Andrew Jackson Donelson

Andrew Jackson Donelson (August 25, 1799 – June 26, 1871) was an American diplomat and politician. He served in various positions as a Democrat and was the Know Nothing nominee for US vice president in 1856.

After the death of his father, Donelson lived with his aunt, Rachel Jackson, and her husband, Andrew Jackson. Donelson attended the U.S. Military Academy and served under his uncle in Florida. He resigned his commission, studied law, passed the bar and began his own practice in Nashville. He assisted Jackson's presidential campaigns and served as his private secretary after Jackson won the 1828 presidential election. He returned to Tennessee after the end of Jackson's presidency in 1837 and remained active in local politics.

After helping James K. Polk triumph at the 1844 Democratic National Convention, Donelson was appointed by U.S. President John Tyler to represent the United States in the Republic of Texas, where Donelson played an important role in the Texas annexation. In 1846, President Polk appointed Donelson as Minister to Prussia. Donelson left that position in 1849 and became the editor of a Democratic newspaper but alienated various factions in the party. In 1856, the Know Nothings chose Donelson as their vice presidential nominee, and he campaigned on a ticket with former Whig President Millard Fillmore. The ticket finished in third place in both the electoral and popular vote, behind the Democratic and the Republican tickets. Donelson also participated in the 1860 Constitutional Union Convention.

Vice-presidential nomination and retirement In 1856, Donelson was nominated as the running mate of former President Millard Fillmore on the Know Nothing (American Party) ticket. Fillmore and Donelson managed to garner over 20% of the popular vote but won only the eight electoral votes of Maryland. He he mentioned in his acceptance speech at the nominating convention that he personally owned 100 slaves and loved the South.

In 1858, Donelson sold Tulip Grove and moved to Memphis, Tennessee. He participated primarily in local politics there, although he was a delegate to the Constitutional Union party's national nominating convention, which selected his old Tennessee nemesis, John Bell, as its presidential candidate. During Reconstruction, he split time between his Memphis home and his plantation in Bolivar County, Mississippi. In his correspondence with his wife, he groused about the need to pay wages to Black workers who had once been enslaved.

Satterfield, Robert Beeler. "Andrew Jackson Donelson: A Moderate Nationalist Jacksonian." Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1961. Spence, Richard Douglas (2017). Andrew Jackson Donelson: Jacksonian and Unionist. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.