Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 6)

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Margaret Bayard Smith, wife of the president of the local branch of the Bank of United States and leader of the social circle of Washington ladies, wrote a letter on New Year’s Day, 1829 that came into John Eaton’s hands. He married Peggy that same night. He called her Peggy when they were alone together; he asked Edgar to use Margaret. Mrs. Smith said his bride’s reputation had been “totally destroyed” by her relations with John, General Jackson’s “bosom friend and almost adopted son,” and that none of the respectable ladies would attend the wedding or call on her, even though she was now the wife of the Secretary of War, as she had strayed from the path of virtue.

Sentiment against  Margaret spread  across the Capital, like an epidemic  of cholera

    The men convinced Edgar that Mr. Smith had set his wife to write that letter in a transparent effort to change Jackson’s pig-headed and anachronistic policy regarding the Bank. What had surprised John and Andy was the swiftness with which sentiment against Margaret spread across the Capital, like an epidemic of cholera.
    Even Jackson’s niece, Emily Donelson, living in the White House, said Peggy’s society was unendurably disagreeable.
    Eaton became Governor of Florida and then Minister to Spain, from ’36 to ’40, where he was concerned with the division between abolitionists and slaveholders in the States, and with European involvement with the issue; “I realized, you see, that Jackson chose to part with his beloved friends, to exile them, rather than change his stance towards his enemies, whom he saw as enemies of the American people,” said Edgar.
    Researching, Edgar read contemporary biographies, one by Daniel Dourbridge called Men and Things, or Reflections in Rhyme: A Posthumous Poem, and reviewed one by Margaret Botsford, The Reign of Reform, or Yankee Doodle Court, by a Lady, which had been published in Baltimore in 1830.
    He told Malinda that he had first met Jackson “when Lafayette took me, a mere boy, to the Hermitage. It was in the May just after Old Hickory had been nominated for president, and he was in fine, high spirit. I met Eaton on that occasion as well, and it was his letter to West Point on my behalf that got me admitted a few years afterwards.”

“What did they all talk about?”

    “What did they all talk about?”
    “Mostly about the Revolution in France and Napoleon. The scene I recall most fondly occurred when Andy showed some pistols he owned: war pistols that Lafayette had presented to President Washington.”
    “Gee!”
    “But they also talked warmly of the lively innkeeper’s daughter at the Franklin House in Washington City and how she knew too much politics for her own good, and Rachel was there with us, too. She was still alive then, and so fond of Margaret, such a good Christian girl. Jackson’s later protectiveness of her reputation must have been so fierce because of his wife’s warm partiality towards the girl.”
    Aware of a weakness in the eyes and a catch in the throat indicative of imminent weeping, Edgar managed somewhat to maintain his composure in front of Malinda.
    “And you think I’m like her?”
    “I think she must be much like you are. Everyone falls in love with you. And you use that to collect information. Like you, she married young: had married her naval officer John at the age of sixteen; he was away at sea for years at a time, his wife safe in the company of his friend John Henry Eaton. Timberlake died in 1828, which I remember well, as it was in the same year that Rachel Jackson passed, just as Andy prepared to assume command.”
    “You met her, too?”
    “Yes. I met Margaret briefly when Lafayette and I stayed at the Franklin House, run by her father, in the capital in October of ’24. Lafayette had just arrived in Baltimore, and he stayed in the States for eleven months. General Jackson was there at the inn then, too. She was about ten years older than I. I had no idea then that she was married. She was beautiful. Dark hair, blue eyes. Obviously Celtic and charming.

“Andrew Jackson fell  in love with her  in the barroom”

    “Andrew Jackson fell in love with her in the barroom where she served the lawyers and politicians gathered to drink and talk and fight, but also in the church, because she played piano and sang sacred music there. They had met in December of ’23, when she was 24 and he 56. She was married, as I said, to John Timberlake, but Andrew fell in love with her, for the charm of her personality alone, and his wife Rachel liked her, too. Rachel, I don’t know why I keep saying, died just as her newly elected husband left for Washington. So as he assumed rule, he was ruled by his heart, on various fronts, which would make for an intriguing story.
    “But back to Margaret. Even at that time, rumor gave her a checkered past, so she must have had an extraordinarily irresistible personality, or she knew the best ways to get the best tips from drunks and reprobates and everyone in between. And it was only because of these unfounded rumors about the poor girl that the society wives of Washington snubbed her continually. Even Jackson’s favorite niece, Emily, didn’t like pretty Peggy. Which led to her changing the course of United States history.”
    “Emily?”
    “No. Peggy. Margaret.”

The scandal reached its crisis during September

    Although he said nothing of it to Malinda, passing through his mind was that in subsequent investigations, he had learned that William Wirt and Salmon P. Chase were involved in a scandal over an alleged miscarriage Margaret suffered, supposedly while her husband was at sea, and which Jackson proved was a malicious lie. The scandal reached its crisis during September of 1829, and again, Jackson threatened a duel.
    Edgar was saying, “The trouble is the papers print a man’s biased opinion as fact, and a later investigator can pursue a red herring for years before he finds proof it’s but a red herring. And it can happen that he later finds the proof was no proof and the herring no herring, the result being that the knight in quest of truth finds himself lost in a forest where the trees may be equally goblins or trees.”
    “So the ones responsible for the dissemination of news or facts may count on the investigator driving himself to madness.”
    “Précisemént. Or, failing that, branding him as a madman produces the desired effect.
    “This new marriage, though, of the scandalous girl to the secretary of war on New Year’s Day, upset, for some reason, Mrs. Smith, the wife of the Bank president at the time, and, as you may recall, Andy, the President of the United States, opposed that bank and the corruption he saw incubating in it, and refused to renew its charter, so, did he know or not know the battle he started when he made John Eaton his Secretary of War? He must have, since he knew wars had to be approved and supported by bankers.
    “But after many years of fighting these private battles simultaneously with public ones among his Cabinet and with his vice-president, and with the nation experiencing financial woe and states threatening to leave the Union, Jackson finally agreed with his advisors to remove the Eatons from the center of the storm. He sent them first to Florida and then to Spain.”

“He just got  rid of her”

    “He just got rid of her.”
    “Well, yes. Yet it was Andy’s championship of Margaret that kept him alive through his two terms. He loved her. It was as though Rachel had returned to the world of light in the innkeeper’s daughter. Part of this lay behind my ‘Ligeiea.’”
    “I read that one. I liked it. I read all the ones that I could find.”
    Jackson defended the poor girl because his wife, Rachel had been similarly slandered, unjustly, and he saw something of his beloved wife in the taverner’s daughter. Maybe he loved her a little bit, too, because of her tendency towards forthrightness and truth, which was lacking in the lawyers, politicians and bankers who hemmed him in and kept him always too much on his toes for his own comfort.
    Because of Mrs. Eaton, Andy’s chance at re-election in 1832 stood in peril. But he got re-elected, which showed him that the people didn’t care about Peggy’s immorality, or they approved of her, or they didn’t like Calhoun.
    Calhoun, a Jesuit agent of European moneylenders, stood behind slavery. Jackson was up against Nicholas Biddle, who ran the Bank of the United States in 1828, while people knew it was owned by a prominent family in France.

Jackson wanted to stop the financiers from controlling the people

    Jackson wanted to stop the financiers from controlling the people and from writing new laws to serve their own interests.
    “While writing the story of Margaret, I realized not only that Smith in Washington but more importantly, Biddle and the Bank’s supporters were behind the propagation of rumors about and the ostracization of her, to distract Jackson and work his ruin with the public.
    “So while writing about Mary Rogers, it occurred to me that hers was also the story of William Morgan, and I abandoned that one for the time to take up Peggy Eaton: all lives that changed the course of American history, during roughly the same time period—why? The Bank of the United States? I learned it’s the financiers who run the world, and not just America, but they make arms and engineer wars just to sell the arms and the boots and bullets and everything, and they control the press so nobody ever knows what’s really going on, so the governments, their puppets, can lie and get away with it, while they preach the benefit of a community of races that really masks a desire to enrich themselves and drain the poor. Maybe.”
    “Maybe another red herring?”
    “I can never be sure. It’s maddening. Discouraging.”

Copyright © 2022 by Pat Hamilton Pat Hamilton has written three novels, hundreds of songs, and a handful of book reviews for the papers. He taught College English for 30 years, which helps him blend popular and classic literature in his writing. As an Army brat, he traveled the USA and Europe before settling into the beauty of Tennessee, but the rock star he used to be still lives on inside him.