A History of the American People

An even more serious mistake was Jackson's sentimental decision to make his old comrade
and crony Major John Eaton the War Secretary. The canny Van Buren, who knew Swartwout of
old but had been unable to prevent his appointment, was even more uneasy about Eaton, whom
he regarded as indiscreet, negligent, and the last man to keep a Cabinet secret. He was even more
suspicious of Eaton's wife, a pretty, pert young woman of twenty-nine called Peggy, a known
adulteress who had lived in sin with Eaton before Jackson ordered him to marry her. But the
President, adoring spirited ladies who stood up to him in conversation, would not hear a word
said against her.
This imprudent appointment set in motion a chain of bizarre events which were to change
permanently the way in which America is governed. The well-informed Amos Kendall dismissed
rumors that Peggy was a whore; she was, he said, merely egotistical, selfish, pushy, and too forward in her manners.' But the other Cabinet wives, older and plainer, hated her from the start and insisted she had slept withat least' twenty men, quite apart from Eaton, before her second
marriage to him. If old Rachel had lived, she might have kept the Cabinet matrons in line (or,
more likely, quashed the appointment in the first place). But her place had been taken by the
twenty-year-old Emily Donelson, wife of Jackson's adopted son. Emily had been accustomed to
managing a huge Southern plantation and was not in the least daunted by running the White
House with its eighteen servants. But she would not stay in the same room with Peggy, who, she
said, was held in too much abhorrence ever to be noticed.' Mrs Calhoun, wife of the Vice- President and a grand Southern lady, would not even come to Washington in case she was asked tomeet' Mrs Eaton. Adams, for whom the Peggy Eaton row was the first nice thing to happen
since he lost the presidency, recorded gleefully in his diary that Samuel D. Ingham, the Treasury
Secretary, John M. Berrien, the Attorney General, John Branch, the Navy Secretary, and Colonel
Nathan Towson, the Paymaster-General, had all given large evening parties to which Mrs Eaton is not invited ... the Administration party is slipped into a blue and green faction upon this point of morals ... Calhoun heads the moral party, Van Buren that of the frail sisterhood.' The fact is, Van Buren was a bachelor, with no wife to raise objections, and he, and the British ambassador, another bachelor, gave the only dinner parties to which Peggy was invited. The battle of the dinner-parties, what Van Buren called theEaton Malaria,' was waged
furiously throughout the spring and summer of 1829. It became more important than any other
issue, political or otherwise. Jackson’s first big reception was a catastrophe, as the Cabinet
wives cut Peggy dead in front of a delightedly goggling Washington gratin. At one point the
President laid down an ultimatum to three Cabinet members: they must ask Mrs Eaton to their
wives' dinner-parties or risk being sacked. He thought Clay had organized it all but patient work
by Van Buren showed that the wives, and Emily, had had no contact with Clay. Jackson then
referred darkly to a 'conspirasy' organized by 'villians' and females with clergymen at their head.' The clergymen were the Rev. Ezra Stile Ely of Philadelphia and the Rev. J. M. Campbell, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Washington, which Jackson often attended. Both believed the gossip, and Jackson had both of them to the White House to argue them out of their suspicions. He exchanged some striking letters with Ely on the subject and engaged in amateur detective-work, rummaging upfacts' to prove Peggy's innocence and having investigators
consult hotel registers and interview witnesses. At 7 P.M. on September 10, 1829, he summoned
what must have been the oddest Cabinet meeting in American history to consider what he termed
Eaton's `alleged criminal intercourse' with Peggy before their marriage. Both Ely and Campbell
were bidden to attend. The meeting began with a furious altercation between Campbell and the
President on whether Peggy had had a miscarriage and whether the Eatons had been seen in bed