[applause] ♪ ♪ >> get c-span on the go. watch the days biggest political events live or on-demand anytime anywhere on our new mobile video at c-span now. access top highlights, listen to c-span radio app and discover new podcasts all for free. download c-span >> american history tv is on social media. follow us at c-span history. on behalf of the and the x foundation i want to welcome you to jackson's old and to our inaugural history in court program. tonight is the first installment of a three-part series to celebrate bicentennial of the first version of the hermitage mansion completion in 1821. for the prior 17 years the

jackson's have lived in a two-story log farmhouse on this property. in november of that year they moved into their newly completed dream home. the house is the nucleus of the mansion we treasuretoday . the history uncorked we want to give our participants, you the success of the early 19th century social economic and aesthetic context of the times to which the jackson's list and when the mansion was constructed. today we are honored to have doctor carole bucy as the first speaker of our series. the doctor is a professor of history at volunteer state community college and she holds a phd in history vanderbilt university as well ll as history degrees from baylor university and george peabody .

in 2011, doctor bucy was appointed davidson county historian by then mayor charles b, a position she continues to hold. carol is the author of tennessee through time: the early years and tennessee through time: the later years . these are social studies textbooks currently used in the fourth and fifth grade classrooms. in numerous schools. she is also the author of history carved in stone i, the city cemetery. women helping women women of nashville, exercising the franchise: building the body politic. the league of women voters and public policy 1945 to 1964 and several scholarly articles.

she served as a member of the board of directors for the presbyterian historical society and is the vice president of the tennessee historical society. as a longtime advocate, local and state history she regularly conducts educator workshops on the incorporation of tennessee history into existing us history courses and is a frequent speaker across the state on a variety of historical subjects. if you have all ever heard someone say history is boring clearly they have never heard doctor bucy speak. she brings to her suspects academic knowledge and thorough research. true passion for history and a delightfully dry sense of humor. i'm also excited to report m that c-span heard about our series and doctor bucy's

presentation and they are here filming tonight's episode that would be od broadcast later this fall. at the conclusion of her comments you are invited to ask questions. to do so please step up to the microphone here in the center of the room. join us for our next history uncorked program on october 14. so i hope you will all uncorked some wine, now sit back and hear some delightful storytelling. this please join me in giving a warm hermitage welcome to doctor carol bucy. >> thank you howard. i'm delighted to be here tonight it's always a pleasure to have an opportunity to talk about nashville's history. i don't know about utyou but in the interest of full disclosure i'm going to tell you right now i am not a native.

i grew up in texas. i came here to graduate school. i liked it so much i've stayed ever since and i think this is a lovely place to be here at the hermitage. i remember coming here on a vacation in the family station wagon. we drove from bottom texas all the way to washington dc to work for my parents to get my brother and take a tour of the nation's capital and we stopped here at the hermitage and i was mesmerized. i had never been in the house museum up to that time and it was a great experience and i have enjoyed coming out here over the 47 years i have been married to a tennessean and coming out here to the hermitage for various events and various programs . i wanted to tell you a little bit about nashville and take

us back to 1820 when the beginning of the hermitage as you and i know it began. nashville began as a dream. land speculation was abundant and a major cause of people primarily scots and irish but not exclusively crossing the appalachian mountains before the revolutionary war.they crossed the appalachian mountains and came across here where they were supposed to be. it was illegal to do that they saw opportunity. and people had come into that eastern corner of our state and as things go people then began to come in more numbers. that is not the place you're going to have a big plantation with lots of plots. on rocky top there would not be a lot of cotton but they came not for that purpose. they came for the opportunity

to own land and own a big plot of land even if they were going to have to take it from someone else. another part of the story, but they came here for the opportunity to own land because land equaled independence . it equaled you are your own person. you own no one anything. so the population of those little settlements proved very very slowly but then as the revolutionary war is beginning, it was decided that about half the population was going to really i hate to say this but take advantage of the war going on on the other side of tthe mountain to come all the way over here to the cumberland river. they were going to have that normal aggression of moving. that's a little bit further west.

they were going to do what theodore roosevelt .and the former state historian walter durham called the great leap westward. they were going to leave over the cumberland lacto and settle here. the reason they had picked this spot was james robertson who was a surveyor and hunter had been here a time or two and he had seen the abundant amount of game. because all of these salt licks where salt comes out of the surface of the ground were attracting animals. so you had animal trails leading all over middle tennessee where you can see what the land looked like and then they were followed by hunters. the native american hunters as well as the long hunters

coming from primarily virginia and north carolina so this great leap was made in the middle of the revolutionary war and it was a hotly contested effort to claim this land because the chickamauga ones that were hostile to the cherokees had tried to prevent these people from staying. they had tried to push them out and the casualty rate among the early settlers was very very high but things did began to settle down. north carolina will ultimately claim this pocket of central settlement. you've got a pocket in east tennessee and a pocket here with 300 miles in between the e two settlements so you've got people here and north carolina is going to create some counties so they create sumner county, tennessee county and davidson county. when these counties are created of course if you're going to have a county you've got to have a county judge and then if you're going to have a court, i think you're going to need a lawyer. so they appoint north

carolina's legislature appoints john mcnary to be the county judge and he brings with him his body and lawyer friend, none other than andrew jackson. and andrew jackson developed quite a successful legal practice here on the frontier area of the civilization. he did lots of contested land claims cwas part of his legal business because you're saying it's my land and your neighbor is saying the boundary is not that rock, it's that tree so peoplewere arguing about land here all the time . these were truly adventurous people and think about the women who had the fortitude to come on this madcap adventure . rachel donaldson's parents were part of the leading effort and her father who was 51 years old which looks pretty young to me today but

he waselderly . james robinson was in his 30s. he was the perfect frontiersman but he saw opportunity and he was coming. so he and his wife have some children that have grown and one of his daughters got all the way to the ohio river on these flat boats that had come all the way down the tennessee river, then up the ohio and up the cumberland to hear. they had decided when they got to the ohio river they could not go upstream and they headed for natchez mississippi so andrew jackson is here and i've got to tell you nashville grows but it does the city the town itself does not grow very rapidly. it's kind of a wild place. the scotch irish were highly literate. the people who signed the cumberland compact, there

were already a couple people cannot write their name, all-male course but they side the cumberland contract and they were literate. these people are not particularly interested in church . not over here to found churches and the missionary. what they do is they get their children educated so the first institution they create is a school. davidson county and they bring in a presbyterian minister. davidson academy had a pretty hard time going but there were two other really important institutions here before and after statehood. one was then a sonic lodge. the lodge was sort of what i would call secular christianity. it was a male organization. it was what some people might today call networking. you were there with these other people. the masonic lodge started

some schools to the lodge was one of these male institutions and it was if you were a rising person with ambition you would join the a sonic c lodge. the other thing that every male had no choice but to be in was the state militia and that was actually written in before the state. that was written into the cumberland contract that every young man over about 50 was going to have to be armed and ready because they knew they were going to be fighting nethe chickamauga ones. the chickamauga ones had left no doubt they were not going to allow the settlers to stay here so nashville growsrather slowly . and yet here comes this invention, the cotton gin. and once it is patented, people living here start looking for more opportunity.

south, maybe door towards columbia and polasky.down in alabama which was part of the mississippi territory and over into mississippi . west tennessee where the chickasaw's had control of that land. treaty after treaty had been signed with the various tribes reserving this piece of land with this piece of land for these tribes again and again, hot land, hungry settlers came and put themselves there and state their claim in spite of the fact that it was on land reserved for the native americans. once the cotton gin gets introduced here you are suddenly going to see land hungry people coming that intensified when tennessee becomes a state in 1796 and people are still coming. they are pushing all the way down to the tennessee,

alabama border by about 19, 1810. imagine this. if you go west from here you'll get to the tennessee river but one of the tributaries over there just a little bit south of where waverley is. one of the tributaries over there is the doc river and a group of settlers had gone over there and planted themselves were there when the greek decided to attack. so the greeks attacked this settlement. they kill a lot of people, they take? crawley as a hostage and they go back into southern alabama where they live o. of course that word travels very fast in asheville. people in nashville are ready to go. they want to go down there a and avenge the attack on this duck river settlement.

so there's a lot of talk about this in nashville. our major general of our militia, tennessee is a state my jew is andrew jackson. he has preceded john severe in the contest when the militia elected its own officers. he had preceded john so the militia is ready to go. all the older generation that had been in some way or another affected by the revolutionary war, they had experienced war. they were not so ready to go but the younger whippersnappers that are here , they are ready to go avenge the deaths at duck river and then the creeks again make an attack at this time it's four minutes which is in alabama almost 2 the coast down towards the coast there. they have a large group of

settlers there and the creeks attack them at fort mims and pretty much kill everybody, women and children. so our governor wiley barth is ready to go up to militia and he gets permission from prevacid president madison to do this. we've got to get our militia down there to avenge all these killings of settlers but there's one small problem with our militia. it seems our major general has been in a bit of a barroom brawl with the benton brothers and hehas a little affliction . he has taken a bullet somewhere up your in his chest or shoulder and he can't really get on a horse twith only one arm so he has to wait till a major general is ready to ride so the militia can go off there and to alabama and not so many years ago the militia wreck and ordered where the militia

coming from east tennessee and fayetteville tennessee which is south of nashville almost nto the alabama border . they recognized her there and the people of fayette bill had something done for this occasion. it was some anniversary and they got jackson on his horse . but he was ready to go and these young men were ready to go as well. what takes place, you got some notable people there at what's called thebattle of horseshoe bend . the bend of the televisa river and what takes place is pretty much a bloodbath . the creeks they had a really good defensive position in this bend of the river but here comes the tennessee militia. they have two of those old short cannons and they start lobbing cannonballs over this embankment that the creeks have put up and the creeks are really, really badly

defeated and very few survive . so now the tennessee militia is redeeming everything that people have said about the people who lived over here in the cumberlandsettlement . what one writer wrote about what the settlements were. but before the 1812. she calls it a male preserve, a brawl in our drinking town on the surface at least, hardly even a community. there were taverns here there and jan run by all sorts of people and the people who really were the residents mostly lived out in the country where the land was. they weren't living down ey there at the public square of market street on the riverfront and that was a heartbreaking place but here

we become heroes overnight so president madison will appoint andrew jackson to be the major general of the u.s. army and sends our boys down so you know what's going to happen in new orleans. unfortunately the news does not travel very fast and d the war had been kind of a disaster from the point of view of the united states after the city of washington dc was burned and dolly madison had to race out from the dinner table without even getting to eat her dinner as the british burned the president's mansion. so president madison had already decided to send negotiators to europe to negotiate a peace treater treaty with great britain so the treaty of ghent ending this war was signed december 24 in belgium but word did not get to new orleans this was happening and general

jackson had his men in a good defensive position waiting for the british navy and british soldiers to come. shauna plantation just down the river close to the mouth of the mississippi river in new orleans. and the british do, and it is the thing that myths are made of. the battle of new orleans. i can still hear tennessee ernie ford singing about the battle of new orleans. so the timothy volunteers, it was a ragtag army. they had some kentucky sharpshooters, you've got some enslaved people. you've got some various other folks from new orleans in the army they held the day. and now the war is over. shooray. we have defeated the british. not once but twice. and the first george washington defeated them in the revolutionary war.

the second george washington is andrew jackson. and people here are enthusiastic to know him. he is a national name all of a sudden. and it is this winning the war of 1812 and simultaneously with the coming of the steamboat that is a major turning point in nashville and tennessee history before the civil war. here we have a frontier outpost, hardly a town and winton hill who had been in n the tennessee militia and fought the jackson's, he now invests in the steamboat which had them coming down the mississippi river from pittsburgh all the way fto new orleans 1811 and 1812 so the events invents a steamboat that will come up cumberland

river. you think of a steamboat as what general jackson looks like today. multi-deck but these were very low boats with a owpaddle and there was a steam engine on them and they were dangerous because the engines often exploded but he invests in this steamboat and it comes to nashville. it is going to change nashville's future because nashville center right here in the middle of what is going wto become this big center of commerce and nashville is going to have the trade business, it's going to be absolutely phenomenal. then when the war ends the creeks are pushed out of alabama. the chickasaw's are pushedout of mississippi and west tennessee . so guess what? land, land, land. get over here and buysome. it's going to go fast .

big investors such as james winchester from sumter county, john over sin from davidson county, andrew paxson and john mack l'amour from davidson county managed to invest in a great deal of acreage in west tennessee and they start selling it with the cotton gin and now this, you're going to see land speculation frenzy and of course if you're going to raise cotton you know what else is going to bring to nashville and the rest of these areas. larger numbers of enslaved people than ever had been expected. indeed, the market forslavery suddenly went up . a surplus of slaves in the area. now there's a demand for slaves here and slaves will be brought sthrough middle tennessee for land to be sold

at a higher price. slavery was a business in nashville as well . here we've got all these people buying land . and then we have our first national depression. the panic of 1893. the citizens who've invested in land but didn't have the money to, in other words they bought from the banks. they go to the general assembly and say help us. what we need you to do is to get the banks to post foreclosure on our homes and in some cases s some of the land owners had more or less personal financing and they were owed money as well so just save the day and the legislator voted to do that. it was considered unconstitutional. the courts decided it unconstitutional but mercifully we recovered from

the depression and from that point forward. nashville was a city. we will soon attract a first rate business educator from princeton new jersey to come to nashville to open a new college, the university of nashville whichwill become a leading institution across the south . educationally, it had a medical school and engineering school and had many courses. you will see banking thrive. you will see riverboats coming up and down the river. you will see alsohave people coming and wanting to visit with andrew jackson . one of the people finally get around to founding some churches. they didn't have any churches for a while so one of the people is a man who was ordained as a presbyterian mister alex vander campbell. he was the founder of this restoration movement.

let's restore the new testament church and he comes in quite a lot and comes out to the hermitage to have dinner with andrew jackson. general lafayette makes a grand tour of the united states. there is a parade, there is a beautiful ball. he is there to visit with the general as well so this puts nashville on the map l. and we are still on the map today. nashville changed almost overnight from this are drinking town of drunks on street to ... and i know what you are thinking of that but i'm not going to talk about those taverns. i'm not even going to bring the subject up but we changed into a rather cosmopolitan place and i must say 200 years later it is a great pleasure for me to live here. it is also always a ipleasure for me to see any historic

house remaining upright and thriving and beautifully cared for as this one is because we have lost a good bit of our historical fabric in many of the houses that we did not preserve. tank you very much. now i'm ready to take questions if you will come to this stmicrophone over here. i would love to hear from some questions from you. whether i can answer them or not remains to be seen but i'd love to hear some questions from you. there are people here who probablyknow a lot more about andrewjackson that i do but i'll get to them if needed . anybody have a question ? okay, please. come up to the mic.

>> can you talk about what the infrastructure in nashville was like at the time west and mark what were the roadways like? how hard was traveling at the time he was here?'s travel was pretty hard. we were not much on spending money . we've always been low taxes over here. it's the scotch irish who were the founders here but we had some roads. the state of north carolina actually sent some soldiers over here before statehood and built a road to connect the east tennessee settlements with the cumberland settlements and it ran more or less not still sort of to gallatin and that was called the avery trace. and north carolina built that road. but there were not a lot of roads and it's not really until about this time when the hermitage is being built nashville decides it really needs a waterworks. so they will have a big sister downtown.

they have a place in the cumberland river. it's between let's see if you were going from here to downtown nashville to the michelin stadium you'll see this place where it's kind of a brick chimney i guess i would call it in the middle of thecumberland river which is where they took the water out and they had a cistern . canyou imagine this ? they had wooden pots. they had wooden water pots and here and in knoxville very sophisticated, those wooden water pots and theyhad a way of getting them hollowed out . i can't imagine the tools it took to get those things hollowed out to hold water but nonetheless, they had volunteer fire departments. they did have a flat laid out drawn by thomas malloy, a survey very early.

1784. it had these city lots and it had the names of all the streets. the streets running by the . river was called front street or water street.that's first avenue now if you know nashville. that is first avenue so you had that street and the second asone was market and so on and so forth. they had about 10 blocks and the hill where our state capital is today was called the cedar knob, not alexander campbell. another campbell. that's on the hill and it is given to the state in the 1840s when it took can you believe it, it took tennessee until 1843 to decide on where they were going to have a epermanent capital. if you read the tennessee, you know exactly why. this is nashville but they sure didn't want to go to knoxville . and knoxville didn't want any

of the business. they didn't want to be nashville either so it's these regional rivalries. at one point believe it or not oone of the west tennessee legislators suggested that west tennessee would just to see and this is in the 1840s and create their own state called guess what? jacksonian. catchy name, don't you think? they would create jacksonian. there's another state rep from east tennessee. he's young, his name is andrew johnson. his future is i guess bright but nonetheless he says if you're going to secede going to secede and go back to that name of the state of franklin sowhat do the legislators from nashville do ? they start appropriating money to build roads in west tennessee and east tennessee. but in spite of this grid, the streets were pretty much

nonexistent. and you would have some boardwalks for sidewalks. you would have some transportation but overall living in the city was really kind of a dirty place to live because you've got chickens running loose and you've got all manner. you don't have a good sewage system. so living in the city was in some ways kind of unhealthy. that's why people build these houses if they had any wealth . they would build the houses out like all these houses in this area that the donaldson's built and travelers like the glenn levin, the thompson's house. eventually belmont but that's the civil war when the house gets built but then they bought out as opposed to

being in town so a lot of people get town houses in the city and worked in the city but they had a house out in the countryside somewhere to keep the kids healthy because epidemics did come through. one of the big epidemics that came through a lot was cholera. we now know cholera was caused by drinking contaminated drinking water. the way this happened with no sewage system is in the spring when it was raining very hard the water table under the ground would rise. and then people would be drinking contaminated water. one of the people who died of cholera in 1849 oof the epidemic was president james k polk who had just come home from his term in the white house so cholera was a very deadly disease. it wasn't contagious however. it was from breaking bad water and yet doctors here,

some doctors refused to believe it was bad water. doctor boeing said it was diet and they were eating the wrong foods. some said it was contagious and of course we know measles, diphtheria, yellow fever, all those things were farmore contagious . you got cholera from drinking the water. there's a roundabout way to answer your question. so we didn't have many roads but that brings me to an interesting point about 1820 . 1820 like i said this places on the map so the board of alderman's, they propose and initiate two big major capital ebuilding projects. not building exactly but capital projects. one is to build a bridge across thecumberland river . so in the they get the plans drawn for this bridge.

there's not enough labor here to build it. so they entice t,irish workers on the northeast to come to nashville to build a bridge over the cumberland river. it's where the victory memorial bridge is today right at the foot of the metro courthouse across the river. tthis was acovered bridge . it wasn't very far off the surface of the water so you can see with steamboats coming the first steamboats were very low but as they get higherand higher , that bridge is going to be obsolete and will ultimately be destroyed. so we get the bridge construction going and the board of alderman's promise that if these irish workers would come they will find building catholic church for these workers. so the first st. mary's is on

the hill where the capital is today and then they go the proper st. mary's of the seven sorrows where it is today on about i guess six in charlotte and it's a very lovely church. then the people in nashville decided we need a proper place to bury and honor our dead. up to this point there was a public graveyard downtown. the churches did not have graveyards. their churches were not really that strong at this point to have a graveyard but there was a public burial ground downtown and that's what it was called, the public graveyard. this cemetery merck movement, the rural cemetery movement has taken off i suppose in cambridge massachusetts with auburn cemetery which is a

lovely place so we're going to call it a cemetery where we remember the dead and honor the dead. it's not just a graveyard. and it's going to be parklike where you can visit."in nashville decided to appropriate land for it. they buy four acres and this is in the board of alderman minutes on the plane off of nashville. i don't know whether you've ever been to the city cemetery or not but it's not really my idea of a plane nonetheless it was, i guess that's what they were thinking about. so the cemetery will get organized and running and it will open. some people's bodies will be brought from the public graveyard which is approximately a little bit above dwhere the metro courthouse is today. they were brought to the city cemetery there and buried and if you'venever been to the city cemetery , you really

want to go. it is absolutely the easiest history left lesson you will ever get. it is nashville history from the beginning of to the civil war. so the city cemetery was laid out and it filled up very quickly. they decided on a fundraiser by selling this time they're going to sell lost family plots so they sell family plots and it expands. it's one of the very few early before the civil war cemeteries in the south was integrated, not only for racial integration but religious integration. we don't really see religion as something that was segregated but believe me, in nashville before the tecivil war the catholics did not associate with protestants . the catholics and jews, christians did not associate. there were strict lines so nsat

the city cemetery we had x buried there. we had jews bury their area that we had african-americans buried there as well. so the city cemetery is quite a remarkable place. that is another sign that we are becoming civilized. we are not just this frontier outpost in the middle of nowhere. we are indeed kind of the gateway to the west. any other questions? >> can you elaborate more on what the cotton business did for nashville? was it kept here, was it shipped north, southeast, west, downriver. if you can elaborate more on that. >> the cotton business did benefit in nashville. the cotton business really made memphis. memphis would not have really become such a big city had

this not been for cotton. but cotton people very close by race cotton from time to time. they certainly were raising a good bit in rutherford county and in williamson county and the county south of williamson county there was a lot of cotton rays and it was brought up here to nashville to be shipped out to market on the steamboat. so cotton really have an effect and we had a need here because we got people coming in. we also have a need for things to buy. so you will see market street having all manner of implements and leather shops and tool shops and also to things for people who are coming in. another important plot here, also labor-intensive requiring a good number of enslaved people was the

tobacco business. and particularly robinson county, sumner county, those along the kentucky border began raising a lot oftobacco . there's one plantation, blessings and plantation in robinson county are they owned i think over 200 slaves and there's a little lovely book about that plantation and the enslaved people that lived there but one thing it brought to nashville was the market for enslaved people. so a lot of people are advertising in the newspapers that they are selling slaves and there's a slave pen down on the hill where the colleges and there's a slave pen in a market where the bus transit building is. there close to the state capital. and slavery becomes a business.

and one of the most wealthy man in the united states is a man from sumner county named isaac franklin who became very wealthy buying slaves in alexandria virginia and initially he he made them walk here and i put them on boats later. they took them around florida to new orleans. he became one of the wealthiest men in the country in the slave business and there's a new book out they have taken all the financial records and thiswould be such tedious work . and really combed through there and dropped the conclusion about isaac franklin's lucrative business and slaves. cotton wasn't just cotton. cotton meant enslaved people. and that's what made the

population of tennessee grow so rapidly. let's just move forward really fast to secession and the civil war. east tennessee, mom and pop, no need for cotton. no need for enslaved people they can't raise cotton over there . the weather is notright . the land is not right. it's hardscrabble subsistence farming. west tennessee agricultural abundance. lots and lots of cotton being raised over there and here in middle tennessee we're sort of the penance of the seesaw if you will. do we go with west tennessee on issues or east tennessee? they havedifferent economic goals . so when talking secession begins after abraham lincoln is asked elected president in south carolina just to raise out of the union tennessee

legislature is going to convene to talk about whether or not tennessee should secede. so you can understand who is the most process session, west tennessee legislature, east tennessee not so much so it's up to middle tennessee. the legislature did not want to take a vote and be responsible for this. what they did was we will have a referendum on the citizenry and of course again that means the men are going to get to vote. we're going to have a referendum of the people on whether or not they want the state of tennessee to call a convention for the purpose of discussing secession. east tennessee, how are you going to vote? no, we don't want it secede. west tennessee, let's go. middle tennessee votes with east tennessee.

not to have a convention to talk about secession. that's not the story you heard, is it? you heard tennessee joined the confederacy and that's what happens a few months later. four months later after the attack on fort sumter and co pleasant president lincoln is calling for troops they tap down the southern insurrection. this time thelegislature , always unique, we're not just going to vote to secede. they're going to write a document called the tennessee declaration of independence where the only states that did that and your going to have a referendum of the people pewhich is going to be do you support the declaration of independence? east tennessee, number west tennessee, yes. we told you that four months ago and middle tennessee tilts the other way.

in the issue in middle tennessee was defending the homeland. when it became apparent that abraham lincoln after the attack at fort sumter was going to go to war to save the union, these people in middle tennessee recognized that they were going to fight in the confederacy. that's a whole other story for a wholeother day . i think we've got time for one more question. anybody have a question? well, i would say we have had a great conversation tonight. it's always a pleasure to be at the hermitage and i hope for our viewers that you will take the opportunity to come

and tour this beautiful site. it is really magnificent this time of year and all that is coming. the leaves will be turning andthings will be glorious all over middle tennessee . thank you very much and have a good evening. [applause] >> i think it ranks right up with washington's mount vernon or jefferson's monticello. in terms of impressiveness. it speaks of a man of significant wealth. jackson is considered to be one of our wealthiest presidents. it's an 8000 square-foot id house so if you were coming here, you would have been very very impressed by the hous t