Stockley D. Hays

(Nashville Banner, 1912)|left|alt=Hand-drawn map of the area northwest of Nashville including the road to Gallatin Stockley D. Hays was born in December 1788, 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 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 the influence of then-Congressman Andrew Jackson. His aunt Mary Purnell Donelson's 1848 obituary told of her arrival at the future site of Nashville: An obituary for Hays' grandson stated that Hays worked as a private secretary to Jackson when Jackson lived at the Hunter's Hill property, between 1798 and 1804. In June 1806, when Hays was 17, the Davidson County sheriff listed for sale two properties for unpaid taxes; owned by Robert Hays, and owned by Stokely D. Hays, both on the Caney Fork of the Cumberland River. == Burr conspiracy ==

, 1806–1807 (The American Nation, 1907) Later in 1806, when Stockley Hays was 18 years old, he was a part of former U.S. vice president Aaron Burr's 1806 Mississippi River expedition, known as the Burr conspiracy. Hays was recruited to the expedition by Patton Anderson, brother of Jackson's aide-de-camp W. P. Anderson. Andrew Jackson built and sold the flatboats that Burr used to navigate to the lower country. Per Mississippi judge Joseph Dunbar Shields, "if they were but flatboats they were three deckers and had layers of muskets between decks". Weapons enough to outfit an army were never found, but as recounted in 1880 by Jacksonian Democrat, Claiborne family scion, and historian J. F. H. Claiborne, "At Burr's trial, Jacob Dunbaugh, a sergeant in the United States Army, who had obtained a furlough from his commanding officer at Fort Massac, and come down with Colonel Burr, swore that on the night the boats left Petit Gulf, he saw a man named Wylie pass into the stern of Colonel Burr's own boat with an augur and hand-axe, and that shortly afterwards he saw several bundles of muskets lowered into the river by cords, through a hole made in the gunwale of the boat". According to a profile of the Hays family read to the Madison County Historical Society and republished in The Jackson Sun in 1944: One article claimed Hays was sent as an "aid" to Burr. Other accounts say Hays was going to be a private secretary to governor Claiborne. A third account says Hays went along because he was "preparing to enter school in New Orleans". Whatever the pretext, if the boatmen intended to make their way to the Neutral Ground, or Spanish Texas, American freebooters "who crossed international boundaries without passports were committing an act tantamount to invasion, illegal under national law and international custom". 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 Ohio Rivers on December 28, 1806. The boats arrived at judge Peter Bryan Bruin's landing on Bayou Pierre on January 10, 1807; Burr surrendered himself to the governor of Mississippi Territory on January 17. According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson, Volume II, after the Burr party landed, Hays connected with governor Claiborne's brother Ferdinand Leigh Claiborne, and territorial secretary of state Cowles Mead, at the territorial capital, Washington. The ambitious plan had already stumbled and buckled at the knees by the time Hays was welcomed by his kinsmen and his uncle's business friends in Mississippi Territory, but in full flower the plan might have involved "an invasion force from St. Louis to capture Santa Fé and open the way for a possible further advance overland into Mexico; a rallying of the Louisiana French who were none too pleased with their colonial status with respect to the United States; and a volunteer army to go down the Ohio, collecting recruits as it went and then, at New Orleans, reforming an amphibious expedition against Vera Cruz." In April 1807, Hays sent a letter to Jackson's business partner John Coffee referencing 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 fatewhen 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." On the same day he wrote to Coffee from Old Greenville, Hays wrote to Jackson that: Hays' uncle, John Caffrey, was married to another Donelson sister, Mary; according to descendants, Caffrey worked for Jackson in the "mercantile business" in the lower Mississippi River valley. Along with his 20-year-old future brother-in-law Thomas Butler, Hays was named on a May 1807 "List of Witnesses to be Summond against Aaron Burr," as "Thomas Butler the Son of the late Colonel" and "Stokely L. Hays Tennessee," respectively. , 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 brothers Washington Jackson and James Jackson, merchants of Nashville and Natchez (Republican Banner, Nashville, October 11, 1828) |left|alt=Newspaper clipping, refer to caption Hays and Jackson's involvement in the conspiracy was relitigated when Jackson ran for U.S. president against incumbent John Quincy Adams. In 1828, Judge John Overton, of Jackson's Nashville campaign committee, solicited a letter from Hays about the expedition. Hays claimed at that time Burr was an "intimate friend and brother officer" of his father from the American 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 had nothing in view hostile to the best interests of the United States, I determined to go with him." Jackson's business partner turned enemy Andrew Erwin characterized Hays' role as an escort "by General Jackson's favorite nephew by marriage". Another longtime Jackson hater said in 1828: "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, mentioned Hays when he argued to history in defense of his ancestor in 1935: in the summer of 1807 (hdl:loc.mss/maj.06158_0265_0271) A Mississippi federal judge, Thomas Rodney, wrote to his son Caesar Augustus Rodney: "... 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." William Duane of the Philadelphia Aurora, described by historian Thomas P. Abernethy as "the best-informed editor on the conspiracy", wrote that "such a spirit of speculating rapacity throughout the nation has formed a mass of corruption in every state of the Union, which menaces the safety of the nation". Abernethy endorsed Duane's belief that Hays, Burr, and the rest were party to a poorly conceived continent-spanning land-speculation scheme backed by hopeful Yazoo land investors, which would have increased the value of Burr's Bastrop claim and forced open other lands for settlement. Historians remain frustrated by the opacity of the plot; in the words of Abernethy: "The whole trouble with the Burr Conspiracy is that there were too many liars mixed up in it". United States Military Academy history professor Samuel J. Watson wrote in 2012 that "many senior army officers, including the commanding general himself, James Wilkinson, were closely linked to leading intriguers and filibusters like Aaron Burr...the tumultuous first decade of the 19th century set the stage for Andrew Jackson's usurpation of civilian authority" during the period 1810 to 1821. == Tavern brawl, Creek War ==

Hays married Lydia Butler in Davidson County, Tennessee, in early 1811. Lydia Butler was a daughter of Thomas Butler, one of the five "Fighting Butlers" of the American Revolutionary War and Northwest Indian War. She was educated at the Moravian Seminary in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. When Lydia Butler's father died in 1805, Andrew Jackson became her guardian. Three of the Hays siblings married three of the Butler siblings: Stockley married Lydia, Robert Butler married Rachel Hays, and Dr. William E. Butler married Martha Hays. Lydia's brother and Stockley Hays' brother-in-law Robert Butler became one of Jackson's closest associates during the push into Florida in the 1810s and 1820s. In 1810, 22-year-old Stockley Hays and 28-year-old future U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton both served as junior counsel to Jenkin Whiteside at the trial of the Magnesses for killing Patton Anderson. Hays was admitted to the bar of Davidson County in 1812. During the Creek War, a subconflict of the War of 1812, Hays was commissioned as 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. During a lull in hostilities between the Natchez Expedition and the Fort Mims massacre, on September 4, 1813, Hays participated in a fight in a downtown Nashville tavern; Thomas Hart Benton's brother Jesse Benton shot Andrew Jackson, and Hays "nearly killed" Jesse Benton. According to the footnotes of Tom Kanon's history of Tennessee military participation in the War of 1812: "Four other pistols were fired in quick successionone by Jackson at Benton, two by Benton at Jackson, and one by John Coffee at Thomas Bentonbut 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. Stockley Hays stabbed 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." Jackson's urgent need for medical attention ended 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. Hays served as lieutenant and brigade inspector to Coffee's mounted gunmen from September 11 to November 17, 1814. == Enslavement and trafficking ==

, to Nashville, where they escaped Hays and his business partner Francis Sanders (Nashville Whig, November 28, 1815)|alt=Newspaper clipping of a runaway slave advertisement headlined "sixty dollars reward" In November 1815, Hays placed a runaway slave advertisement in the Nashville Whig newspaper, offering a reward of $20 each for the recovery of Sam, Nuncanna, and Luck, African-born enslaved men ranging in age from 25 to 40 who had been taken to Nashville mid-year from Augusta, Georgia, by Richard Tullus and Sam. S. Starns. Two of the three men were recaptured near Knoxville in the eastern section of the state in February 1816 but then escaped again; Hays renewed the reward offer in June 1816. == U.S. Army Judge Advocate ==

On September 10, 1816, Hays was appointed to the position of judge advocate of the regular U.S. Army, with "brevet rank, pay, &c. of a major of cavalry". This was a military lawyer job with 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. Stockley Hays' father, Robert Hays, died in 1819, leaving a widow and surviving offspring who ranged in age from 31 (Stockley D. Hays) to 19 (Samuel J. Hays). His sister Narcissa Hays never married. In her youth, she sometimes served as a traveling companion for her Aunt Jackson, for instance, traveling with the family to recently captured Pensacola in 1821. In later life, as Aunt Nar, she 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 a major general. Hays was judge advocate for the court martial of William King at Fort Montgomery, Alabama, in November 1819. The United States 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 ==

" in June 1822 (Nashville Whig, August 21, 1822) As of January 1822, Stockley Hays was living on a Tennessee farm called Greenvale that had been formerly owned by merchant banker James Jackson. In the first week of May 1822, six weeks after the birth of his son, He and 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. He struggled financially, possibly unable to pay debts, after the Panic of 1819. 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 in Jackson, Tennessee. Jackson was "for some years the largest community in the Western District" of Tennessee. == Jackson administration ==

In September 1830 Samuel J. Hays, the youngest sibling of Stockley Hays, wrote President Jackson a letter reporting his first son had been born healthy and "with very black hair", that a drought would diminish the cotton crop, and: "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 advised Jackson by letter: "... many of our good orderly, but enterprising citizens intend forthwith, to move over on to the Chickisaw lands to procure occupant claimsThere is a treaty stipulation to prevent this procedureUntil the U States troops can arrive, Would it not be well to issue your proclamation on the subjectto prevent the great mischief which may otherwise ensue." The treaty between the United States and the Chickasaw () 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 tribe's expulsion. Jackson wrote in the letter: "The acting Sec. of war will instruct the chikisaw agent to forewarn 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 to Secretary of War John Eaton the threat had been duly transmitted, and that some "Obstinate Intruders" were removed, and 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." , painted sometime from 1832 to 1835|left 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 at that time for the surveys of Louisiana and Mississippi, and wanted to appoint 42-year-old Hays to the post. On November 7, 1830, Jackson wrote to Hays' brother-in-law Robert I. Chester. Jackson offered to sell Chester an enslaved mother named Charlotte and her children, Aggy, Jane, and Maria, for , and he described a possible patronage position for Hays: Brief letters of recommendation were sent from the vicinity of Nashville, stressing Hays' "scientific qualifications and self-sacrificing Army service in and after the War of 1812", 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. In January 1831, David Barton, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Land Surveys, inquired with the Tennessee delegation about their constituent and neighbors' fitness for federal appointment. According to the editors of The Papers of Andrew Jackson: "All the replies but Crockett's were noncommittal". Crockett said 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 said 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: "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 emphatically I do not[.]" Jacksonian newspapers attacked Crockett for his opposition to Hays. In response, in June 1831, an anti-Jacksonian who signed himself Corn Planter wrote a letter to the newspaper describing 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, and 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 wrote to the Southern Statesman newspaper of Jackson, Tennessee: U.S. Senator from Mississippi George Poindexter objected to the Hays appointment on the basis the land to be surveyed was in Mississippi and Hays was a Tennessean. In the first round, the Senate rejected Hays, backed Poindexter's objection, and 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 due west of the state capital, Jackson. The surveyorship (temporarily, as it turned 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 Jackson's wartime chaplain, Rev. James Gwin. 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)|left Gwin was appointed to the newly created land office at Chocchuma, Mississippi, near the Yalobusha River, and he died from wounds received in a duel with Poindexter's former law partner, Isaac Caldwell. Gwin's brother William M. Gwin became influential during the Martin Van Buren administration and was eventually elevated to the U.S. Senate by the newly admitted state of California. The sale of public land at the Chocchuma land office was investigated by the U.S. Congress: == Death and legacy ==

of the Shawnee () at Wapakoneta, Ohio, and Stokely D. Hays of the Donelson family at Jackson, Tennessee (Vermont Courier, November 4, 1831) Stockley D. Hays fell ill and died on September 8, 1831. According to his obituary in the Jackson newspaper Southern Statesman: Hays' widow, Lydia Butler Hays, died in Shelby County, Tennessee, on November 22, 1865, at age 77. In 2017, descendants and researchers placed grave markers at Riverside Cemetery (Jackson, Tennessee) 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. Jackson's marriage to Rachel Donelson came with an "army of brothers" and nephews, and together they engaged in what has been described as vertically integrated family-business imperialism. According to Inman (2017): "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 ==