The Petticoat Affair

I came across this story just before I left Oconomowoc, and I thought I'd share. Once again, it comes from NPR, my main source of all things remarkable, wondrous, and strange.

The main political affair known to Americans is Clinton's affair- the Lewinsky scandal. However, a scandal that not many are aware of takes place in Andrew Jackson's time, back in 1830.

Margaret O'Neill, called Peggy, was raised and still lived in a Washington D.C. boarding house. Her father owned the place, and she would usually serve and entertain guests at the bar as a way of helping out. She married a man in the Navy, John Timerblake, in 1816 at the age of 17, but didn't see him often due to his regular calls to sea.

Peggy Eaton, known as the most
beautiful woman in D.C.

She was usually the talk of the town, when conversation of politics ran dry. Peggy was known as the most beautiful woman of D.C., and the most flirtatious, as well. Many politicians came through the boarding house, and she apparently showed none of the modesty that the normal married woman would. People loved to talk of the latest rumors floating around Peggy, and she became the main source of idle gossip for the city until 1828, when Timberlake died at sea, leaving her alone, friendless, and very much unmarried.

Peggy and her late husband had befriended a senator from Tennessee in 1816 named John Eaton- a respectable man, and a politician very close to Andrew Jackson. Having been appointed Secretary of War that very year, his political standing had risen sharply- yet he was also very much unmarried.

Peggy and John Eaton were seen together more and more often after Timberlake's death, to a point where, once again, the town began to talk. It was strange- and unusual- for a woman to be out and seen with another man so soon after her previous husband's death. The murmurs and whispers rose to blatant stares and pointing fingers, and when they married at the end of the year, trouble was bound to follow.

Eaton was held in high regards by Andrew Jackson. They were close friends, and Jackson had no problems with his marriage to Peggy. She was hard not to like: funny, pretty, charming, and intelligent, and Jackson grew just as close to her as he was with Eaton.

John Eaton, Peggy's second
husband, and Andrew Jackson's close friend

However, the rest of the city was not as won over. Peggy was seen as a whore and a slut, selling herself off to politicians due to greed and a lack of respect for her dead husband. The main rumor became that Peggy and Eaton had been an item even while Timberlake had been alive, and that his mysterious death at sea was a suicide due to his knowledge of his wife's infidelity. The women of Washington- Floride Calhoun, in particular- spoke in depth of her scandalous marriage, her middle-class background, and, in the end, decided that she wasn't fit to be a politician's wife, and that she had to go.

They began by simply spreading more of the rumors already hanging about her head, then by publicly snubbing her. They made it a governmental issue, forcing their husbands- John Calhoun and his cronies, to be specific- to challenge Eaton about his marriage. When that didn't go anywhere, they pushed the senators to bring the topic to the attention of the president.

Jackson had just lost his wife, Rachel, and in a fit of anger and betrayal, he took Peggy under his wing. Rachel, he remembered, had been killed by the same political gossip, and he decided then not to let Peggy fall victim to the same horrors.

He warded off the Washington women's husbands ferociously, labeling every piece of gossip surrounding Mrs. Eaton as pretentious and false. He would sometimes become so upset in the debates over Peggy's honor that he would demand that his opponent be thrown out of the room. He was fighting a losing battle, but was determined to fight it all the same.

Jackson, to put it simply, saw Peggy as his own late Rachel, being slowly destroyed by words. Unable to undo this connection between them, he let his personal rage and vendetta over his wife consume his thoughts and actions.

He actually completely decimated his entire cabinet, firing and replacing every man who disagreed with him over the Peggy Eaton conflict. He continued to battle ferociously for her honor into his late terms; when there was no one else to fire, the rest of his cabinet began to quit simply because he couldn't seem to shut up about the issue.

Peggy Eaton,
as a middle-aged woman.
Scandal remained a factor
in her life until her death in 1879.

Peggy Eaton's name was never officially cleared- but neither had it been officially tarnished, either. Her name was muddied by the gossip that had been spread by the Calhouns and their followers, and no matter how hard Jackson tried, he could never completely wipe away every bit of that mud.

The point of the story?

Maybe it's that the middle class is never truly accepted into the hierarchy of the wealthy and political. Truly, the only real reason that Peggy was such an easy target was because of her less-than-fortunate background. Having been born into the middle class but given the ability to reach her way to the top was, perhaps, something that others looked upon with jealously.

Another possibility is that the government will always be ridden with gossip and lies. Even into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, controversies like the Lewinsky scandal and the Petraeus affair follow America stubbornly, exposing governmental officials to the same disgust and loaded rumors that Peggy Eaton, John Eaton, and even Andrew Jackson went through.

It is a bit different, comparing 1820 to 1998 and then again to 2012. But the techniques remain the same- and, I'm sure, the results are as hurtful today as they were then.

Does this story make you think any differently about government scandals? If so, how, and if not, do you think that Jackson was right to stick up for Peggy the way that he did?

Thanks for reading! Check out a better interpreted version of the story here, at This American Life.