Future president Andrew Jackson bought his first slaves in 1794 and by 1804 owned 9 slave men and women. In that same year, he bought the Hermitage, a Tennessee cotton plantation, and slowly increased the size of his property and its slave population. By the time he was president, he owned 100 slaves and would own more than 160 before his death in 1845. Although Jackson was known to provide adequate food and housing for his slaves, he was not above employing corporal punishment, as is evidenced by the following advertisement he placed for a runaway slave in 1804.

STOP THE RUNAWAY.

FIFTY DOLLARS REWARD.

Eloped from the subscriber, living near Nashville, on the 25th of June last, a Mulatto Man Slave, about thirty years old, six feet and an inch high, stout made and active, talks sensible, stoops in his walk, and has a remarkably large foot, broad across the root of the toes—will pass for a free man, as I am informed he has obtained by some means, certificates as such—took with him a drab great-coat, dark mixed body coat, a ruffled shirt, cotton home spun shirts, and overalls. He will make for Detroit, through the states of Kentucky and Ohio, or the upper part of Louisiana. The above reward will be given any person that will take him and deliver him to me or secure him in jail so that I can get him. If taken out of the state, the above reward, and all reasonable expenses paid—and ten dollars extra for every hundred lashes any person will give him to the amount of three hundred.

ANDREW JACKSON, near Nashville, State of Tennessee

Source: Tennessee Gazette, November 7, 1804.