Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) to cause a commotion.

1845		W.T. Porter Big Bear of Arkansas (1847) 62: How Simon Suggs ‘Raised Jack’ [title].
1851		R. Hicks Lady Killer 58: It gave them little concern [...] whether Dr. Pusey kicked up jack.
1861		Dly Wabash Exp. (Terre Haute, IN) 10 July 2/1: [He] will swear vengeance against us, and call us all sorts of hard names, and ‘cut up jack’ generally.
1867		S. Hale letter 26 Oct. in Atkinson Letters of Susan Hale (1919) 23: The street is narrow, so it looks quite deep, — and full of Arabs raising Jack all the time.
1872		Cairo Dly Bull. (IL) 7 Sept. 2/1: [The] true blues vociferated, and gesticulated, and made faces, and cut up jack generally.
1886		Times & Democrat (Orangeburg, SC) 4 Mar. 2/1: I recomember how you cut up Jack when I merried [sic].
1896		Shiner Gaz. (TX) 23 Jan. 7/2: They who dance must pay the piper. We cut up Jack and are brought low by our own folly.
1904		Lincoln Co. Leader (Toledo, OR) 9 Dec. 8/2: Some men imagine they are great and try to tear up Jack.
1905		Minneapolis Jrnl (MN) 12 Nov. 28/5: Whistle thru her fingers / Ride a horse bareback, / [...] / Sometimes cut up ‘jack’.
1906		J.W. Carr ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in DN III:ii 161: tear up jack, v. phr. To raise a commotion. ‘He just tore up jack when he found out he was fired.’.
1908		L.W. Payne Jr ‘Word-List From East Alabama’ in DN III:iv 304: cut up Jack, v. phr. To do mischief, romp around and tear up things. [Ibid.] 327: kick up jack, v. phr. To raise a disturbance, cause a commotion, disarrange things.
1911		G. Stratton-Porter Harvester 365: I heard he was just tearing up Jack over here, and I could get the sound of hammering.
1912		R.W. Brown ‘Word-List From Western Indiana’ in DN III:viii 580: kick up high jack, v. phr. To cause a disturbance; to have a ‘hot time.’ ‘They are goin’ over to the school-house to-night and will just kick up high jack’.
1922		N.Y. Tribune 5 Nov. 64/1: The tariff, which seemed very likely to ‘tear up Jack’, has really figured in the campaign only locally.
1953		Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 292: Sometimes one hears tear up jack, with the same meaning.