General Jackson had recurring bad luck with his cotton crop from time to time up to the very year of his death. On February 10th, 1845, just four months before he died, in a letter to A. J. Donelson, then United States Minister to the Republic of Texas, he mentioned that his current crop of cotton, amounting to 37,000 pounds, had been “forced into the market” (for what reason is not revealed) and that it netted only $1,312. This, he said, after paying the overseer and drafts on the cotton “left us only $36 to pay our debts here.” To add to his discomfiture at this time, his overseer in Mississippi misappropriated the proceeds of that plantation’s crop and left the General in a temporary financial stringency. But Jackson immediately put hands to work cutting wood on the Mississippi plantation (wood was the fuel for the Mississippi River steamboats then), and stated that if this did not relieve him from debt he was determined to sell the lower plantation and enough of its slaves to put him square with the world again. * * * * Although cotton was looked upon as the principal and most important crop of the Hermitage farm, the General really derived the greatest personal pleasure (and a substantial part of his income) from the horses that were raised on the farm. When he resigned from the Superior Court of Tennessee in 1804 and concentrated all his ability and energy on the rehabilitation of his private affairs, he wisely decided to go into stock-breeding on an ambitious scale. He was admirably suited to the business of breeding fine horses. In the first place, he admired and loved a fine piece of horseflesh. From his earliest youth he had been interested in racing, gaining his first taste of “the sport of kings” at the Charleston meets in his youthful days when he was living with the Crawfords. When he came to Tennessee he came riding one blooded horse and leading another, and he was always to be found among the foremost spectators or participants if there were a horse-race anywhere in his neighborhood. He loved horses and, in the words of one of his biographers, “he knew all about the noble animal from pedigree to pathology.” That is no idle use of words, either, for Andrew Jackson studied horses, their records and their breeding; and, in an emergency, he showed that he was skilled in the art of the veterinary surgeon. A goodly share of the books in his library are on the subject of horses and the turf.