Free A Treasury of Great American Scandals by Michael Farquhar Page B

name?” Pistols were immediately drawn and shots fired, but neither man was hit and they were quickly separated. Jackson was still enraged, however, and challenged Sevier to a formal duel. When the governor hedged, Jackson posted him in the Tennessee Gazette: “Know ye that I, Andrew Jackson, do pronounce, publish, and declare to the world, that his excellency John Sevier . . . is a base coward and poltroon. He will basely insult, but has not the courage to repair.”
    When the two did eventually meet on the field of honor, they immediately started shouting insults and profanities at one another. Jackson rushed forward with a raised stick, threatening to cane Sevier, who drew his sword. This sudden movement frightened the governor’s horse, which trotted away with his pistols in the saddle bag. Jackson took full advantage of the situation, drawing his own pistol as Sevier ducked for cover behind a tree. This was not how gentlemen were supposed to fight! Seeing his father’s peril, Sevier’s son drew his own pistol on Jackson, while Jackson’s second drew on the son. At a stalemate, and realizing how foolish the whole scene had become, the parties withdrew. They were alive, but enemies still. Rachael, meanwhile, would endure far more abuse when her husband later ran for president, and she died just before he took office. 10

5
    â€œThe Eaton Malaria”
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    Andrew Jackson was every bit as chivalrous as he was murderous. With the untimely death of his wife still a raw wound, he came to the defense of another woman’s honor soon after being elected president in 1828. Though no duels were fought and no blood was shed over Margaret “Peggy” Eaton’s reputation, the issue nevertheless had devastating consequences. In the two years that it dominated the new Jackson administration, “the Eaton malaria,” as Secretary of State Martin Van Buren called it, contributed to a serious rupture in the president’s family relationships, the dissolution of his entire cabinet, and, perhaps most significantly, a bitter and permanent breach between Jackson and his vice president, John C. Calhoun.
    Jackson had come to know the young woman who was at the center of these messy conflicts earlier in his career as a senator from Tennessee. He lived in her father’s boarding house while working in Washington and came to dote on her, treating her almost like a daughter. Yet while Jackson found Peggy to be a delight, others in Washington weren’t so enamored. They saw her as brash and opinionated, a woman who stepped way too far outside the bounds of what was considered proper female behavior.
    The gossip about her was vicious, and it only grew worse when president-elect Jackson appointed her husband, Senator John Eaton of Tennessee, to his cabinet as secretary of war. People whispered that Peggy had been sleeping with Eaton while still married to her first husband, John Timberlake, and that she carried his child. The affair, it was said, caused Timberlake such despair that he slit his own throat while out to sea with the U.S. Navy. Peggy maintained that she was always faithful to Timberlake, and that it was asthma that killed him. Andrew Jackson was one of the few who believed her. “I had rather have live vermin on my back than the tongue of one of these Washington women on my reputation,” he once said to Peggy sympathetically.
    The ugly chatter about Peggy Eaton had ramifications beyond a bunch of society hens clucking with disapproval. Though women of the era had little power in most arenas, they ruled supreme when it came to maintaining community morals and standards. If they decided someone was unfit for polite society, that person was ostracized without appeal. Men were expected to honor the women’s decisions and snub whomever they were told to snub. Peggy Eaton had been declared unworthy of Washington society and thus was eminently snubable. The