In spite of the difficulty of raising cotton in a climate not entirely suited to it, it is noticeable that the Hermitage plantation had the reputation of making good crops of high-grade staple. In 1832 there was an article in _Niles’ Register_ commenting on the fact that fifty-four bales of the Hermitage cotton had sold in New Orleans at 11½ cents a pound, which was called “an extraordinary price;” and the article stated further that it was the best cotton that had come to New Orleans from Tennessee. In 1826 Jackson’s New Orleans factor, Maunsel White, wrote to him that he had sold the Hermitage cotton at “the very top of the market,” the net proceeds for the crop that year being $3,477.51. Checking over the references to the sales of the cotton crops in the Jackson papers it is to be seen that there was a great fluctuation in the price obtained. The 1844 crop, for instance, brought only 4½ cents a pound, the price ranging from that low mark up to 15 cents for the crop of 1825 and even higher than that during the boom in cotton following the end of the War of 1812. In Maunsel White, General Jackson had at New Orleans a factor who stood high in the cotton trade and who could be depended on to protect the Tennessee planter in marketing his crops to the best advantage. Captain White was not only Jackson’s factor but his friend and a former comrade at arms in the New Orleans campaign, and he took great pride in getting the highest possible price for the Hermitage crops. In January, 1831, White wrote to Jackson, then in the White House, that the flatboats had arrived from the Hermitage with their cargo of fifty-nine bales and that the overseer was to be congratulated on its quality and condition as it was “without blemish.” The best offer he had got at that time, he wrote, was 9 cents; but he expressed a determination to hold for 10 cents “which it is fully worth” he added, “unless we receive worse news from the unsettled state of politics.” He mentioned the popular belief that a general war in Europe was perhaps impending, and slyly added: “On this subject, however, you must be better advised than anyone else in these states; and if it were not asking too much, or what were improper for me to ask, I would ask your opinion on that subject.” An inside tip from the President on an impending war would be worth a fortune to a New Orleans cotton broker; but there is no evidence that Jackson gave Captain White any information on the subject. This was before the day of White House “leaks.” The following year White wrote Jackson that he had sold part of his crop for 11½ cents in New Orleans and shipped part of it to Liverpool where it commanded 8½d sterling, stating that “your cotton this year has brought the highest price both at home and abroad.”