Free A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans by Michael Farquhar Page B

overstepped his authority by invading Spanish Florida in 1817, and supported him in the 1824 presidential election, which was decided in favor of John Quincy Adams in the House of Representatives, despite Jackson winning the popular vote.
    Four years later Old Hickory defeated Adams to become the first “populist” president. Johnson lost his Senate seat at the same time, but was promptly reelected to the House, where he served as a powerful ally of the administration throughout both of Jackson’s terms in office. Having “the rare quality of being personally liked by everyone,” as John C. Calhoun’s biographer, Charles M. Wiltse, notes, Johnson often found himself in the role of mediator—particularly in the disputes between Jackson and Vice President Calhoun over such issues as nullification. 3 But it was in a social-political fracas dubbed by Secretary of State Martin Van Buren as “the Eaton Malaria” that his conciliatory talents were most sorely tried. 4
    Essentially, the society women of Washington decreed that Margaret “Peggy” Eaton, wife of Secretary of War John Eaton, was a woman of questionable virtue and thus unfit for their company. Men of the day were expected to follow their wives’ decisions on such matters and ostracize whomever they were told to ostracize. Accordingly, most of Jackson’s cabinet, as well as Vice President Calhoun, rejected Mrs. Eaton. This enraged the president, who personally liked the shunned woman and also viewed the social assault on her as a political attack on him—a conspiracy to make John Eaton’s position in the cabinet untenable, therefore destabilizing the administration and undermining his decisions.
    Silly as it all may seem now, the Eaton Malaria consumed the first two years of Jackson’s presidency and had tremendous political ramifications. The president was determined to have Peggy Eaton welcomed into society and sent Johnson as an emissary to three of his more recalcitrant cabinet members. Johnson, on friendly terms with all three, cordially advised them that Jackson was in earnest and was prepared to fire anyone who continued to snub John Eaton’s wife. This would be persuasive enough, or so Johnson believed. He was stunned, therefore, when his diplomatic entreaties were rejected. Even the president of the United States could not force them into company their wives had determined was unworthy, the cabinet members declared. Defeated, Johnson went back to the president, who, he noted, was “like a roaring lion” upon hearing the news. In the end, the entire cabinet was dismissed—the only such event in American history.
    Given his own domestic situation, Johnson’s role in the Eaton affair is interesting. He was all but married to one of his slaves, a woman named Julia Chinn, with whom he had two daughters. They were his family, and he wanted them accepted as such. But that was asking way too much in the antebellum South. It was one thing to sleep with a slave, which many a master considered a perquisite of ownership, but to try to introduce her or the offspring of such miscegenation into white society was simply intolerable. George Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, reflected the hypocrisy of such standards when he lambasted Johnson in an editorial. “If Col. Johnson had the decency and decorum to seek to hide his ignominy from the world, we would refrain from lifting the curtain,” Prentice wrote. “His chief sin against society is the publicity and barefacedness of his conduct; he scorns all secrecy, all concealment, all disguise.”
    Notwithstanding his unusual living arrangements, Johnson enjoyed wide support in the West (which then extended only to the Mississippi River), as well as among workingmen in the urban centers. Furthermore, he was close to the president and had every reason to expect that Jackson would select him as his running mate in the 1832