Free The Book of Bastards by Brian Thornton

Buren — a widower — had cheerfully embraced the couple. The Calhouns also failed to consider their scheme's impact on the president. Jackson was convinced that campaign slanders had killed his beloved wife Rachel, and seeing Peggy's treatment at the hands of Washington's “polite society” enraged him.
    Eaton resigned from the cabinet in 1831, but the Calhouns won a hollow victory. Jackson had formed such a close bond with Van Buren that he was willing to state openly that Van Buren — “frank open, candid, and manly … Republican in his principles” — was his preferred successor.
    Eaton's political career, once so promising, never recovered from the “Eaton Affair.” He governed the Florida Territory and served as Van Buren's ambassador to Spain, dying in 1856.
    After Eaton died, Peggy married an Italian musician forty years her junior. Karma eventually caught up with old Mrs. Eaton: her third husband ran off with her seventeen-year-old granddaughter and her fortune. Once a bastard's wife, always a bastard's wife.
    â€œI had rather have live vermin on my back than the tongue of one of these Washington women on my reputation.”
    â€” Andrew Jackson to Peggy Eaton

25
MATTHIAS THE PROPHET
Wholly Fraud (1778–1841?)
    â€œIf men who keep about their business, maintain their characters, make bargains, make money, and give no other proof of an impaired intellect, can fall into the belief of so revolting, so amazing a fraud and lie, who is safe?”
    â€” The North American Review in an editorial about Matthias the Prophet
    Religion has been the basis for some of the greatest of humanity's achievements. Scripture such as the Bible, the Quran, the Tao Te Ching, and the great Hindu epics all contain invocations for people to treat their neighbors well and live good, meaningful lives. But through the millennia, religion has also served as a haven for scoundrels. America as well has a history of supposedly “holy men” making mischief.
    Some of them come across as out-and-out whackjobs, others as nothing but malevolent spirits bent on acquiring power. And yet when it comes to sheer bastardry none of the Haggards, Falwells, or Swaggarts could hold a candle to a largely forgotten religious four-flusher who called himself “Matthias the Prophet.”
    Born Robert Matthews in 1778 on a farm in rural New York, Matthias grew up doing farm work and learning carpentry. At some point he married and fathered children.
    But by the mid-1820s Matthews had snapped. Experiencing a “religious vision,” he claimed to be the reincarnation of the apostle Matthias, referred to himself as a reborn Jew, and began wandering about the Northeast. He preached a gospel that emphasized the place of the father as the head of any household, the notion of eternal life through passing one's soul along to one's children, and a host of other beliefs based on a loose reading of the King James Bible.
    By this time he had quit shaving or cutting his hair, quite a rarity at the time as most men went clean-shaven. This of course made him look every bit the part of the Old Testament prophet.
    Matthias eventually made his way to New York City and was able to convince a group of upper-middle-class evangelicals that he was in fact a resurrected apostle. It was only a matter of time before he had bilked them out of thousands of dollars, two houses, and one of the men's wives! For a time Matthias had it all: money he hadn't earned, women drunk on his power, and followers from all walks of life who showed up just to hear him speak. It couldn't last.
    By 1835 one of the men whom Matthias cheated had gone bankrupt and had Matthias thrown in jail for fraud. Later that year Matthias and his housekeeper Isabella Van Wagener wound up in more hot water. They were tried for the murder of one of Matthias's wealthiest followers, Elijah Pierson, and for stealing his estate. Matthias was eventually