"She is as chaste as a virgin!"

In his biography of Andrew Jackson, James Parton provides the context surrounding Old Hickory's famous exclamation that Peggy O'Neill Eaton was “as chaste as a virgin.”

One of the allegations against Peggy was that John Eaton and she had, while she was married to John Timberlake, registered as husband and wife at a New York hotel and spent the night there together. Jackson, determined to disprove the charge, sent the Reverend Ezra Stiles Ely to New York to examine the hotel register and interview witnesses. Rev. Ely reported back that the charge could not be substantiated.

On September 10, 1829, Jackson held a cabinet meeting, to which he also invited Rev. Ely. According to Parton, “the President opened the proceedings with an address upon the meanness of calumny, and concluded by giving an account of the late investigations” by Ely and others, including the President himself. After reviewing and condemning as unfounded another report about Mrs. Eaton (that she had had a miscarriage at a time when Timberlake had been abroad for more than a year), Jackson turned to the New York hotel charge:

The charge that Major Eaton and Mrs. Timberlake passed the night together in a New York hotel dwindled first, said the President, into a story that they had been seen on a bed together, and, afterward, that they had been seen sitting on a bed together. He called upon Dr. Ely to state the result of his inquiries in New York.

The reverend gentleman told his story, and concluded by saying that there was no evidence to convict Major Eaton of improper conduct.

"Nor Mrs. Eaton either," broke in the President.

"On that point," said the Doctor, "I would rather not give an opinion."

"She is as chaste as a virgin!" exclaimed the President.

"It is not good for a girl to grow up in a large tavern"

I've been leafing (digitally) through James Parton's Life of Andrew Jackson. It's a delight. Take this opening paragraph from his chapter on Peggy O'Neill Eaton. A bit Victorian, perhaps, but it makes me smile for precisely that reason:

William O'Neal kept at Washington for many years a large old-fashioned tavern, where members of Congress, in considerable numbers, boarded during the sessions of the national legislature. William O'Neal had a daughter, sprightly and beautiful, who aided him and his wife in entertaining his boarders. It is not good for a girl to grow up in a large tavern. Peg O'Neal as she was called, was so lively in her deportment, so free in her conversation, that, had she been born twenty years later, she would have been called one of the "fast" girls of Washington. A witty, pretty, saucy, active tavern-keeper's daughter, who makes free with the inmates of her father's house, and is made free with by them, may escape contamination, but not calumny.

About the illustration:

A mild satire on Jackson and his Cabinet, portraying in imaginative terms a White House reception of popular French dancer and actress Madame Celeste. Seated in chairs in a White House parlor are six cabinet members. In the center Jackson sits behind a table, as "Door Keeper" Jimmy O'Neal (standing) presents Madame Celeste. The cabinet members are (left to right): Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson, Attorney General Benjamin F. Butler, Secretary of War Lewis Cass, Postmaster General Amos Kendall, Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury, and Vice-President Martin Van Buren. Each figure's remarks are an amusing reflection of his own character or reputation. Dickerson: I never felt the inconvenience of being a bachelor untill now. what I have lost!! she as gracefull as a Seventy-four under full sail. Cass: This is a very strange introduction to the Cabinet when weighty matters are under discussion; but it does not become me to complain. Jimmy O'Neal: O' she'll bother them all by the powers faith, except my friend Kendal he has no soule for a pretty woman... Celeste: Mon General, if it is "glory enough" to serve under you "ma foi" vat is my grand satisfaction to see you wis de Grand Cabinet of dis Grand Nation here assamble. Jackson: Charming Creature. I've not lost all my penchant for pretty women .... Kendall: I wonder how the General could ever prefer the heels to the head. He never learnt that from me. But the least said the soonest mended. Woodbury: She has grace enough to dance all the surplus Revenue out of the Treasury Hasn't she, Mr. Attorney general? Butler: She is well enough, but I have conscientious scruples on these matters. Van Buren: Pooh pooh Butler, this is not the age for scruples of any kind. I like her rapid movements, her quick changes, her gracefull transitions. She is of my school ..." Weitenkampf's association of the cartoon with the Peggy Eaton affair of 1831, where several cabinet members resigned, is mistaken since the cabinet shown here consists of later appointees. The print appears from the style and monogram to be the work of lithographic draftsman Albert Hoffay.

Andrew Jackson's First Cabinet

Other than Martin Van Buren at the State Department, Andrew Jackson’s first cabinet is generally given very low marks. Its subsequent dissolution two years later in the aftermath of the Peggy Eaton Affair has further tarnished the cabinet's reputation, although by rights it is Jackson himself who should take most of the blame for that debacle.

While conceding that, with the exception of Van Buren, Jackson “chose obscure men he could dominate,” Charles Sellers gives the president more credit than most do for his selections, which were:

John H. Eaton, Tennessee, for the War Department

Samuel D. Ingham, Pennsylvania, for the Treasury Department

John Branch, North Carolina, for the Navy

John M. Berrien, Georgia, as Attorney General

William T. Barry, Kentucky, Postmaster General

First, Sellers argues, “this Cabinet manifested considerable canniness on the part of a President determined to be master of his own house.”

By appointing a New York Bucktail [Van Buren], a Pennsylvania New Schooler [Ingham; New Schoolers were pro-internal improvement democrats who had originally supported John C. Calhoun for president in 1824 but had converted to the Jackson cause early in 1824], two southerners [Branch and Berrien], and two westerners [Eaton and Barry], he recognized the factions and sections that had given him strongest support while denying predominance to any. Although Van Buren got the top spot, Jackson managed, by appointing obscure men of Radical antecedents from North Carolina and Georgia, to exclude not only the Little Magician’s South Carolina foes [allies of Calhoun] but also his potent radical allies in Virginia [the Richmond Junto, headed by editor Thomas Ritchie]. Never before had the Old Dominion been banished from the highest executive levels.

In addition, Sellers suggests, Jackson cleverly appointed men who were ideologically predisposed to carry out “some controversial policies not yet announced.”

The westerner Eaton was positioned in the War Department and the Georgian Berrien as Attorney General to execute a final solution of the Indian problem. Branch had denounced banks, and Barry had been chief justice of Kentucky’s antibank New Court. The most ingenious selection was Ingham, a paper manufacturer loyal to Pennsylvania protectionism but also a veteran Calhounite. Having resolved his conflicting loyalties by abstaining on the Tariff of Abominations, he was placed at the Treasury to compromise the most dangerous impending issue.

About the illustration:

A satire on dissension and political intrigue within Andrew Jackson's administration, surrounding the Spring 1831 resignations of several members of his Cabinet. In the center Jackson sits in a collapsing chair, labeled "The Hickory Chair is coming to pieces at last." Seated on the arm of his chair is a rat with the head of Postmaster General William T. Barry. On the floor before him is a pile of resignations with a broken clay pipe, and a brazier. He sweeps with a broom at a number of rats scurrying at his feet, and in the act knocks over the "Altar of Reform" toppling a winged ass also holding a broom. The rats have heads of (from left to right) Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, Secretary of War John H.Eaton, "D. I. O."(?), Navy Secretary John Branch, and Treasury Secretary Samuel D. Ingham. John Calhoun is a terrier which menaces the Van Buren rat. Van Buren, threatened by an eagle while attempting to climb the "Ladder of Political Preferment" whose rungs are labeled with the names of the states, says, "If I could only humbug that Eagle and climb up this ladder." Calhoun: "You don't get up if I can help it." Eaton: "I'm off to the Indians." Branch: "This from the greatest and best of men." Ingham: "Is this the reward of my Patriotic disinterestedness." In a doorway marked "Skool of Reform" appears a man in a visored cap and fur-trimmed coat saying, "There's Clay, and this is all Clays doings." Daniel Webster and Henry Clay (with raised arms) look in through a window. Webster: "That Terrier has nullified the whole Concern." Clay: "Famine! War! Pestilence!"

Margaret ("Peggy") O'Neill Eaton

While looking for a picture of Andrew Jackson's wife, I stumbled across a picture of Peggy Eaton that begins to explain why John Eaton pounced on her when her first husband died. Earlier posts about Mrs. Eaton are here and here.

Margaret ("Peggy") O'Neill Eaton 2

She is as chaste as a virgin!

Andrew Jackson

Age cannot wither nor time stale her infinite virginity.

Henry Clay

Margaret ("Peggy") O'Neill Eaton

[T]he political history of the United States, for the last thirty years, dates from the moment when the soft hand of Mr. Van Buren touched Mrs. Eaton's knocker.

James Parton, Life of Jackson (1860).