PEGGY EATON AND ANDREW JACKSON:A PRESIDENTIAL SCANDAL
ALTINA L. WALLER
The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 as President of the United States inaugurated a new era in political history-the “era of the common man,” as it has been dubbed by historians. Jacksonian democracy was perceived at the time, and has been perceived ever since, as a period when the promise of democracy embodied in the American Revolution and the Constitution finally came to fruition. By the time Jackson came to office, most states had revised their constitutions, providing for universal manhood suffrage; that is, the property qualifications for voting were removed so that all white men, regardless of wealth or property, could vote. Many of these men, hardscrabble farmers on the frontier or members of the new working classes in the cities, closed ranks behind Andrew Jackson as the candidate who would champion their interests in Washington.
Indeed, Jackson himself seemed to embody all the hopes and aspirations of these ordinary men. He had been born in poverty on the North Carolina frontier, moved to Tennessee, fought Indians, and devoted himself to the economic development of western Tennessee. Along the way he became a military commander in the War of 1812, gaining fame and recognition for his victory in the battle of New Orleans. When the frontier had been secured from the Indians and the British, Jackson pursued his own fortune in western Tennessee as a lawyer, merchant, and land speculator. He took every opportunity to achieve wealth and social status. Even his marriage to Rachel Donelson Robards, as controversial as it was, brought with it the resources of the large and politically powerful Donelson family. By the time Jackson ran for President, he had achieved what many young men only dreamed about; he was famous for his military exploits, he had acquired a large plantation in Nashville complete with slaves, and he was politically powerful in his home state.
Although such rags-to-riches stories have become a staple of American political history, when Jackson was elected, it was the first time that a President did not have a background that placed him in the wealthy elite from either New England or Virginia. He was the first President who began life in poverty and the first from the western frontier. As the initiator of a new pattern of political history and of American democracy, Jackson has received much attention from historians. Some have applauded the changes his administration brought, while others have shown that the actual changes instituted by Jackson were not nearly as dramatic as he and his supporters claimed. Yet in all the debate and argument about Jackson himself and his administration, historians have ignored the scandal that plagued the first two years of his administration-the scandal that revolved around Peggy Eaton.
Altina Waller's essay about the Peggy Eaton affair reveals that important changes were taking place in social and domestic life as well as in politics. Peggy herself seemed to take the rhetoric about democracy seriously; although she never argued that women ought to have the right to vote (nor did other women make this argument in the antebellum era), she did seem to assume that her status as a tavern keeper's daughter would not prevent her from achieving status as a "lady" in Washington society. And Jackson did not understand why Peggy, as the wife of his best friend and officer of the Cabinet, could not rise to high social status. What neither realized was the opposition that would be mounted by the society "ladies" of Washington and then exacerbated by Jackson's political opponents. Altina Waller's story shows why Peggy Eaton became the subject of a scandal and why Andrew Jackson, in his attempt to defend her honor, escalated the scandal and jeopardized his own administration.
On March 18, 1829, the Reverend Ezra Stiles Ely, an influential Presbyterian leader, sat down to write a letter to Andrew Jackson. The clergyman had only a few days before returned from Washington, where he attended the inauguration of the new President. Despite the well-known fact that Andrew Jackson was more noted for military battles, dueling, Indian fighting, and hard drinking than for religious piety, the two men had been casual friends for thirty years. Jackson's wife Rachel, always more religious than her husband, had encouraged the friendship. Ely prefaced his long letter by explaining why he was compelled to write rather than speak to the President personally. He had intended, he said, to initiate a personal conversation on this important matter but was prevented from doing so by the crowds and excitement which surrounded the President at the inaugural festivities. This explanation was entirely believable, especially since Andrew Jackson's inauguration was considerably more boisterous, rowdy, chaotic-and democratic-than previous ones. Although a wealthy plantation owner himself, Jackson claimed to represent the interests of the "common man," and indeed, his inauguration was notable for the crowds of country folk and poor people who showed up to celebrate his triumph in Washington. Others were not so sanguine. One longtime Washingtonian described the scene with more than a little apprehension:
The Majesty of the People had disappeared, and a rabble, a mob, of boys, negroes, women, children, scrambling, fighting, romping. What a pity what a pity! . . . Cut glass and china to the amount of several thousand dollars had been broken in the struggle to get the refreshments, punch and other articles had been carried out in tubs and buckets, but had it been in hogsheads it would have been insufficient. . . . Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe,-those who got in could not get out by the door again, but had to scramble out of windows. . . . The noisy and disorderlyrabble in the President's House brought to my mind descriptions I had read, of the mobs in the Tuileries and at Versailles. . .
Considering this chaotic situation, it would not be surprising that Reverend Ely did not have the opportunity to find a private moment with the President. Yet critics of the clergyman later offered another explanation; they insisted that he did indeed intend to speak with the President but, at the last moment, lacked the courage to raise a matter which was sure to irritate and anger a man who was famous for his temper tantrums and rage at those who dared to disagree. However, safe in his ministerial study in Philadelphia, Reverend Ely did not hesitate or mince words in his strongly worded letter to the President. In his view, it was, after all, a matter of great importance which concerned the Christian morality of the nation. His subject and perceived threat to the public morality was Peggy O'Neale Eaton, the wife of Jackson's newly appointed secretary of war.
In his long and carefully composed letter, Reverend Ely argued that for the sake of his administration, his country, and himself, the President should not allow Mrs. Eaton such an exalted position in the government; she had, Reverend Ely stated, a long-standing "bad reputation." The implication was obvious; he was suggesting that Andrew Jackson fire his secretary of war! Knowing that Jackson would not be likely to countenance such a suggestion without persuasive arguments, Ely marshaled all the ammunition he possessed. Everyone in Washington, he claimed, knew what Andrew Jackson did not: that Mrs. Eaton was known to be a dissolute woman shunned by the virtuous ladies of Washington. Worse, while her first husband had been on sea duty as a naval officer, she had been intimate with her present husband, Major Eaton, and become pregnant with his child. After the suicide of her first husband and before her marriage to Eaton, Mrs. Eaton had, said Reverend Ely, traveled alone with Eaton, even recording their names as man and wife on hotel registers in New York. Not only was all this evidence irrefutable, argued the clergyman, but the President's own wife, the recently deceased but still beloved Rachel, had held the "worst opinion" of Mrs. Eaton. In the light of all this overwhelming evidence, Ely hoped the President would follow the only Christian moral course and dismiss Secretary Eaton from the Cabinet, thus preventing an example being set that would undoubtedly lead to the decline of public morality.
As anyone who knew Andrew Jackson could have predicted, this letter sent "Old Hickory" into a ferocious rage which none of his advisers or friends could contain. Its culmination came two years later with the resignation of the entire Cabinet, an event unprecedented in the history of the United States government. In the intervening two years the normal affairs of government-foreign affairs, tariffs, taxes, appointments to official office-were relegated to secondary importance as Andrew Jackson became obsessed with proving Peggy Eaton's chastity and virtue. Not only was almost every letter Jackson wrote concerned to a greater or lesser degree with her, but he sent government agents to interview witnesses and collect written evidence which could then be presented in legislative and Cabinet meetings. Peggy Eaton became the political litmus test of loyalty to the Democratic party. Belief in Peggy's virtue meant loyalty to Jackson, while anyone who let slip the slightest doubt was banished. Even the President's nephew and niece, acting as his personal secretary and official hostess in the White House, were dismissed and sent back to Tennessee when they refused to socialize with Mrs. Eaton. Although historians have dismissed the "Eaton Malaria" (Martin Van Buren's term) as trivial and unworthy of the President's attention-"sheer madness," said one-to Andrew Jackson himself it was the most pivotal and significant issue during the first years of his presidency.
Jackson's initial response to Reverend Ely was a long, impassioned letter castigating the clergyman for trafficking in vicious rumors and gossip. "If you had come to see me," said Jackson, "I could have given you information that would at least have put you on your guard with respect to anonymous letters, containing slanderous insinuations against female character. If such evidence as this is to be received," continued the President, "I ask where is the guarantee for female character, however moral-however virtuous?" There was real danger here, argued Jackson, since women require special protection.
Whilst on the one hand we should shun base women as a pestilence of the worst, and most dangerous kind to society, we ought, on the other, to guard virtuous female character with vestal vigilance. Female virtue is like a tender and delicate flower; let but the breath of suspicion rest upon it, and it withers and perhaps perishes forever.
It was a sentiment with which most men and women of the time would have agreed. Where many would have disagreed with Jackson was his assumption that Mrs. Eaton belonged with virtuous women rather than with those "base" women who should be shunned as a "pestilence."
Furthermore, said Jackson, "I have not the least doubt but that every secret rumor is circulated by the minions of Mr. Clay, for the purpose of injuring Mrs. Eaton, and through her, Mr. Eaton. . . ." Although Jackson was to change his mindseveral times about just who the villains were-after Clay, he blamed a conspiracy by clergymen and females and finally settled on his own Vice President, John C. Calhoun-he never doubted that the ultimate target was not Mrs. Eaton or Mr. Eaton but he himself, the President of the United States. His conviction was not shared by most of his friends and supporters. They urged him to avoid becoming involved in the petty squabbles of the ladies of Washington for fear he would appear ridiculous. The President was oblivious to their pleas, insisting that his own character and the integrity of his entire administration were at stake. From Jackson's perspective, on Peggy Eaton's chastity or the lack thereof depended the respectability and integrity of his presidency.
Before Andrew Jackson immortalized Mrs. Eaton by making a political issue of her sexual behavior, she would not have appeared a likely candidate for such public attention. Born in 1799, the daughter of tavern keeper William O'Neale, Margaret O'Neale had grown up with Washington. Although she was commonly referred to as "Peggy," the tavern keeper's daughter who served her father's customers with much more than drinks and food, Mrs. Eaton indignantly denied the rumors. Insisting that she had never been called "Peggy," that her parents and friends had always referred to her as Margaret, Mrs. Eaton, in her autobiography, defended her upbringing as very respectable and middle-class.
My father kept a tavern, and called it the Franklin House. I recollect distinctly as a little girl watching the swinging sign which bore the portrait of the Philadelphia printer and swung in front of our door to let travellers know that we kept a public house. When I approached young womanhood my father took down that old sign and turned his residence into rather a first-class boarding house for first-class people; but I am not ashamed to say that I was born in the Franklin House and that my father was a tavern-keeper. I have always been superior to that petty American foolery.
Margaret Eaton's family was not alone in struggling to achieve respectability
in the new capital city of Washington. Located on low muddy ground, the government buildings-the Capitol and the President's house-were still unfinished and primitive in appearance when Eaton was growing up. She described the city in her youth as a "wilderness." But it was a wilderness where all the important people of the fledgling republic came to exert their influence and make their reputations. Senators, congressmen, generals, clerks, and diplomats converged yearly on the raw, muddy streets, where very little housing was available. As a result, when Congress convened every year and representatives arrived from all over the country, they took up rooms in boardinghouses like the one owned by Margaret O'Neale's father.
…from my earliest years, I became acquainted with all the distinguished men in the nation. I was always a pet. I suppose I must have been very vivacious. . . . Amongst my earliest recollections of distinguished people who stayed at my father's house are those of Gov. Lloyd of Maryland and his family, and of Senator Gore of New York.
Margaret Eaton's autobiography makes it clear that from a very young age, she was keenly aware of her own attractiveness and intelligence. She soon found that she could carry off a witty repartee with the most distinguished of her father's guests and became more and more confidant in her ability to charm them. "While I was still in pantalets and rolling hoops with other girls I had the attentions of men, young and old, enough to turn a girl's head," Margaret wrote, but ". . . the fact is, I never had a lover who was not a gentleman and was not in a good position in society. No low mean man ever dared from my earliest childhood to intrude himself upon me." This young woman was clearly set on improving her situation in life by marrying a man of respectable social status. After several false starts on relationships with men who turned out to be inappropriate, Margaret met and married John Timberlake, an officer in the U.S. Navy. Unfortunately, although Timberlake was a respected naval officer with the social status Margaret longed for, he drank heavily and was financially improvident. The young couple, soon with two young children, continued to live with Margaret's father, and when Timberlake was away at sea, his young wife helped out in the boardinghouse.
It was during these years that Margaret became acquainted with Major John Eaton and Andrew Jackson, as well as many of the other congressmen and senators from Tennessee and other surrounding southern states. Eaton was a regular at the boardinghouse, where he formed a firm friendship with Margaret and her husband, as well as her parents and children. Andrew Jackson, as an elected representative from Tennessee, was there for two congressional seasons, one year with his wife Rachel and the other by himself. Ordinarily, wives tended to stay at home, and the congressmen who stayed in the boardinghouses made up what they called a "mess"-a term which meant more than just eating together. It also indicated a voting block, because representatives from the same geographic regions talked over political strategies and formed a kind of community away from home. Several times Eaton and Jackson accompanied Margaret and her family to a nearby Presbyterian church, and both commented in their letters home that they regarded her parents with respect and found Margaret herself quite charming, especially when she entertained the company with her piano playing in the evenings.