The Hermitage Mansion The Hermitage

The Hermitage was the plantation home of Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, from 1804 until his death in 1845.  Completed in 1819, the main house is a two-story Greek Revival, brick mansion.  Frontier-born, Jackson was the first chief executive elected from west of the Allegheny Mountains, the first from other than Virginia or Massachusetts, and the first non-aristocrat.  The charisma of “Old Hickory,” his renown as a military hero and Indian fighter, and his astuteness in politics assured his election as president.  Although he was a wealthy, slave-holding planter and served in both Houses of Congress, he saw himself and both his supporters and opponents saw him as representing the common man.  He not only expanded the powers of the office of president but also virtually redefined them.

Born in 1767 in the British colony of South Carolina, Andrew Jackson joined the American forces during the Revolutionary War. Captured by the British, he suffered great privations. After the Revolutionary War, he moved to Tennessee, where he became a lawyer and entered politics, becoming Tennessee’s first congressman, and later a senator and a judge on the Supreme Court of the State.

In 1804, Andrew Jackson purchased a 425-acre tract of land that he named The Hermitage. For the next 15 years, Jackson and his wife, Rachel, lived in a cluster of log buildings on the property. Here they entertained notable visitors including President James Monroe and Aaron Burr.  Jackson led the life of a gentleman farmer at The Hermitage until 1813, when the Tennessee militia called him to active service.  His military conduct during the Creek War brought him a commission as a major general in the regular United States Army. After the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, he returned to The Hermitage a national hero.

Jackson built the central portion of the present Hermitage mansion between 1818 and 1819 on a site chosen by his wife. The square, two-story brick building followed a four-room, center-hall plan with parlor, dining, and two bedrooms on the first floor and four additional bedrooms on the second.

Jackson's bedroom The Hermitage

In 1823, the Tennessee legislature elected Jackson to the United States Senate, but the following year he was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency.  Even though he won the greatest number of popular and electoral votes, he did not have a necessary majority in the Electoral College.  This threw the election into the House of Representatives.  The House selected John Quincy Adams as president in what Jackson considered a “corrupt bargain.”  Jackson immediately resigned from the Senate to begin planning his next campaign.  In the extraordinarily bitter campaign of 1828, he defeated Adams with a majority of 178 electoral votes to 83.  His election was in many ways the first modern one, because by this time most States chose their electors by popular vote.  His victory was clouded by the death of his wife.  She died in January 1829, only a short time before he departed from The Hermitage for the inauguration.

Jackson achieved three major political victories during his two terms as president.  He closed the Second Bank of the United States.  This action contributed to a nationwide depression and created difficulties during his successor’s term.  In spite of threats of secession, he disallowed South Carolina to refuse to enforce Federal tariffs, thus “nullifying” a law with which they disagreed.  In his third victory, Jackson, a famous Indian fighter, defied the Supreme Court and launched the removal of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole Tribes from their homelands in the Southeast to Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma.  His successor completed the removal with the tragic Cherokee Trail of Tears.

At the end of his second term as president in 1837, Jackson returned to a vastly changed house. In 1831, he arranged from Washington, DC for an expansion of the original 1819 building. He added one-story to both sides of the house, a dining room, pantry, and storage area on the west and a library and plantation office on the east.  In 1834, fire gutted the central and eastern sections of the mansion, leaving only the foundation and exterior walls intact.  By May 1835, the reconstruction transformed the front entrance and increased the ceiling heights of both floors. The front elevation was painted white to hide smoke damage. Decorative interior features in the fashionable Greek Revival style included carved marble mantels, classical door and window surrounds, and an apparently unsupported circular staircase.  Scenic wallpaper imported from France was installed in the main hall.  Dufour made the paper in Paris c. 1825, using 3,500 wooden blocks to handprint and color brush to complete the process.

Entrance hall with original wallpaper from 1837 The Hermitage

Andrew Jackson died on June 8, 1845.  His body lies next to that of his wife in the tomb at the southeast corner of The Hermitage garden.  In 1856, the State of Tennessee purchased 500 acres of The Hermitage plantation, including the mansion and outbuildings, from Jackson’s adopted son Andrew Jackson, Jr.  The intention was to preserve the property as a “shrine” to Andrew Jackson.  The state intended to turn over the property to the Federal Government as the site of a southern branch of the United States Military Academy.  The Jackson family remained at The Hermitage as caretakers until 1887.  The Senate Committee on Military Affairs endorsed the plan, but with the growing threat of war between the North and South, they did nothing.  In the 1870s and 1880s, increasing numbers of people began coming to visit the plantation.  In 1889, a group of wealthy Nashville women formed the “Ladies’ Hermitage Association,” directly modeling it on the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union that successfully saved Mount Vernon before the Civil War.  The following year, the Tennessee legislature granted the Ladies’ Hermitage Association ownership and control of the mansion and 25 acres of land on behalf of the State.  The association opened The Hermitage to the public as a museum that same year, one of the first historic sites preserved as a monument to one of America’s great men. Today, visitors will find The Hermitage restored to its appearance 1837, when Jackson returned there after serving his second term as president.

Andrew Jackson is the subject of an online lesson plan, The Battle of Horseshoe Bend: Collision of Cultures. The lesson plans have been produced by the National Park Service's Teaching with Historic Places program, which offers a series of online classroom-ready lesson plans on registered historic places. To learn more, visit the Teaching with Historic Places home page.