The painter and the zebra-hunter: what presidents do after leaving office

By Matthew Sweet

Not all presidents are on the money. Not all presidents are in the money. Andrew Jackson, who these days looks out quizzically from the back of every $20 bill, was born poor, married a rich heiress who smoked a corncob pipe, and died with 150 slaves, a 1,000-acre plantation and wealth equivalent to $133m.

Thomas Jefferson, the face on the $2 note, inherited 3,000 acres in his teens but died in debt, his slaves mortgaged, after failing to dispose of his stuff by public lottery. For Jefferson there was a final consolation. He died on July 4th 1826. The same July 4th on which his predecessor, John Adams, breathed his last – yet Adams died in credit, with a 40-acre estate to his name, and no human property on the ledger.