The lots were untouched forests jutting out on an Indian trail to the river. And yet the one on which the present bank stands fetched over $3,000, and the one just below the courthouse and diagonally across fetched $1,840! Here is faith for you—here is booming that booms. If such men as Jackson and Madison pinned their faith there like that, in July, 1818, what splendid opportunities now offer themselves for faith in a town which, as one stands on the hillside looking down on the same great river, sees it covered with a cloud, not from the sky, but from earth—from furnace and factory, and behold, the valley of erstwhile woods, the busy mart of men in homes and houses. And two great railroads—the Louisville & Nashville and the Southern—and one great river, to keep freight down. The total sale of the first two or three hundred lots was $233,580. Andrew Jackson bought lot 6 for $350; Nos. 57 to 62, for $250 to $400. Madison bought lot No. 28 for $300; 39 for $390; 41 to 44, $400 to $600. Madison made his first payments, and then—let them all go for taxes! Evidently the great expounder of the Constitution and President of the United States took his first lesson in boom towns when Fate sent him to the Tennessee River to close up an Indian treaty. And he must have been easy. Oh, if the real estate agents of to-day could always meet his kidney! Further tracing of old records shows that he caught it all around. November 1st, 1826, I find that James Madison appointed one Dabney Morris his agent to handle “all his lands in Alabama, all lots in Florence, also eight shares of stock in Cypress Land Company.” On August 22, 1826, is an agreement in which James Madison extends the time of payment of a judgment he held against one Bedford amounting to $4,680.96. And, worst of all, Dabney Morris laid down on him, for later a record shows that Morris’ notes to Madison went to protest, to satisfy which the said Morris turned over land to said Madison to the tune of $24,866—a small fortune in those days (in money, not in land) when money was worth nearly double what it now is. In the slang language of to-day, they evidently “did enough to Jimmy.” But Old Hickory paid for his. It is not recorded that he lost a cent. Old Hickory was born holding on. He never turned loose.