|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The presidential election of 1828 involved a former national war hero Andrew Jackson (Democratic-Republican, eventually Democratic Party) against President John Quincy Adams (National Republican). Both parties resorted to attacks against each other. Jackson charged Adams with striking a “corrupt bargain” with Henry Clay to steal the prior 1824 election from Jackson. Adams’ forces raked up charges of adultery against Jackson for having lived without marriage with a woman named Rachel Donelson Robards. The campaign became filthy and ended in the worse possible way.
In August 1791, Andrew Jackson “married” Rachel Donelson Robards. They were both 24. The marriage, however, was invalid because Rachel’s divorce from her first husband, Lewis Robards, had not yet become final. Jackson and Rachel remarried, this time legally on January 17, 1794. The issue goes back to the time when Rachel was only age 17, when she had married Lewis Robards in Kentucky and she lived with him there while her parents returned to their residence in Nashville, Tennessee. “Insanely jealous, Robards repeatedly accused Rachel of having affairs with other men. Despite her pleas of innocence, he ordered her to return to her family in Tennessee until he called for her. Soon after she had rejoined her mother, now a widow, Andrew Jackson, not knowing Rachel, arrived as a boarder at the Donelson’s. Eventually, Jackson and Rachel fell in love. Nevertheless, when Robards came to Nashville to reclaim his wife, Rachel dutifully returned with him to Kentucky. She soon learned, however, that he had done nothing to curb his rages of jealousy. Told of her unhappiness, Jackson raced to Kentucky and rescued her. In December 1790, at Robards’s request, the state legislature passed an enabling act permitting him to sue for divorce. Mistaking this preliminary action for a final divorce decree, Jackson, as a lawyer, should have known better when he “married” Rachel in 1791. Robards learned that his wife was living with Jackson and sued for divorce on grounds of adultery; the decree was issued in September 1793. Unfortunately, their remarriage in 1794 did not end the matter. The charge of adultery was to haunt the couple thereafter. Scurrilous attacks on Rachel’s character poisoned the presidential campaign of 1828. Although Jackson tried to keep such reports from his wife, who had heart trouble, Rachel heard enough to realize that her past was being raked up in the national press. At least in part, as a result of her anguish, she grew ill and died suddenly on December 22, 1882. Jackson forever blamed his political opponents for her death. “In the presence of this dear saint,” President-elect Jackson solemnly vowed at her burial, “I can and do forgive all my enemies. But those vile wretches who have slandered her must look to God for mercy.”
Source: The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, by William A. DeGregorio; Duke University Libraries, “Election of 1828,”; U.S.History.com, “Election of 1828,”: Wikipedia, “United States Presidential Election, 1828”; Britannica.com, “United States Presidential Election, 1828”).
