Good-Bye, Lord, I’M Going to New York: The Secret Life of Belle Meade’S William Harding Jackson

By Vic Currierv

America would be very different if William Harding Jackson (1901 1971) had not put his indelible stamp on the US government as OSS / War Department chief of secret intelligence in World War II Europe, cofounder of todays Central Intelligence Agency, and his work as Eisenhowers national security adviser. During the most dangerous times in our history and for decades beyond his death, there is no other American who influenced so many sensitive, top-secret national security matters more than Jackson. When Bill Jackson was in the room, everyone paid attention; and for a time in our history, three US presidents saw to itpersonally.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503547728

Vic Currierv

Vic Currier was born in Tucson, living most of his early years in the Southwest and on the Pacific Coast. He graduated high school in California followed by an unremarkable career at the University of Arizona where he became a top ROTC cadet officer. He volunteered for the US Air Force serving with the Military Airlift Command Travis AFB, California and in communications at the 49th Tactical Fighter Wing at Holloman AFB, New Mexico. He was assigned to Cam Ranh Bay Air Base, Vietnam just in time for the Tet Offensive of 1969 -- where he worked over two-years in top-secret communications as a command post coordinator in computers, tele-communications, and ground-based navigational-aids for six air bases in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. He "survived" dual-duty with the12th Security Police as a perimeter combat marksman during 30 enemy attacks. After more than two years in Vietnam, including one combat tour plus three voluntary combat assignments, Currier received the Presidential Unit Citation, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with "V" for valor device & 2 oak leaf clusters, the National Defense Service Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal with 5 bronze campaign battle stars, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal and the Vietnam Gallantry Cross Medal with Palm. The author has traveled widely around North America, Japan, Indonesia, the Caribbean, Great Britain, Scandinavia and Australia during his lifetime. After the military, he returned to work for the SP-UP railroad and, later, served as terminal manager and labor relations officer at the Port of Los Angeles. That was followed by a 20-year management career in lending, insurance, and banking. He served four years as director of a large California bank -- then co-founded a regional mortgage loan company based in Phoenix; both of which required traveling many times to Washington and New York as a liaison with Wall Street bond-rating agencies and investment banks. He served three years as a fraud investigations coordinator working with FDIC and FBI investigators. He is the author of employer-specific operating manuals and has taught community education finance courses at Eastern New Mexico University. Currier is now retired, living in the central highlands of New Mexico with his wife of 30-years where they bred, raised and raced thoroughbred horses (1997--2008). He is a vocal advocate for military Veterans and families -- and was the radio Host of "Legacy Watch Veterans Hour" for nearly 2-years -- a weekly program broadcast to 26 regional radio stations. He is a member of the American Legion and a Life Member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) – while working on his golf game and his next two history books about the American intelligence community -- to be released in late-2017.

Book preview

Good-bye, Lord,

I’m Going To

New York

The Secret Life of Belle Meade’s William Harding Jackson

Successful Wall Street Attorney, Venture Capitalist, World War II OSS ULTRA Intelligence Officer—CIA and National Security Adviser

Vic Currierv

Copyright © 2015 by Vic Currier.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2015903112

ISBN:      Hardcover       978-1-5035-4773-5

                Softcover         978-1-5035-4774-2

                eBook             978-1-5035-4772-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Rev. date: 05/19/2015

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CONTENTS

Dedicated to the memory of William Harding Jackson (1901–1971)

Acknowledgments

Prologue

PART ONE

Early Years (1901–1941)

Chapter 1   Five Generations of Family History Bill Jackson’s Early Years (1901–1911)

Chapter 2   The Belle Meade Thoroughbred Breeding Legacy

Chapter 3   A Southern Gentleman Moves to New England

Chapter 4   Stock Market Crash of 1929—the Great Depression Begins

Chapter 5   Bill Jackson as a Law Partner Carter, Ledyard & Milburn (1934–1947)

PART TWO

Battle of the Atlantic US Military Involvement

(1942–1943)

Introduction to Part Two

Chapter 6   Mr. Jackson Goes to War

Chapter 7   History Is Made: 1942 US Anti-Submarine Coastal Command

Chapter 8   Allied Coastal Command

Chapter 9   London—Air Transport Command

Chapter 10   Executing the Bay of Biscay Decision

Chapter 11   The Secretary of War Likes the Plan

Chapter 12   British Royal Navy Joins the Battle

Chapter 13   British and American Relations

PART THREE

Growth of the US Intelligence Community

(1940–1945)

Introduction to Part Three

Chapter 14   Bill Jackson and US Intelligence

Background for American Indoctrination

Chapter 15   Foreign Propaganda Influence in America

Chapter 16   Enigma and the ULTRA Program

Chapter 17   Establishing the American OSS

Chapter 18   Friends Made—Associates for Life

Chapter 19   ULTRA, Red, Purple, and Magic Cryptography

Chapter 20   Military Intelligence in WWII Europe What Part Did Bill Jackson Play?

Chapter 21   The Allies Storm France

Chapter 22   Hitler’s Surprise—December 1944

Chapter 23   Writing History: The Ardennes Counteroffensive

Chapter 24   Targeted Intelligence and Hitler’s Gold

Chapter 25   The Spy Connection

Chapter 26   Postwar Plans for the OSS, British SOE, and Bletchley Park

Chapter 27   From War to Business in the States

Chapter 28   Washington Called

Author’s Notes

Appendix A

Appendix B

Bibliography

DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

William Harding Jackson (1901–1971)

image001.jpg

A private moment with the president. William Harding Jackson (left) and President Dwight D. Eisenhower (right), immediately after Jackson was sworn in as special assistant to the president, Foreign Affairs, March 1, 1956. Photo from the Jackson family collection, courtesy of Bruce Pitcairn Jackson.

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the State to defend them.

Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares … and a lion to terrify the wolves.

—Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Italian Renaissance Philosopher

On royalty keeping faith, from The Prince

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is dedicated to my best friend and most constructive critic, Denise, my wife of twenty-eight years, and her family and to my late parents, Ralph and Marvelle Currier, and my two brothers, Ken and Paul of Tucson, Arizona, and their families. They put up with me for all these years, and I can only thank them for their love, understanding, and patience in all things.

Nothing worthwhile in life is possible without devotion and personal surrender to God, his son on earth, Jesus Christ, and dedicated service to others. It is a fact; there are no atheists in a foxhole. For God and country and the brave men and women who served America in war and those who will never return, and their families—I salute you.

Vic Currier, 2015

_______________________

Writing about another man’s life was new to me when I began this project in 2008. Fortunately, early in my research, I ran across these words from Yale history professor and former WWII Office of Strategic Services intelligence officer Sherman Kent (1903–1986), hired by William Harding Jackson at the Central Intelligence Agency in the early 1950s to oversee the Office of National Estimates until his retirement in 1967: "We have within us a feeling of common purpose, and a good sense of mission. … People work in the intelligence calling until they are numb, because they love it, because it is their life, and because the rewards are the rewards of professional accomplishment."

Kent wrote a book many consider to be the bible of intelligence and the tradecraft called Strategic Intelligence for American World Policy, first published in 1949 by Princeton University Press. Kent cautioned writers of intelligence estimates and history, saying, "When the evidence seems to force a single and immediate conclusion, then that is the time to worry about one’s bigotry and to do a little conscientious introspection into why this particular conclusion stands out. Was it in the material—or was it in you? The command of Socrates, ‘know thyself,’ never gave richer rewards then in the world of what we’ve been calling systematic study." Throughout the project, we kept those words posted on the office wall as a reminder to report—and let the reader decide—once an art, now long lost in today’s journalism. In the course of research, we corresponded with many knowledgeable people who were just as inquisitive about our subject, William Harding Jackson, as we were. Their help and guidance were invaluable.

We should start by thanking Mr. Jackson’s four living sons: William Harding Bill Jackson, of Gloucester, Massachusetts; Richard Lee Dick Jackson, of Wellington, Florida; Bruce Pitcairn Jackson, of Washington, DC; and Howell Edmunds Jackson, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. We finally met for the first time in Georgetown in October 2012. Over time, we have become friends. There had to be some early reluctance on their part, but gradually, as each one learned more about their father, they began contributing stories and rare photographs of his life. To them, and their families, we are most grateful. One of them in particular, my friend Dick Jackson, formerly a senior officer in the diplomatic corps and president of Anatolia University in Greece for some fifteen years, is a busy world traveler. There are no words to describe his help, hospitality, and the countless hours he devoted to making this story about his father’s place in history both accurate and readable. Dick, thank you! To Bill, Bruce, and Howell, thank you as well for your important contributions to text and—especially—for the photographs of your father, which are, in fact, history changers!

After forty years missing and once thought by the family as lost, a large part of the William Harding Jackson Papers surfaced at an online antiquities auction in 2011 and were, thankfully, purchased by the Special Collections Research Center of the Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library at Georgetown University. The family and this writer were relieved to find them in good hands in the spring of 2012. The Special Collections Center is one of the largest known collections of US intelligence community papers in existence. We would like to specifically thank Dr. John A. Buchtel, PhD (a fellow New Mexican by birth and connoisseur of world-class chili peppers), who found the papers and brought them to the library. Also, we would like to thank Mr. Nicholas B. Scheetz, the chief manuscripts librarian at the time, and manuscripts custodian Ms. Elizabeth Wilkinson and archivist Scott S. Taylor of Georgetown University for their invaluable continuing assistance.

Further, the National Archives and Records Administration helped retrieve certain documents related to our subject. The help of NARA researchers and affiliated presidential libraries was equally invaluable. Sincere thanks for days and weeks helping us sort through finding aids, documents, and copying go to Mr. Randy Sowell, archivist at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library at Independence, Missouri, for his assistance in locating a single history-changing document among hundreds of thousands—and to Ms. Mary Burtzloff and Ms. Chalsea Millner, of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum at Abilene, Kansas. Special thanks for the tour and archival assistance go to Mr. George J. DuPont Jr., executive director, and Ms. Brenda Lynn, director of development at the Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame at Lake Worth, Florida, for verifying records regarding Tommy Hitchcock Jr., Jock Whitney, Averell Harriman, and our subject, William Harding Jackson, among others.

For our multiple research trips to the boyhood home of Mr. Jackson, the Belle Meade Plantation in Nashville, we would like to offer our sincere appreciation for historical preservation and assistance to many folks, especially the Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities, the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and the Belle Meade Plantation—with special thanks for tours and archival retrieval to Belle Meade executive director, Mr. Alton Kelly; Mr. John Lamb, curator; Historian Tom Macaulay; and to Mr. Jackson’s cousin, Hennie Benedict-Morris, who donated their valuable time to researching, correcting, and verifying our many assumptions and thoughts about the Harding and Jackson families. Readers should especially understand that Old South historian Mr. Ridley Wills II, author of The Belle Meade Mansion, Plantation and Stud (Vanderbilt University Press, 1991), allowed us to quote freely from his excellent history of Belle Meade. Mr. Wills also helped this writer and the Jackson family locate the long-lost William Harding Jackson (1901–1971) Papers, now at Georgetown University—and clearly, without his gracious help, this project might have missed the turn down an extremely valuable road toward accuracy.

Many thanks to the Wall Street law firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, LLP, and especially to Mr. Robert Riggs for providing a rare, out-of-print copy of A Brief History of Carter, Ledyard, & Milburn from 1854 to 1988, by authors Francis M. Ellis and Edward F. Clark Jr. (publisher Peter E. Randall, 1988) and permission to quote freely from the many biographies and stories about the lawyers associated with the firm, including their partner William Harding Jackson from 1930 to 1947. Without this book, we might have gone down a completely different historical path. Thank you.

Many individuals contributed to this text. We would like to thank Louisiana cousins removed to Tucson, Arizona, former air force colonel Donald Hutchinson, a U-2 pilot and operations officer at Davis-Monthan AFB, and his sweet wife, Millie, for introducing us to Mr. Jackson during the Christmas holidays of 1969–70, and to Mr. Jackson’s stepdaughter, Patricia Hanley, for their contributions; and to our late friend William F. Dement Jr., of Alto, New Mexico, an author of several books including Delay, Deny, Hope They Die: World Trade Center First Responders—The Battle for Health Care and Compensation (2011), former head of the drug enforcement division for NYPD, one of the first responders on 911. Bill Dement was a constant source of inspiration and encouragement through long conversations about writing and his editing a portion of this book. Rest in peace, my good friend. And to former US ambassador Frank Wisner II, of Patton-Boggs in New York, thank you so much for your interview and insights.

Presidents and world leaders sought William Harding Jackson’s advice and counsel. It was a great pleasure to have met the man on a personal level. Our hope is that his story will finally be told so he can take his honorable place in history, and more importantly, his family will finally know the facts about his very secret life in intelligence, espionage, counterespionage, and psychological warfare.

PROLOGUE

It is certain this country would be very different if William Harding Jackson had not put his indelible stamp on the government of the United States of America and its national security apparatus for more than fifteen years—from 1941 through 1956, probably the most dangerous times in US history. There is no other American patriot who influenced the outcome of so many sensitive, top-secret national security matters more than Bill Jackson during that time—and for decades beyond his death. It’s as if he was born for it.

Jackson was raised in the best of Southern traditions. His ancestors were part of our nation’s pioneering fabric, yet Bill Jackson’s secret double life was hidden in a shroud of American patriotism at the highest levels of government, the details of which would not be declassified nor revealed to his family and the public for some forty years after his death. He became a prominent Wall Street attorney representing the New York Stock Exchange and many business power brokers, only to find himself immersed in the horrors of World War II as a top-secret Enigma code ULTRA intelligence and counterespionage agent on the Allied front lines in Europe. He was a personal confidant and go-to guy for at least three sitting US presidents, instrumental in breaking the back of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. He helped plan the D-day invasion of France, aided in the rescue of American troops at the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest, and set the stage for the ultimate downfall of the brutal East German Stasi state security. He was instrumental in turning the tides of war during the Battle of the Atlantic and the Chinese invasion of Korea. As a trusted adviser and personal friend of key people in the British government, with unfettered access to the most well-kept secrets of war and diplomacy, Jackson learned from their MI-6 intelligence service then helped build the world’s most powerful tool for intelligence gathering and covert operations: the US Central Intelligence Agency.

His public life was at the pinnacle of ethical behavior. Domestically, he created innovative financing for American industry during troubled financial times, served as president of one of the oldest hospitals in America, and helped eliminate racial inequality. His inspiring speeches and policy-building white papers were discussed in Congress, the State Department, and the Oval Office. He sat across from Nikita Khrushchev with Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles at the Big Four talks in Geneva, and on the National Security Council during the Suez Crisis and the Hungarian Revolution. He monitored thermonuclear bomb testing for the president and was a key American designated to restore continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack. The brilliant Bill Jackson was a powerful rainmaker who asked for no public recognition and received little.

This book will demonstrate that William Harding Jackson was an important loyal advocate of American exceptionalism in many arenas—while standing in the wings on the stage of freedom’s quest. When Bill Jackson was in the building, everyone paid attention. And for a time in our nation’s history, at least three presidents of opposing political stripes saw to it—personally.

PART ONE

Early Years (1901–1941)

CHAPTER ONE

Five Generations of Family History

Bill Jackson’s Early Years (1901–1911)

______________________

When you reach a point in life where there’s

More history behind you than future in front of you,

. . . it’s at that moment you begin to learn and contribute.

—Anonymous

Monday morning, December 8, 1941: Forty-one-year-old international polo star Tommy Hitchcock Jr., a dashing, successful investment banker at Lehman Brothers, quietly folded the Times and laid it on the credenza in his office. He reached for the telephone and rang the number for Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, a respected old New York law firm just a few blocks away. The receptionist picked up the line at the other end, and Tommy asked to speak to his friend Bill Jackson, a prominent attorney, perched in his executive office with its large picture windows overlooking Wall Street. Jackson was just a year younger than Hitchcock. The two men had a lot in common. When they weren’t working, their families enjoyed a good life near the horse country and polo fields of Long Island. Tommy was chief executive for an expanding air transport company. Bill was president of the board of directors for a major hospital.

In younger days, the two men were accomplished athletes. Jackson had played football at St. Mark’s and led the Princeton University Tigers to the national collegiate polo championship. Hitchcock was a war hero, a volunteer teenage pilot of the famed World War I Lafayette Escadrille in France. He had been the world’s number 1 polo player for two decades. Both men were private pilots. On occasion, the two would commute to the financial district by seaplane or speedboat up the Hudson River.

Among the top-twenty corporate law firms in America in 1925, Beekman, Bogue, Clark & Griscom ranked number 3 with twelve partners; Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft was number 7 (eleven partners); Sullivan & Cromwell was number 8 (eleven); and Carter, Ledyard & Milburn ranked sixteenth with nine partners. When Bill Jackson graduated from Harvard Law, his first stop as a new law associate was Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Two years later, he moved to Beekman-Bogue. By late 1930, he had found his way to the prestigious, albeit smaller, and more focused Wall Street law firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn, where he became a full partner (and the firm’s hiring partner) in 1934.¹ By the time Tommy Hitchcock placed the phone call, Bill Jackson had become a well-established Wall Street attorney with deep roots in New York’s elite legal and philanthropic circles. The two men’s lives were filled with client meetings, Brooks Brothers pinstriped suits, private planes, thoroughbred horses, and good schools for their kids—until that Monday morning when time seemed to stand still. Things had changed radically.

Tommy glanced once again at the newspaper and abruptly asked Bill what he was going to do about the situation. Bill was aware of the weekend’s events but hadn’t really given it much thought. Unofficially, World War II started overnight for Americans. On a lazy Sunday morning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, had been attacked by Japanese warplanes. News reports were slow coming in. They estimated that hundreds, if not thousands, died in the attack. After years of relative isolationism following the bloody stalemate in the World War I Flanders Fields of Europe, it looked as though another major war was certain. America had formally declared its neutrality and avoided the war in Europe up to that point—but the events of the weekend were the proverbial last straw. Within hours there would be a formal congressional declaration of war against Japan, and Germany would, in turn, declare war on the United States soon thereafter.

Military service is normally reserved to men in their thirties, or younger. So what drives successful forty-year-old businessmen to pull up roots and enlist in the armed forces? That’s exactly what Bill Jackson and Tommy Hitchcock did. Forgetting for the moment they were beyond their youthful prime and the fact that both men had growing families, Tommy spoke wistfully about the thrill of flying the army’s high speed fighter planes. He told Bill, "It’ll be like playing a championship game on the main field! Come on. Let’s fly down to Washington tomorrow and see what’s going on."

In those days, the average American male lived to about age sixty-two. Two-thirds of their lives were behind them. Yet, just like that, the two men were off to war. One would not return but remain a hero.² The other would come back, his world tattered by war memories, but he would become a far more serious and determined man.

Belle Meade Plantation—Nashville

Bill Jackson’s story begins and ends in Nashville, Tennessee. Jackson was born on March 25, 1901, in the Belle Meade Mansion, the only child of William Harding Jackson (1874–1903) and Anne Davis Richardson (1877–1954). Bill was given the same name as his father in honor of the rich Harding and Jackson family ancestry. No doubt some of his first mature thoughts were centered in the fact that he had a reputation to live up to. He was without a father figure most of those childhood years. It was a difficult, complex family burden, yet seventy years later, history proved that he did his part.

image003.jpg

William Harding Jackson (1901–1971)

at fourteen months, courtesy of

Belle Meade Mansion collection

Throughout his life, Jackson would never escape the shadow and much-chronicled history of the Belle Meade Plantation. His earliest childhood memories of close and endearing relationships with both white and black families were with him until his death. Belle Meade had a rich, five-generation, one-hundred-year history as the world’s premier thoroughbred breeding farm. Jackson rarely, if ever, lived in a home or worked in an office that did not contain old family photographs, furniture, paintings, and other memorabilia from Belle Meade to remind him of his family’s legacy. If those things were not present, his mother, D, was sure to remind him with many Civil War–era stories. In her mind at times, it seemed the Old South might surely rise again!

image005.jpg

Belle Meade Mansion (circa 1890), courtesy of Jackson family collection

The Hardings—from the Farms of Halifax, Virginia, to Davidson County, Tennessee

image007.jpg

John Harding (1777–1865)

(Photo Engraver: Samuel Sartain)

The Harding families cleared and settled hundreds of acres of land west of Fort Nashborough near the winding Cumberland River. The area had been settled in 1779, later incorporated in 1806 and renamed Nashville. After helping his father, Giles, establish the family settlement and farming interests, twenty-nine-year-old John Harding married twenty-one-year-old Susanna Shute in 1806 and tended their own farm near McSpadden’s Bend, eventually naming it Belle Meade (or beautiful meadow). The couple had two daughters (Amanda and Elizabeth) and a son, future CSA General William Giles Harding, born in 1808. The latter followed his father’s footsteps by taking over the Belle Meade plantation operation in 1839.

For much of Bill Jackson’s life, he was surrounded by or knew heroic and powerful military generals. To start with, he was the grandson of two famous Civil War generals who served the Confederate States of America (CSA): his great-grandfather, General William Giles Harding (1808–1886), and his paternal grandfather, General William Hicks Red Jackson (1835–1903).³

image009.jpg

CSA Major General William Giles Harding

(1808–1886) (Photo Engraver: Samuel Sartain), courtesy of Belle Meade Mansion archives

General Harding, son of John Harding, married twice. His first wife in 1829 was Mary Selena McNairy (1812–1837). Mary Selena eventually gave birth to two sons, hopefully destined to carry on the Belle Meade family legacy. She died of an unspecified illness in March 1837. One of the two boys, Nathaniel, died five years later in 1843 at age ten in a tragic horse-riding accident near downtown Nashville. The second and only son to reach adulthood, John Harding Jr. (1831–1914), lived to inherit substantial wealth from his grandfather.

In 1839, William Giles Harding was named a brigadier general in the Tennessee Militia, later becoming an important organizer for the Confederacy, and said to have raised nearly five million dollars (2014 value) for the war effort. General Harding remarried to his second wife in 1840, Elizabeth Irwin McGavock (1850–1913), the daughter of Randal McGavock (1766–1843), former mayor of Nashville.⁴ Elizabeth gave birth to two daughters, Selene (1846–1892), better known as Lena to friends and family, and Mary Elizabeth (1850–1913)—but there were no sons. Infant mortality was high in those years. Between the two wives, General Harding lost six children due to illness during infancy or to stillbirth. By the time the Civil War broke out, only his son by his first wife, John Harding Jr., and two daughters (Lena and Mary Elizabeth) by his second wife had survived to adulthood.

John Harding Jr. married and moved away from Belle Meade in 1853. That year, according to the preeminent Old South historian Ridley Wills II, the young man was given a large 1,200 acre Stones River plantation (he named Bellevue) by his aging grandfather, John Harding. John Harding’s other grandson, John McGavock, received Harding’s ten-thousand-acre Mississippi County, Arkansas, plantation as a wedding gift that same year. The gifts left the senior Harding with about seven thousand acres, where his immediate families lived, including the Belle Meade plantation property operated by his only son, General Harding. Later that year and into 1854, General Harding expanded their home, resulting in the rather palatial Belle Meade Mansion we know today.⁵

Unfortunately, General Harding’s second wife, Elizabeth McGavock Harding, died two years after the Civil War ended, leaving the general to live in the mansion alone for the remainder of his life with his two daughters, twenty-one-year-old Lena and seventeen-year-old Mary Elizabeth. Thereafter, General Harding never remarried.

The Jacksons—From the James River Farms of Virginia to Paris County, Tennessee

The Jackson family relocated to Paris, Tennessee, from Goochland County on the James River in eastern Virginia, where Bill Jackson’s paternal great-grandfather, Dr. Alexander Jackson, was born. After studying medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Alex Jackson opened his medical practice in Paris County sometime around 1826–28. In 1829, he married Mary Hurt, who gave birth to a daughter, also named Mary, and two famous sons of the Old South: Bill Jackson’s great-uncle, US Supreme Court Justice Howell Edmunds Jackson (1832–1895), a graduate of Cumberland College (1856),⁶ and future CSA General William Hicks Red Jackson (1835–1903), a West Point Military Academy graduate (class of 1856).

image011.jpg

CSA General William Hicks Red Jackson

(1835–1903)

With his fiery-red hair and mustache, General Jackson was nicknamed Red by hundreds of his fellow soldiers (and his enemies) but was more commonly known as Billy to his immediate family. Red Jackson served in the federal army with fellow West Pointer J. E. B. Jeb Stuart (class of 1854), and both future Civil War heroes served under another Tennessean then Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Eggleston Johnston (class of 1829), a personal friend of General Harding’s. All three were assigned to the mounted riflemen in the New Mexico Territory out of old Fort Union north of Santa Fe, chasing renegade Indians along the Chisholm and Santa Fe Trails during the Kiowa and Comanche Campaign of 1858–1861 in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.⁷

By the late 1840s, Dr. Alex Jackson had retired from medical practice and relocated to Jackson, Tennessee, to take up plantation farming and politics. There he found a kindred soul in General Harding of Davidson County. Both were men of opinion and leaders in Tennessee business, agricultural, and political circles. As historian Ridley Wills relates the story, Dr. Alex Jackson and General Harding had become friends by 1851. The two families knew each other well.

In May 1861, Colonel Johnston, Captain Jeb Stuart, Lieutenant Red Jackson, and thousands of other soldiers walked away from the federal army to serve with the Confederacy. Johnston quickly became one of CSA President Jefferson Davis’s most trusted generals, while Jeb Stuart returned to his home state of Virginia. Red Jackson went home to Tennessee to interview for an officer’s position with the Tennessee Militia—where General Harding, then fifty-three, sat on the militia review board. Jackson was immediately promoted to captain in a CSA artillery regiment. Soon thereafter, he was severely wounded fighting Union army troops at the Battle of Belmont, Missouri (November 7, 1861).

Over the next three years, after several months recovering from his wounds, Jackson was quickly promoted through the ranks to CSA colonel in charge of the First Tennessee Cavalry (renamed later as the Seventh Cavalry) under General Earl Van Dorn. For gallantry at the capture of the Union army supply depot at Holly Springs, Mississippi, Red Jackson was promoted to the rank of brigadier general on December 29, 1862, at the age of twenty-seven. "He served throughout the Vicksburg campaign, was in command of Polk’s cavalry during the Meridian expedition, and had charge of the Army of Mississippi in the Atlanta campaign. He was attached to Hood’s army during the invasion of Tennessee in the autumn of 1864; and in February 1865, was placed in command of all the Tennessee cavalry in General N. B. Forrest’s Department. Although, he was never formally advanced to the grade of major general, he led one of Forrest’s two divisions at the close of the war." Red Jackson led as many as five thousand troops or more in battles throughout the South, from Missouri to Georgia. It’s estimated that General Jackson had ridden more than seven thousand miles on horseback since graduating from West Point in 1856. By the war’s end nine years later, he was said to be older than his years.

Red Jackson was a living legend by 1865—he had just turned thirty years old.

At one point after the Battle of Shiloh, Red Jackson "missed by a margin of less than an hour while en route from Shiloh to Memphis" of capturing the Union’s general of the army, Ulysses S. Grant, an event that might have changed the course of the entire war.⁸ A. H. Holden quoted, "Persons who lived in West Tennessee at the time and from ‘General Grant’s Memoirs.’" The event was pretty much forgotten until Holden’s article appeared in the Nashville Banner seventy years later. John C. Cooke (also a writer for the Banner) and Frank M. Ewing of Nashville heard the story and remembered "that General Jackson was not in the habit of talking freely about Civil War incidents, and that is why the one referred to had been generally forgotten … Mr. Ewing was a kinsman of Mrs. [Lena] Jackson and as a child and as a young man spent much of his time at Belle Meade with the Jackson family. He says some years after the war, Gen. Fitzhugh Lee came to Nashville, and that, as a youngster, he had the privilege of hearing a conversation between him and General Jackson. The two grizzled veterans were talking about their former associations and friendship, when Lee asked Jackson to tell him the story of Grant’s escape from him in West Tennessee."

image013.jpg

General William Hicks Red Jackson (1835–1903) (left) and General Fitzhugh Lee (1835–1905), former governor of Virginia (1886–1890) and nephew of Gen. Robert E. Lee, telling Civil War stories in front of Belle Meade Mansion (circa 1901); photo from the Jackson family collection, courtesy of William H. Jackson Jr.

"Jackson said Grant’s story in his ‘Memoirs’ was not accurate in detail. General Jackson said he rode up to the Deleach residence [Grant’s headquarters at Shiloh] not knowing he was a Union man, and asked for General Grant. Deleach said Grant was not there and had not been there. ‘The reason I did not capture Grant … was that Deleach told me a lie. I found out afterwards that as I walked into the front door, Grant slipped out the back way.’"

In response to a letter from Tennessee Governor Harris about former Confederate President Jefferson Davis denying Jackson’s promotion to major general, General Joseph E. Johnston, Red Jackson’s former commander from the New Mexico Territory Comanche campaign, penned a letter to General Marcus J. Wright. The letter sent from Washington was dated April 25, 1885, and read:

Dear General, I have just received and read your letter of yesterday, and Gov. Harris’s enclosed with it. As Gov. Harris does not mention the grounds of Mr. Davis’s refusal to promote General W. H. Jackson, it would be difficult for me to make remarks on the subject as you request. I will say, however, and do so positively and confidently, that there was not only no reason why that admirable officer should not have been promoted, but every reason why he should have been, as he proved on many a bloody day. The army in which he commanded a division at least two years, knew in him only the good and best parts of soldiership. It would be strange if the President in Richmond knew him better than his comrades and immediate Commanders. Yours truly, J. E. Johnston⁹

Many years after the war, on March 17, 1887, Bill Jackson’s grandfather answered a letter from a writer in Atlanta named Charles C. Jones, inquiring about the general’s memories, in which he expressed his bitterness about the war.

Dear Sir,

My absence from home [while] at Hot Springs, Ark. prevented me from replying sooner to your letter. All my private papers covering the time I was in the Confederate Army have been left at my old home in Jackson, and I have no recollection of the time I was appointed Colonel [and] Brigadier Gen. and further, it is my wish to forget, as much as it [is] in my power—all about the war. Yours respectfully, W. H. Jackson

The Harding-Jackson Dynasty

General Harding had followed (some say memorized) the war history of the young Civil War hero. Red Jackson was a favorite son of the South, always welcomed in General Harding’s Belle Meade home. Harding’s second wife, Elizabeth McGavock, died at age forty-eight in 1867. A year later, after helping his father, Alex Jackson, reestablish his two war-ravaged plantations in West Tennessee, Red Jackson, then age thirty-three, asked for twenty-two-year-old Lena’s hand in marriage. General Harding, then age sixty, was elated and reportedly entertained one of the largest and most publicized weddings of the Old South at Belle Meade. Following the wedding, the couple moved into the mansion at Harding’s invitation to help him run the plantation. In the following years, the two former Confederate generals expanded Belle Meade to more than 5,400 acres in size.

Bill Jackson’s Great-Uncle Howell Edmunds Jackson (1832–1895)

Dr. Alex Jackson’s other famous son, Howell, returned to practicing law in nearby Memphis after the war while brother Red Jackson helped General Harding with Belle Meade. Howell’s first wife, Sophie Malloy of Memphis, died in March 1873, leaving Howell to raise five children.

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Supreme Court Justice Howell Edmunds Jackson (1832–1895), courtesy of Jackson family collection

Several years before marrying Sophie, he had visited Belle Meade many times with his father and met General Harding’s youngest daughter, Mary Elizabeth, when she was just a schoolgirl. Howell, a well-known attorney and a forty-two-year-old widower with children, began courting Mary Elizabeth from long distance. The next year, in April of 1874, he married the general’s twenty-four-year-old daughter, which created quite a stir in Nashville society. The couple moved into the Belle Meade Mansion, along with Mary’s sister Lena and Howell’s brother Red Jackson. Several historical accounts say they all—the aging General Harding, General Red Jackson and Lena and their children, Howell and Mary Elizabeth Jackson and their children—lived together in separate wings of the mansion.¹⁰

In 1886, after Howell had served as a US senator (1881–1886), he and Mary Elizabeth moved into their own mansion down the Natchez Trace from Belle Meade. They named it West Meade. After relocating to West Meade, Howell was appointed to the US Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit (1891–1893). In 1893, America’s twenty-third president, Benjamin Harrison, nominated Howell Jackson to serve as an associate justice on the United States Supreme Court; his replacement on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals was fellow Tennessean and personal friend Justice Horace Lurton.¹¹ Lurton’s friend, President William Howard Taft, appointed Lurton to fill the vacancy of Justice R. W. Peckham on the US Supreme Court, where Lurton also served as an associate justice from 1909 until his death on July 12, 1914, at age seventy. Lurton’s son, Horace Jr., and Bill Jackson were childhood friends who corresponded frequently in their adult years.

After senate confirmation, Howell Jackson commuted to Washington and served there until 1895, when he resigned due to ill health and died shortly thereafter. The Washington Post front-page headlines, August 9, 1895, read: "Justice Jackson Dead: Passed Away Peacefully at His Old Home in Tennessee. Funeral to Occur on Sunday. Although Afflicted With Consumption He Seemed to Improve Slightly Until He Came to Washington to Sit In the Second Hearing of the Income Tax Cases—After That His Decline Was Rapid, Although He Took To Bed Only a Week Ago … died at his residence at West Meade, six miles west of (Nashville) at 2 o’clock." On the same date, the New York Tribune carried an article on page 7 headlined "Justice Jackson Dead: He Passed Away At West Meade Yesterday Afternoon—His Strength Had Failed Rapidly Since His Return From The Income Tax Hearing and The End Was Not Unexpected."

Bill Jackson’s Father, William Harding Jackson (1874–1903)

Meanwhile, General Harding continued to live with his daughter and son-in-law at Belle Meade, likely fearing the couple might never have a son to continue the Belle Meade legacy. Finally, in 1875 at age sixty-six, Lena and Red presented the general with a grandson. They named him William Harding Jackson in honor of both General Harding and Dr. Jackson. Lena and Red Jackson had given birth to five children in all, but only three lived to adulthood: their only son, William Harding Jackson (1874–1903), and two Jackson daughters, who later married locally, Eunice Jackson Marks (1871–1901), the wife of Albert D. Marks, and Selene Harding Jackson Elliston (1876–1913), the wife of William Robert Elliston.

Bill Jackson’s father, William, and his two aunts, Eunice and Selene, were homeschooled at the mansion until they reached their preteens, then William was sent off to the Webb School in Belle Buckle, Tennessee, as a boy. It was several miles east of Nashville, between Murfreesboro and Manchester, which led to his early bouts of homesickness. He returned as a young man to the Montgomery Bell Academy, a preparatory day school adjacent to the old University of Nashville campus near Belle Meade—while Eunice and Selene attended Dr. Price’s School for Young Ladies in Nashville.

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William Harding Jackson (1874–1903),

Bill Jackson’s father (circa 1900);

courtesy of Belle Meade Mansion

The prestige of Belle Meade and the Harding-Jackson dynasty had become well-known around the world. Lena and General Red Jackson were honored to host President Grover Cleveland and his wife at the mansion in October 1887, the year after General Harding died.¹² However, the massive plantations had seen better years economically. Ridley Wills discussed the serious falling-out between Howell, his brother Red Jackson, and General Harding’s son, John Harding