The party battles of the Jackson period

by Claude G. Bowers

“My resignation.”

“Never, sir; even you know little of Andrew Jackson if you suppose him capable of consenting to such a humiliation of his friends by his enemies.”

To understand the conditions leading to such a suggestion from Van Buren, it is necessary to refer to the serious petticoat entanglement in which Jackson found himself within a few weeks after his inauguration, because of the presence of Senator Eaton in his Cabinet. It is an amusing fact that the first real democratic administration in American history should have been all but wrecked on a social issue. Aside from the agreeable work of “turning the rascals out,” little had occurred to disturb the serenity of the new Administration between the inauguration and the meeting of the Congress in the following December but this social war. The call to battle had been sounded even before Jackson had taken the oath of office; the battle raged with unprecedented fury for many months, finally wrecking the Cabinet and advancing Van Buren to within sight of the White House. It has not been uncommon for women to change the course of political and dynastic history in other countries, but to this day the case of the captivating Margaret O’Neal is unique in the United States.

The pretty daughter of a popular tavern-keeper, whose old-fashioned house was a favorite with statesmen and their wives, she had developed into womanhood under the eyes of men famous in the State. Here Jackson lived during his senatorial service, and grew fond of the vivacious child he often held on his knee. With the education a doting father lavished upon her, and with her intimate contact with men of ability and women of refinement, she found herself, on the threshold of life, the intellectual peer of the best of her sex. It is not unnatural that this clever and beautiful girl should have incurred the jealous displeasure of the less attractive spouses of the elder statesmen. Her rare beauty alone would have done that had she been as virtuous as Cæsar’s wife should have been. Perley Poore[287] describes her as of medium height, straight and delicate and of perfect proportions; with a skin of delicate white, tinged with red, and with an abundance of dark hair clustered above her broad, expressive forehead; with a nose of perfect Greek proportions, a finely curved mouth, a firm, round chin—the Aspasia of Washington. When, in addition to her physical and intellectual charms, it must be recorded that she occasionally played the rôle of barmaid, permitting such liberties as men in the early stages of their cups would take, it is easy to understand why the more sedate matrons of the little capital were prone to look upon her as beyond the pale. She had married a purser in the navy, and even her enemies at the time conceded that the match was a mésalliance because of her intellectual superiority. In time the husband sailed across the sea, leaving his comely young wife in the rather free-and-easy atmosphere of her father’s tavern. The moral conditions of the capital were not such as to spare the most virtuous, thus situated, from the tongue of gossip. A contemporary has said that the Washington of those days “resembled in recklessness and extravagance the spirit of the England of the Seventeenth Century, so graphically portrayed in Thackeray’s Humorists.’ ... Laxity of morals and the coolest disregard possible, characterized that period of our existence.”[288]

Living at the O’Neal tavern at the time was the wealthy Senator Eaton, who had manifested more than a passing interest in “Peggy,” as she was called, before her marriage. Gossip had it that he became more than ever attentive when the sailor went to sea. When, after a drunken debauch, which the gossips, without the slightest justification, ascribed to the worthless seaman’s knowledge of his wife’s friendship for the Senator, the husband shot himself, and Eaton was found in her company with increasing frequency, the case was complete as far as the drawing-rooms were concerned. All that evidence could not furnish, the imagination did, and pretty Peggy stood pilloried in the community.

It was at this juncture that Eaton asked the advice of Jackson as to a marriage. With characteristic impulsiveness the old warrior replied that if he loved her he should marry her and save her good name by the act. Thus, on January 1, 1829, the future Secretary of War was married to the tavern-keeper’s daughter, and instantly the drawing-rooms began to buzz. One of the patrician ladies of the time of the wedding poured forth the chatter of the social set. Here we find that Mrs. Eaton “had never been admitted into good society”; that while “very handsome” she was “not of an inspiring character” and had a “violent temper”; that notwithstanding this she was “irresistible” and “carries

whatever point she sets her mind on.” The enemies of Jackson were laughing in the drawing-rooms and diverting themselves “with the idea of what a suitable lady in waiting Mrs. Eaton will make for Mrs. Jackson,” and were repeating “the old adage, ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’”[289] In arriving at an understanding of Jackson’s vigorous defense of the lady of his Cabinet, it is well to bear in mind that the same scandal-mongers were rolling the name of Mrs. Jackson on their tongues. The same letter relates how one of Mrs. Smith’s gentlemen callers “laughed and joked about Mrs. Jackson and her pipe.”

The marriage might have remained merely one of the innumerable morsels with which ladies sometimes regale the drawing-rooms but for the announcement that Eaton had been invited into the Cabinet—and that spread the controversy to the politicians. Among these Senator John Branch had the courage or the insolence personally to press the point upon Jackson that, because of social complications, the appointment of Eaton would be “unpopular and unfortunate.”[290] Jackson heard his future Secretary of the Navy in stern silence, and appointed Eaton Secretary of War. The inauguration was scarcely over when the petticoat battle began. The most fashionable minister at the capital at the time, at whose church Mrs. Smith, the Branches, the Berriens, and the Inghams worshiped,[291] importuned, no doubt, by the society women of the city, and quite probably encouraged by the Cabinet ladies of his congregation, persuaded a Philadelphia minister to write the President of the alleged irregularities of Mrs. Eaton. Some of these ministerial charges are unfit for print. Jackson sent a stinging reply, and at the same time employed detectives to investigate the charges. The search of the sleuths was unavailing, and the situation became so embarrassing to the Philadelphia clergyman that he demanded that the Washington minister should reveal himself.