Sharing via The Pinckney District Chapter, SCGS, SPARTANBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY, and Charity Rouse (Director of Local History, SCPL)…
The Pinckney District Chapter, SCGS, will meet on Monday, March 25 at the SPARTANBURG PUBLIC LIBRARY, Kennedy Street, in the Hoechst-Celanese Room (bottom floor of the library.) Our speaker will be Dr. Patricia McNeely – see attached flyer – thanks Charity. Meeting will begin at 7:00. Please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think would be interested in our program and/or genealogy. Hope to see you all there.
Mike
Speaker Dr. Pat McNeely Columbia, South Carolina …..
retired from the University of South Carolina
Program: her book, “Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun and the Petticoat Affair “
A book on “Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun and the Petticoat Affair” will be discussed in a PowerPoint presentation by USC Professor Emerita Pat McNeely
Dubbed the Petticoat Affair by 18th and 19th century newspapers and magazines, the scandal caused Jackson to dissolve his cabinet and cost Calhoun his almost certain chance to be president.
The center of the political storm was beautiful and vivacious Margaret “Peggy” O’Neale Timberlake, the daughter of a popular Washington tavern keeper. She had been widowed only four months in 1829 when she married newly elected President Jackson’s best friend and Secretary of War John Eaton.
“Horrified by rumors about her dubious reputation, the ladies of Washington refused to socialize, even ignoring Jackson’s pleas and direct orders to make social calls and to invite her to parties,” McNeely said. “Enraged by their rejection, Jackson called a Cabinet meeting to officially discuss Peggy’s character and virtue and to order them to include Peggy in their social lives.”
When they still refused after a year and a half of pleading and threatening, Jackson stunned the nation in 1831 when he turned with a vengeance on everyone who had ostracized his beautiful friend and dissolved his official cabinet.
“Since Vice President John C. Calhoun’s wife Floride had been one of the ringleaders in Peggy’s social rebuff, Jackson angrily ended his friendship with his South Carolina ally who had been widely regarded as heir apparent to the presidency,” McNeely said.
The scandal was also made into a movie called The Gorgeous Hussy in 1931 starring Joan Crawford as Peggy Eaton and Robert Taylor as her first husband, as well as a miscast Lionel Barrymore as Andrew Jackson and Frank Conroy as John C. Calhoun. It was Crawford’s highest grossing movie.
Peggy’s hair style—long ringlets spilling over her shoulders—became a national trend that lasted well into the 20th century, and she appeared in an advertisement on a cigar box with a picture on one side showing Andrew Jackson presenting her with flowers at a social event and a picture on the other side depicting men fist-fighting over her.
After the political upheaval of Jackson’s cabinet, Calhoun, who had lost his chance to be president, resigned as vice president to return to the senate in December 1832. He would spend the rest of his life leading the sectional fight against escalating tariffs that favored and protected northern manufacturers while destroying the south’s economy and international trade. Although he died in 1850, his calls for nullification of the unequal taxes that he considered to be unconstitutional would help lead to Civil War by 1861.
Even after Jackson had risked his administration to save Peggy’s reputation, she made national news again in 1859 when, at the age of 59, she married a 19-year-old Italian music and dance teacher.
The marriage and her money did not last, and within seven years, her Italian husband ran off with the rest of her money and her 17-year-old granddaughter, who he married after Peggy divorced him in 1869.
Peggy Eaton died penniless at a home for destitute women in 1879 at age 79.
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