the cotton crop, and that "We have neither seen nor received the scrape of a pen from brother since he went to see you at Nashville—begin to fear he must be sick, tho' I suspect he must be detained by the Federal court where he was summonsed as a witness—he might have written however." A week later Stockley Hays surfaced to advise Jackson that "...many of our good orderly, but enterprising citizens intend forthwith, to move over on to the Chickisaw lands to procure occupant claims—There is a treaty stipulation to prevent this procedure—Untill the U States troops can arrive, Would it not be well to issue your proclamation on the subject—to prevent the great mischief which may otherwise ensue." The Chickasaw treaty had a clause preventing sale of land prior to removal but there was no clause prohibiting settlers from squatting on the land prior to the expulsion of the tribe. Jackson wrote on the letter, "The acting Sec. of war will instruct the chikisaw agent to forwarn all person from moving to, or intruding on the chikisaw lands assuring them that they all trespassers will be removed from it and their houses burnt & every thing destroyed." Chickasaw subagent John L. Allen reported back to Secretary of War John Eaton that the threat had been duly transmitted, and some "Obstinate Intruders" removed, but that military intervention would not be necessary. In October 1830, Jackson wrote to Samuel J. Hays, "Colo Stockely travelled a few miles with me the morning I set out, I intend to [do] something for him as soon as it can be with propriety, but you know, under such a pressure for office, how hard it is to get a connection in, without great censure—I am astonished that he had not returned before the date of your letter, as he told me he would go directly home—he was in fine health."

When Jackson became president of the United States following the 1828 election, he removed James Turner from the United States General Land Office job of Surveyor General South of Tennessee, responsible for surveys of Louisiana and Mississippi. Jackson wanted to appoint Hays to replace Turner. On November 7, 1830, president Jackson wrote to Hays' brother-in-law Robert I. Chester offering to sell him Charlotte and her three children, Aggy, Jane, and Maria, for $800, and describing about a possible patronage position for Hays: "I wish you to say to Colo. S. D. Hays, that he must get, & send on here, as early as he can, testimonials of his sobriety & capacity as a survayor; This will be necessary, for so sure as an opportunity offers if one should, to give him a survayers District, that in order to mortify me that his appointment will be opposed in the Senate & [Davy] Crockett & [Robert] Desha, will represent him as intemperate. Let the recommendations be strong and go to his capacity, and ability to give the necessary security, if required. This must be attended to early to be here by the middle or 20th. of Decbr next if practicable." Brief letters of recommendation sent from the vicinity of Nashville and Jackson stressed Hays' "scientific qualifications and self-sacrificing Army service in and after the War of 1812" and were signed by Thomas Claiborne, Robert Armstrong, John Overton, William Carroll, Robert Whyte, Parry W. Humphreys, Ephraim H. Foster, Robert Purdy, James Collinsworth, Thomas H. Fletcher, Samuel Hogg, John C. McLemore, Adam Huntsman, and others.

Mississippi before the subdivision of the lands from which the Indians were removed during the Andrew Jackson administration; map of the United States in 1830, showing population density and locations of General Land Offices (American Expansion Maps, 1962); friends and relatives of President Jackson who held appointments to administer the survey and sale of the public lands of the United States in 1832 included Hays, John Coffee, Robert Butler, Richard K. Call, and Archibald Yell (The American Almanac, 1833); map of part of the surveying district south of Tennessee, showing boundary lines of Chickasaw and Choctaw cessions, created by A. Dowling

In January 1831, David Barton, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Land Surveys, inquired with the Tennessee delegation about their constituent and neighbor's fitness for federal appointment. According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, "All the replies but Crockett's were noncommittal." Crockett said that Hays had lived in his Congressional district for about eight years, since approximately 1823, but he could not fairly estimate his "mathematical ability" and skill at land surveying. Crockett did volunteer that Hays had "succeeded badly in finding employment" as an attorney, was bankrupt, and "his want of Sobriety is So great that on the other hand he is notorious for intemperance—bordering on Sottishness." Crockett concluded his reply with the statement: "You fourthly and Conclusively enquire whether from my knowledge of Hays taking all together I think him qualified and a Suitable person for the office? I answer emphaticaly I do not[.]"

Crockett was bitterly attacked by Jacksonian newspapers for his opposition to Hays. In response, in June 1831, an anti-Jackson who signed himself Corn Planter wrote a letter to the newspaper that described Hays as unqualified based on his "intemperate, idle, and wholly disqualifying habits", and protested the political appointments and government-funded salaries of Jackson's kinsmen including Hays, Chester, Coffee, McLemore, and A. J. Donelson, asking, "Have we, sir, no high minded and honorable men amongst us, who are qualified to offices of honor, profit, and trust, but the nephews of President Jackson?" Crockett himself wrote to the Southern Statesman newspaper of Jackson, Tennessee, which published an excerpt of his letter:

"If I am to be condemned for acting honestly, let it be so. I considered myself bound to answer the inquiry, in the language of truth, which I yet contend I did. I regret the necessity I am under of giving publicity to the correspondence between the Committee and myself, but I am informed Col. Hays is cursing and abusing me, and misrepresenting the true state of the case. Self justification is the first law of nature. I have never done an act that I am unwilling for the people of my District to know."

— Davy Crockett, Southern Statesman, Jackson, Tennessee, June 4, 1831

U.S. Senator from Mississippi George Poindexter objected to the Hays appointment on the basis that the land to be surveyed was in Mississippi and Hays was a Tennessean. In the first go-round, the Senate rejected Hays, backed Poindexter's objection, and even passed a motion affirming Poindexter's position. Eventually, "a temporary truce was reached on this issue, when Hays was appointed to the lesser office of register" at the Clinton (formerly Mount Salus) land office, about 10 mi (16 km) due west of the state capital of Jackson. Mount Salus was originally known as Mount Dexter, when it was the site of a "temporary Indian agency", and was located along the Natchez Trace. The land office was first opened following the 1820 Treaty of Doak's Stand, "for the purpose of disposing of the Choctaw lands acquired under 'The New Purchase.'" The surveyorship (temporarily as it turns out) went to Poindexter's candidate, Gideon Fitz, thus "party unity was preserved...patronage was divided to the satisfaction of the contending parties. Only the land business suffered." This incident was the beginning of a deeper rift between Jackson and Poindexter. Hays' appointment to the register job was confirmed on February 21, 1831, but he was dead by the autumn of that year. Jackson sought to replace him at the Clinton office with Samuel Gwin, "son of an old comrade", Rev. James Gwin, and brother of future U.S. Senator William McKendree Gwin. Poindexter objected and blocked this nomination as well, and the feud exploded.

In the course of events, Samuel Gwin was appointed to the newly created land office at Chocchuma, Mississippi, and then died from wounds received in a duel with Mississippi judge Isaac Caldwell over the whole matter, brother W. M. Gwin became a political power during the Martin Van Buren administration, and Crockett broke with Jackson, lost his Congressional seat, moved to Texas, and was killed at the Alamo by the Mexican Army in part because he "chose to join Col. William B. Travis, who had deliberately disregarded Sam Houston's orders to withdraw from the Alamo, rather than support Houston, a Jackson sympathizer". The sale of public land at the Chocchuma land office was ultimately investigated by the U.S. Congress, "which revealed that although members of Congress, the chief justice of the Court of Appeals of Mississippi, and the federal marshal were present, no one could recall that the provisions of the Act of 1830 had been read, as required by the instructions of the Commissioner of the Land Office, or that there had been protests against the clearly illegal actions of the combinations. It was also brought out that the register, Samuel Gwin, had left his office to buy some tracts and had resold them immediately at a 33 percent profit to settlers, but the only unusual feature of his conduct is that he was induced to admit his dereliction."

Death and legacy

A Vermont newspaper reported on the deaths of Black Hoof of the Shawnee at Wapakoneta, Ohio, and Stokely D. Hays of the Donelson family at Jackson, Tennessee (The Woodstock Mercury, and Windsor County Advertiser, November 4, 1831)

Hays fell ill and died on September 8, 1831. The Southern Statesman newspaper of Jackson published an obituary for Hays that read: "Mr. Hays' death of bilious fever has spread an unusual gloom around us—possessed of hospitable, kind, and generous feelings, even to a fault, no man had fewer enemies...Hays was by profession a lawyer—endued with a strong mind, and possessing advantages of liberal education. Fame and fortune were within his grasp, but such were his social habits that neither ambition or parsimony could find a resting place in his bosom. For the purpose of removing his family he had just returned in apparently good health from Clinton, Mississippi, where he had been for some time attending his official duties as Register of the Land Office. He has left a widow, two children, and numerous train of relatives. Masonic honors." Hays' widow, Lydia Butler Hays, died in Shelby County, Tennessee in November 1865 at approximately 75 years of age. J. G. Cisco wrote graciously of Hays in a 1903 history of Madison County, Tennessee, describing him as "a lawyer of ability and a genial gentleman. He was said to have been the finest looking man in Jackson, being over six feet tall and weighed two hundred pounds...Mr. S. D. Hays, a prominent lawyer of Jackson, is a grandson of Colonel Hays." In 1904, Hays' grandson was featured as a notable attorney in an advertorial insert about the commerce and industry of Jackson, Tennessee. In 2017, descendants and researchers had grave markers placed at Jackson's Riverside Cemetery for Hays, his sister Narcissa Hays, and his mother Jane Donelson Hays.

Historian Lorman Ratner described Andrew Jackson as a boy without a father, and a man without sons, which may have motivated him to accept guardianship of dozens of young people who lived with him at various times or whom he both assisted and used for his own benefit. Hays, as a nephew of Andrew Jackson, was one of the several early participants in and beneficiaries of this system. Andrew Jackson's marriage to Rachel Donelson came with a literal "army of brothers" (and nephews), and together they engaged in what has been described as vertically integrated family-business imperialism: "They fought the native peoples, negotiated the treaties to end the fighting and demanded native lands as the price of war, surveyed the newly available lands, bought those lands, litigated over disputed boundaries, adjudicated the cases, and made and kept laws within the region that had been carved out of Indian lands."

See also

• Andrew Jackson Jr.
• Indigenous members of the Andrew Jackson household
• Andrew Jackson and land speculation in the United States
• Andrew Jackson and the slave trade in the United States
• Bibliography of Andrew Jackson
• Bibliography of the Burr conspiracy
• Bibliography of Davy Crockett
• Spoils system
• Petticoat affair
• Filibuster (military)

Sources

• Abernethy, Thomas P. (February 1949). "Aaron Burr in Mississippi". The Journal of Southern History. 15 (1): 9–21. doi:10.2307/2198070. ISSN 0022-4642. JSTOR 2198070.
• ——— (1954). The Burr Conspiracy. New York: Oxford University Press. LCCN 54006907. OCLC 710644.
• Army JAG Corps (1975). The Army Lawyer: A History of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, 1775–1975. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. 008-020-00563-1.
• Boylston, James R.; Wiener, Allen J. (2009). David Crockett in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Poor Man's Friend. Houston, Texas: Bright Sky Press. ISBN 978-1-933979-51-9. LCCN 2009024431. OCLC 318426723.
• Carey, Bill (2018). Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls: A History of Slavery in Tennessee. Nashville, Tennessee: Clearbrook Press. ISBN 978-0-9725680-4-3. LCCN 2018903570. OCLC 1045068878.
• Cheathem, Mark R. (2014). Andrew Jackson, Southerner. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-5099-3. LCCN 2012049695. OCLC 858995561. Project MUSE book 26506.
• Cisco, J. G. (January 1903). "Madison County (Part 2 of 2)". The American Historical Magazine and Tennessee Historical Society Quarterly. 8 (1): 26–48. ISSN 2333-8997. JSTOR 45331988.
• Dunn, W. McKee (1876). A Sketch of the History and Duties of the Judge-advocate General's Department, United States Army. Washington, D.C.: McGill & Witherow – via Harvard University Libraries, HathiTrust.
• Everett, Grace (February 1944). "The Hays Family". The Jackson Sun. Madison County Historical Society. Jackson, Tennessee.
  • Chapter I: John Donelson and the Adventure - February 13, 1944
  • Chapter II: Rachel Donelson and Andrew Jackson, Jane Donelson Hays - February 14, 1944
  • Chapter III: Stockley Donelson Hays, Andrew Jackson, and the Burr conspiracy - February 15, 1944
  • Chapter IV: Stockley Donelson Hays, Natchez Expedition, Nashville Inn fight with the Benton brothers - February 16, 1944.
  • Chapter V: Stockley Donelson Hays, settlement of Madison County, later life and death of Jane Donelson Hays - February 17, 1944
  • Chapter VI: Samuel Jackson Hays - February 18, 1944
  • Chapter VII: Samuel Jackson Hays, Middleton Hays, Richard Jackson Hays - February 20, 1944
  • Chapter VIII: Richard Jackson Hays, conclusion and source listing - February 21, 1944
• Fratcher, William F. (April 1959). "History of the Judge Advocate General's Corps". Military Law Review. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army: 89–122. No. 27-100-4 – via HathiTrust.
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• Inman, Natalie R. (2017). Brothers and Friends: Kinship in Early America. Early American Spaces. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press. doi:10.1353/book51901. ISBN 978-0-8203-5110-0. LCCN 2016055415. OCLC 985105661.
• Kanon, Tom (2014). Tennesseans at War, 1812–1815: Andrew Jackson, the Creek War, and the Battle of New Orleans. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. ISBN 9780817318291. LCCN 2013049815. OCLC 900093586. Project MUSE book 30812.
• Meredith, Rachel (May 2013). "There Was Somebody Always Dying and Leaving Jackson as Guardian": The Wards of Andrew Jackson (M.A. History thesis). Murfreesboro, Tennessee: Middle Tennessee State University. ProQuest 1538368.
• Miles, Edwin A. (February 1958). "Andrew Jackson and Senator George Poindexter". The Journal of Southern History. 24 (1): 51–66. doi:10.2307/2955285. ISSN 0022-4642. JSTOR 2955285.
• Mueller, Ken (2014). Senator Benton and the People: Master Race Democracy on the Early American Frontier. Early American Places. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 9781501757556. OCLC 1203952026. Project MUSE book 83601.
• Robinson, Dan M. (Fall 1967). "Robert Hays, Unsung Pioneer of the Cumberland, Country". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 26 (3): 263–278. ISSN 0040-3261. JSTOR 42622953.
• Rohrbough, Malcolm J. (1971) [1968]. The Land Office Business: The Settlement and Administration of American Public Lands, 1789–1837. Galaxy Book 354 (Paperback ed.). London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-501472-3. LCCN 68029725. OCLC 176589.
• Shockley, Megan Taylor (Fall 1997). "King of the Wild Frontier vs. King Andrew I: Davy Crockett and the Election of 1831". Tennessee Historical Quarterly. 56 (3): 158–169. ISSN 0040-3261. JSTOR 42627359.
• Smith, Elbert B. (February 1958). "'Now Defend Yourself, You Damned Rascal!'". American Heritage. Vol. IX, no. 2. pp. 44–48. ISSN 0002-8738. OCLC 1479963.
• Various; Jackson, Andrew (1984). Moser, Harold D.; MacPherson, Sharon (eds.). The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, 1804–1813. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-0-8704-9441-3. LCCN 79015078. OCLC 5029597.
• ———; ——— (2010). Feller, Daniel; Coens, Thomas; Moss, Laura-Eve (eds.). The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume VIII, 1830. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-1-57233-715-2.
• ———; ——— (2013). ———; ———; ———; Alexander, Erik B. (eds.). The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume IX, 1831. University of Tennessee Press. ISBN 978-1-62190-004-7.
• Wilkinson, James (1935). Wilkinson, Soldier and Pioneer. New Orleans: Rogers Printing Co. LCCN 44002879. OCLC 1855454.
• Williams, Emma Inman (1946). Historic Madison: The Story of Jackson and Madison County, Tennessee, from the Prehistoric Moundbuilders to 1917. Jackson, Tennessee: Madison County Historical Society. LCCN 47004107. OCLC 4045339 – via University of Virginia Libraries, HathiTrust.

External links

• Hays, Stockley Donelson - Correspondence of Andrew Jackson - Library of Congress