Pick a Little. Talk a lot.

Talk a lot, pick a little more.

My music teacher in the third grade introduced me to the musical The Music Man. The 1962 film starred Robert Preston, who played Harold Hill, a con man who goes from town to town, convincing people to create a boys’ marching band and paying him a lot of money. To succeed, he needs to seduce the local music teacher because all music teachers fall for con men who drop into town. Once under his spell, they never knew he was a fake.

In River City, Iowa, Hill sees his next mark, and standing in his way to fortune is the local librarian, Marian Paroo, played by Shirley Jones¹ who also teaches piano.

To get the lowdown on Paroo, Hill runs into the Ladies of River City, who explain that Paroo is no librarian but instead a secret hussy who carried on a tryst with the local billionaire², Miser Madison, who, when he died, left River City the library building but left all the books to her. Dirty books, to be exact!

So upset at Marian's mere mention, the River City Ladies bust into a song about it. They mention the authors of these dirty books, and to this day, only one of them sounds familiar.

As a class, we practiced singing all the songs, especially the Pick a Little Talk a Lot number. When you think about it, it's probably not the best idea to have eight and nine-year-olds singing about adultery.

But remembering The Music Man and the gossip that swirled in that make-believe town brings us to the next political scandal. Instead of River City, the town is Washington, DC. Instead of a librarian, the accused Jezebel is a cabinet member’s wife.

And the talking about it almost brought down an administration.

Let’s dive in.

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# 39. The Petticoat Affair

Introduction

John Henry Eaton was an aide to General Andrew Jackson during the Second War With England. After the war, Eaton returned to Tennessee and was elected to the state’s House of Representatives. In 1818, at 28, he was elected to the United States Senate, making him the youngest and most illegal senator in US History.³

Forever loyal to Jackson, he helped Old History secure his Senate seat in 1823, a position he used to officially launch his run for president in 1824.

Background

We all know how the 1824 election turned out because we all read my essays.

After the defeat, Jackson resigned from the Senate and plotted his next campaign. Meanwhile, Eaton continued on and eventually became the Chair of the Senate Committee of the District of Columbia.

When Eaton arrived in Washington, he was a widower.⁴ In 1813, Eaton married Myra Lewis, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. Eaton wasn’t about to marry some poor chick from Memphis. Jackson happened to be Lewis’s legal guardian after her father died years earlier.

Eaton's marriage to Lewis lasted only two years. Myra died in 1815 because we didn’t have universal healthcare or the World Health Organization back then, just as we do 200 years later.⁵

Eaton remained a widower for the next fourteen years until fortune struck and someone became available in 1829.

That woman was Peggy Timberlake. Her father was John Timberlake, a Navy man who married Peggy when he was 39 and she was seventeen. John moved his family to Washington, DC, to live in a house provided by his father-in-law and continued to make great decisions that put him into financial debt.

It was in DC that the Timberlakes met the newly illegally elected Senator Eaton. They became fast friends, so much so that Eaton introduced bills to help Timberlake escape debt.

Those bills were easily defeated because who would agree with an illegally seated Senator's desire to give his buddy money? Rejected by the people, Timberlake fell into a deep depression, and as a way to get out of it, he left his family in DC and went back to the Navy, where he would eventually die abroad in 1829.

While John was sailing all over the place, his wife Peggy remained in DC and tended the bar that her father owned. It also served as a boarding house, so it was full of guys.

Peggy was also considered hot in her day. She was intelligent, could speak French, and, like Marian Paroo, played the piano.

With a husband away, men coming and going from a tavern and boarding house, and an attractive, smart woman in the middle, gossip surrounding Peggy increased.

Peggy chooses to combat that gossip by marrying John Eaton ten months after John is lost at sea. Encouraged by newly inaugurated Andrew Jackson, 1829 was a heck of a year for the newly minted administration.

However, the Cabinet Ladies of Washington, DC, weren’t thrilled about having Peggy “Eaton” among their circle. Led by the wife of Vice President John Calhoun, they shunned the Secretary of War and his wife socially and publicly. They didn’t invite them to parties, and they didn’t go to their homes.

Why?

Because the Cabinet Ladies of Washington, DC, thought Peggy didn’t mourn her dead husband long enough before marrying Eaton. Therefore, they must have had an affair when Timberlake was abroad, trying not to be depressed and forget about being in debt.

This entire affair shook Washington, DC. Lines were drawn. On one side, there was the Vice President and his bitchy, wife, Floride.⁶ On the other was Jackson, a widower himself. His niece Emily Donelson served as his “First Lady” and hosted all the official White House events, except she sided with Floride Calhoun and the Cabinet Ladies of Washington, DC.

Furious at this alliance, Jackson canned his niece and replaced her with his daughter-in-law. His anger stemmed from being triggered by his past presidential campaign when people accused him of adultery for marrying his wife Rachel, who probably was still technically married to her husband when Jackson and her got hitched in 1788. Jackson believed these attacks on Rachel eventually killed her.⁷

The Mean Girls escapades lasted another two years. Jackson was already difficult to deal with if he liked you; imagine being at odds with him over the marriage of his loyal Secretary of War. He must have been insufferable.

The height of the affair was when Eaton exposed Calhoun as the instigator of a Congressional investigation of Jackson’s behavior in 1818 when Jackson was fighting the Seminole Tribe. He was cleared of any wrongdoing, but in proper Jackson temperament, he was pissed. He accused William Crawford, his old nemesis on the campaign trail, of being the culprit.

However, Crawford wrote Jackson a detailed letter explaining that it wasn’t him but John C. Calhoun who wanted to censure the general. Eaton went to great lengths to ensure the president received the letter.

With the letter in hand and gossip on his mind, Jackson made life difficult for his inherited Vice President.

Martin Van Buren was Jackson’s Secretary of State and himself a widower because we never cared about women’s health. He smartly sided with Jackson and offered to resign from the cabinet to help Jackson with a reset.

Jackson declined and instead called a meeting, asking anyone who opposed Eaton and his wife to resign. Three did. The Postmaster guy did not, and not wanting to be continually shunned in Washington, DC, Eaton also resigned.⁸

The Petticoat Affair was over.

Outcome

Jackson was done with his official cabinet and instead established his own “Kitchen Cabinet” to make decisions. This phrase came from another Jackson enemy who mocked the fact that Jackson met these guys in the White House kitchen.

One of the Kitchen Cabinet members would become Chief Justice and hand down one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever.

Calhoun would become the first Vice President to resign from office and return to South Carolina over the Nullification battle on the Administration placing tariffs on Southern states. This incident was a precursor to the Civil War because South Carolina was full of jerks.

Reaction

This scandal from 200 years ago cracks me up. For people at the time, I’m sure there wasn’t much news about it until the next election. However, the public was staunch supporters of Jackson, a fellow Southerner, so they supported Martin Van Buren, a Northerner, when it was confirmed that he would be Jackson’s successor.

Okay, so what do you think? Let’s take a poll:

It was a busy week, and I’m not just talking about all the essays I cranked out this week. There’s lots of stuff going on here in DC with the new administration’s desire to gut the federal government and toss out missions of inclusion. I’m already exhausted.

But I will be back on Monday. In the meantime, I hope you all have a great week! Thanks for supporting Okay History. Feel free to hit the like button or share with a friend who plays the piano.

Okay,

Chris

So much scandal behind those eyes.

1. Who I was in love with at the time.

2. I doubt Madison was a billionaire, but billionaires are in charge now so I’m going with it.

3. The Constitution says you need to be at least 30 to get the job.

4. A common theme in this story.

5. This might be the time period when America was great.

6. That’s her real name, not kidding.

7. OKAY!

8. What a dork.