The Scandalous Second Marriage of Rachel Jackson

Interactive Transcript

spk_0 Hello friends, welcome!

spk_0 So glad you're here with me for another episode of Here's Work, it's interesting.

spk_0 Today we're going to talk about a first lady who never got the opportunity to step foot

spk_0 inside the White House because she died.

spk_0 Can you call her a first lady?

spk_0 We'll discuss, we'll discuss.

spk_0 She died after her husband won his presidential election, but before he was inaugurated,

spk_0 you see how this is like a little murky?

spk_0 She did, however, have an undeniably major impact on her husband's two-term presidency.

spk_0 And I know we all love to hate him.

spk_0 But during this episode, we're going to discuss the lifelong and at times, scandalous love

spk_0 and devotion between President Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachel.

spk_0 I'm Sharon McBam and here's where it gets interesting.

spk_0 So on April 13, 1827, a half a page of letters to the editor appeared in one of New York City's

spk_0 newspapers, The Evening Post.

spk_0 These printed letters all weighed in on the same topic and they were only a handful

spk_0 of the letters that were regularly showing up in the mailrooms of newspapers across the country.

spk_0 Everyone had an opinion.

spk_0 And the subject of the debate, the good name and reputation of Rachel Donaldson Jackson,

spk_0 the wife of presidential candidate Andrew Jackson.

spk_0 Before Rachel, no one had really questioned the suitability of a presidential candidate's wife.

spk_0 Sure, you know, past presidents and their families had found themselves under periods of scrutiny.

spk_0 But in the months leading up to the 1828 election, Rachel Jackson endured a full-fledged

spk_0 smear campaign backed by her husband's political opponents.

spk_0 All anyone could talk about was the scandal between Andrew Jackson, his wife Rachel,

spk_0 and the sticky timeline of Rachel's divorce from her first husband, Captain Lewis Robards.

spk_0 For his part, letter writer James Ray told The Evening Post,

spk_0 I consider Mrs. Jackson as most unjustly and ungenerously slandered.

spk_0 I'm well acquainted with most of the circumstances and regret to see the whole transaction

spk_0 misrepresented. Rachel spent the first part of her childhood in Virginia raised in a prominent

spk_0 southern family. She was the youngest of 11 children.

spk_0 And when Rachel was around the age of 12, her whole family left Virginia and traveled for

spk_0 four months over a thousand miles to the Tennessee Frontier where the family settled for a short time.

spk_0 While there, Rachel's father John Donaldson helped build the settlement of Fort

spk_0 Nashville, establishing it for around 600 of Tennessee's first white settlers.

spk_0 And if Nashville has a familiar ring to it, it's because the settlement was later developed

spk_0 into the city of Nashville, Tennessee. But the adventurous Donaldson family didn't stick around.

spk_0 They moved on and eventually settled north of Tennessee in the Kentucky territory.

spk_0 It was in this backdrop of the blue hills of Kentucky that Rachel came of age.

spk_0 By 17, she had grown into a capable, well-educated young woman. She was

spk_0 devout in her Presbyterian faith and loved spending time reading the Bible and poetry.

spk_0 Her friends and family adored her and she was considered to be a very

spk_0 Mary teenager who was often quick to show kindness. And when it came time for Rachel to find a

spk_0 suitor and settle down, it didn't hurt that she was also very beautiful. And once she probably had

spk_0 her pick of rugged Frontiersmen, Rachel Mary Captain Lewis Robards. Lewis was from Virginia,

spk_0 like Rachel, and he had served in the Revolutionary War before traveling to the Frontier.

spk_0 The couple was married in the spring of 1785 when Rachel was 18 and they moved in with Lewis's

spk_0 widowed mother on the Robards Kentucky land where she ran a boarding house. But it just wasn't meant

spk_0 to be for Rachel and Lewis. Lewis was the jealous type. He was always suspicious of Rachel's

spk_0 actions and motivations while being rather lenient with his own marriage vows. It said that he

spk_0 regularly accused her of sleeping with the men who were boarding at his mother's house and often

spk_0 resorted to cruel abuse to control her. So Rachel fled. At this point, their story becomes a bit of a

spk_0 he said she said tale with accounts that diverged depending on who told it. According to the

spk_0 Jackson's and the Donald Sands, Rachel escaped to her family's home and then fled to the

spk_0 Spanish on city of notches to avoid Robards who had gone looking for her at her mother's home.

spk_0 During the early days of Rachel's marriage to Lewis, Rachel's father was killed and like Lewis's

spk_0 mother, Rachel's mom had opened her home up as a boarding house for travelers. One of those

spk_0 borders was the tall and dashing war hero with a great head of hair, Andrew Jackson. He was

spk_0 immediately sympathetic to Rachel's plight and in their version of the story, he shivurously

spk_0 escorted her to notches Mrs. Sippy to keep her safe while Lewis, who declared he was ready to cut

spk_0 ties with Rachel, filed divorce papers. But the Robards family claimed that Rachel stole away with

spk_0 Andrew Jackson. The both of them hoping that their actions would prompt her husband to divorce her.

spk_0 Historians tend to agree with the Robards.

spk_0 Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Meacham writes in his biography of Andrew Jackson American Lion,

spk_0 Andrew and Rachel's passion for each other was apparently deep enough to lead them despite their

spk_0 claims to the contrary to choose to live in adultery in order to provoke a divorce from Robards.

spk_0 It was an extremely risky move for Rachel in a time when divorce was practically unheard of,

spk_0 especially in elite families. Women were expected to bear their husband's bad behavior silently.

spk_0 Rachel chose otherwise and it was a choice that would haunt her for the rest of her life.

spk_0 In 1791, while in notches Rachel and Andrew got married under the impression that Lewis

spk_0 Robards had obtained the divorce and Rachel was free to wed again. But here's the thing,

spk_0 divorcees weren't just a social faux pas. They were a complete logistical nightmare to execute.

spk_0 During the process of Rachel and Lewis's divorce, Kentucky became a state instead of a territory

spk_0 that was held by the state of Virginia and North Carolina turned over management of the territory

spk_0 of Tennessee to the federal government. So Lewis did in fact file for divorce like he said he would,

spk_0 but it was never officially granted. It was lost instead through the cracks of an increasingly

spk_0 complicated filing system. And of course, at the time, women were not permitted to initiate divorce,

spk_0 so Rachel was very much at his mercy. So the newlyweds Rachel and Andrew were none the wiser

spk_0 until two years later. And while a lot of historical emphasis is placed on the fact that Rachel

spk_0 and Andrew didn't know the divorce wasn't finalized, it's important to know that even Lewis himself

spk_0 had been in the dark. He had also remarried, unaware that he wasn't truly divorced from his first

spk_0 wife. Searching for the quickest way to put the legal snaffoo to bed once and for all,

spk_0 Lewis Robards agreed to sue Rachel, claiming that she was a bigamist and an adulterer,

spk_0 which was regarded as a valid reason to obtain a divorce. The courts found her guilty of abandoning

spk_0 her husband and granted the divorce. What's up guys, it's Candace Dillard Bassett,

spk_0 former real housewife of Potomac and Michael Arsino, author of The New York Times best seller,

spk_0 I Can't Day Jesus. And this is undemesticated. The podcast where we aren't just saying the

spk_0 choir parts out loud. We're putting it all on the kitchen table and inviting you to the function.

spk_0 If you're ready for some bold takes and a little bit of chaos, welcome to Undemesticated.

spk_0 Follow and listen to Undemesticated, available wherever you get your podcasts.

spk_0 On January 18th, 1794, Rachel and Andrew were quietly and legally married in a small second

spk_0 ceremony. After their second wedding, they oversaw the construction of the hermitage, their

spk_0 plantation home in Nashville, Tennessee. The fledgling city Rachel's father had once helped establish.

spk_0 And when the couple purchased the land in 1804, they brought with them nine enslaved workers,

spk_0 a number that evolved over the years and grew to over 150 by the time Andrew Jackson left the

spk_0 White House. Rachel and Andrew were not able to have any biological children of their own,

spk_0 but they were certainly not childless, quite the opposite, in fact. Andrew Jackson is known for,

spk_0 shall we say, has more temper-driven tendencies? So it may surprise you to learn that he loved

spk_0 children. It was often said that he became a totally different man around children. The first

spk_0 child they brought into their home was one of the twin sons of Severn Donaldson Rachel's brother.

spk_0 Around the year 1809, they welcomed this baby into their family as their own and gave him the name

spk_0 Andrew Jackson Jr. It's a little odd for us today to imagine separating twin babies at birth,

spk_0 right? I mean, like the practice is most famously relegated as a movie plot device to reignite the

spk_0 romance between the parents of Haley Mills or Lindsey Lohan, depending on your preferred parent trap

spk_0 era. But in the early 19th century, the concept of kinship adoption, being adopted by a family member,

spk_0 became extremely commonplace as large families began to decide what type of living arrangements and

spk_0 educational opportunities might be in the best interest of the child. And we don't know the exact

spk_0 reason why Severn Donaldson and his wife Elizabeth decided to let Rachel and Andrew adopt their son.

spk_0 But what we do know is that by the time these twin sons were born, Severn and Elizabeth

spk_0 already had three children all under the age of five. Could imagine that there must have been

spk_0 some sort of conversation that took place between the two families. Rachel and Andrew had no

spk_0 children, but wanted to have them and Severn and Elizabeth had more children than they could handle.

spk_0 A kinship adoption probably felt like the best course of action. And so Rachel and Andrew

spk_0 raised Andrew Jr as their own, but he also grew up closely connected to his biological siblings.

spk_0 Around 1812, Rachel and Andrew adopted five-year-old AJ Hutchings. AJ was Rachel's great nephew.

spk_0 He had recently been orphaned, and Rachel's sister Catherine was unable to care for her grandson,

spk_0 so Rachel stepped in. I say Rachel, because during the war of 1812, Andrew spent

spk_0 long periods of time away from the hermitage fighting in the conflict. The pair hated being

spk_0 separated from one another, and later Andrew's niece Emily said, general Jackson loved and admired

spk_0 Rachel extravagantly, finding his chief pleasure in her companionship and his greatest reward

spk_0 in her approval. But one of the most surprising stories about the Jackson's has his origins in the

spk_0 war of 1812. In the aftermath of the Creek War in Alabama, an indigenous baby boy was found alive,

spk_0 crying, and clinging to his Native American mother who had been killed. He was brought

spk_0 directly to Andrew at his military encampment, and it said that Andrew immediately decided to

spk_0 adopt the child as his own. It's a perplexing part of Andrew Jackson's personal history,

spk_0 considering he used his power first as a general and later as the president to kill and

spk_0 display thousands of indigenous people off their lands. But perhaps he identified with the boy,

spk_0 because Andrew Jackson was an orphan himself. Andrew kept the small child alive by mixing flower

spk_0 and water together, and in the midst of war raging all around, he would gently feed him to make

spk_0 sure he grew healthy enough to travel to Rachel at the hermitage. In the letter he sent to Rachel

spk_0 about the rescued boy, Andrew said, I send Linquaya to my little Andrew son, and I hope he will adopt

spk_0 him as one of the family. He referred to Linquaya as a pet with two teas, so maybe he thought of the baby

spk_0 more as a plaything or a subordinate to his son rather than a child of his own. But as time went on,

spk_0 Linquaya was given the Jackson surname and lived in the home with Rachel and Andrew,

spk_0 and was educated and raised alongside the other adopted boys, Andrew and AJ. Although it's not clear,

spk_0 the extent to which Andrew and Rachel viewed him as their child, rather than somebody who just

spk_0 lived with them. And sadly, Linquaya died of tuberculosis just before his 17th birthday. He was

spk_0 buried in an unmarked grave, and while historians have long debated how much Andrew Jackson really

spk_0 cared for Linquaya, very few were marked on the heartbreak Rachel experienced at his passing.

spk_0 Over the course of their marriage, Rachel and Andrew became the legal guardians of as many as a

spk_0 Rachel and Andrew set up their home at the hermitage and began adopting their sons. The story of Rachel's

spk_0 botched to force and supposed bigamy had been only spoken about in hushed tones and behind closed doors.

spk_0 The social elite were too polite to drag the rumors out into the open. But that all changed

spk_0 in May of 1806. A cocky lawyer in Nashville, a man named Charles Dickinson, entered a dispute with

spk_0 Rachel's family, the Donald Sins, claiming some of her brothers cheated during a horse racing

spk_0 bet. Andrew stepped into the situation, looking to defend the honor of his in-laws. But Charles

spk_0 took things further by insulting Rachel's character in a newspaper article No Less and speaking

spk_0 about her penchant for, quote unquote, living in sin. Andrew flew into a rage.

spk_0 He was no stranger to dueling, having previously drawn pistols with at least two other men,

spk_0 including the governor of Tennessee. And he challenged Charles Dickinson, who was, by the way,

spk_0 considered one of the best shots on the frontier to a duel. Charles accepted, and the

spk_0 two made their way to a farm in Kentucky because dueling was illegal in Tennessee.

spk_0 Charles shot first. And he hit Andrew in the chest, where the bullet stayed lodged for the rest

spk_0 of his life. But the shot did not kill Andrew, who took the next shot. A good many accounts of this

spk_0 duel say that Jackson's pistol jammed, but then he recocked his pistol and he took a second shot

spk_0 that hit Charles in the abdomen and ultimately killed him. Andrew's second shot broke the code

spk_0 duelo or the rules of the duel. But when the dust settled, one man lived and one man died.

spk_0 Andrew had technically won the duel, but in his haste to defend Rachel's honor, he brought

spk_0 into his life the smear of murder alongside the bigamy rumors his wife endured.

spk_0 This made Andrew Jackson's run for the presidency of living hell. You'll remember he ran

spk_0 against John Quincy Adams in 1824, losing bitterly when the House of Representatives elected Adams,

spk_0 even after Jackson won nearly 70% of the popular vote. And when Jackson and the Quincy, as I like to

spk_0 call him, squared off in 1828, things got even more ugly. John Quincy Adams' presidential campaign

spk_0 supporters regularly brought up Jackson's lack of self-control, his use of slave labor,

spk_0 and of course his marriage to Rachel before she was fully divorced from Lewis Robards.

spk_0 And though I think it's important to mention that John Quincy Adams himself never got

spk_0 personally involved in the smear campaign. He felt the mudslinging tactics were beneath him,

spk_0 and he even refused to write in his diary between August and October of 1828.

spk_0 The press however loved the scandal. One newspaper ran an article asking its readers,

spk_0 ought to be convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest

spk_0 offices of this free and Christian land. And hotheaded Andrew Jackson did not take the high road

spk_0 in response. He regularly delighted in the rumors that his own supporters spread about John

spk_0 Quincy Adams even when they were clearly baseless. He also tried to do damage control by writing to

spk_0 newspaper editors himself and sharing guidelines on how the attacks on Rachel's virtue should be

spk_0 countered. The insults continued. And Rachel grew depressed. She wrote to her niece about an incident

spk_0 where she overheard other women talking about her. She wrote listening to them, it seemed as if a veil

spk_0 was lifted. And I saw myself whom you have all guarded from outside criticism and surrounded

spk_0 with flattering delusions. As others say me, a poor old woman, a hindrance instead of a help

spk_0 meet to the man I adore. Between the scandal and Koya's death earlier that year and a downturn

spk_0 in her health, Rachel spent much of the campaign teary-eyed and tucked away from the world.

spk_0 Once her husband won the election, Rachel Jackson reportedly confided in a friend saying,

spk_0 I would rather be a doorkyper in the House of God. Then live in that palace in Washington.

spk_0 Whether it was a throwaway complaint or a premonition of what was to come, an early December

spk_0 Rachel suffered a near fatal heart attack and died three weeks later on December 22, 1828

spk_0 at the age of 61. Rachel was buried on Christmas Eve at the hermitage and she was laid to rest

spk_0 wearing the white dress she had picked out for the inaugural ball. Devastated Andrew Jackson

spk_0 blamed his political enemies for Rachel's death, even going so far as to say at her funeral,

spk_0 may God Almighty forgive her murderers, as I know she forgave them. I never can.

spk_0 And even as Andrew settled into his presidency, Rachel's death caused him constant pain.

spk_0 My heart is nearly broke, he said in a letter to a friend, I tried to summon up my usual fortitude

spk_0 but it is in vain. Because he was now in need of someone to fill the house and hostess duties

spk_0 of a first lady, Andrew turned to an obvious choice, a family member who was already living in

spk_0 Washington DC with him. The president-elect had designated Rachel's nephew, Andrew Donaldson,

spk_0 to be his private secretary, a position that we now call the chief staff, which was the highest

spk_0 employee rank in the West Wing of the White House. His wife, Emily Donaldson, was educated

spk_0 ever-chetty and already a part of the fabric of his new administration. So she was the perfect

spk_0 person to have the job of White House hostess. Emily was born in 1807 to John Donaldson,

spk_0 one of Rachel Jackson's brothers. And she was raised with the formal education at the Nashville

spk_0 Female Academy, benefiting from the type of schooling that was extremely rare for a girl to have

spk_0 at the time. At 17, she married her first cousin Andrew Donaldson and over the course of their

spk_0 marriage they had four children together. Emily was just 21 years old when she came into her White

spk_0 House hostess role, but she came to it with all the know-how style and gumption that a woman twice

spk_0 her age could only hope to have. Andrew Jackson was the president of the United States, but he was

spk_0 also a man in deep mourning over the loss of his beloved wife. Around the one-year anniversary of

spk_0 Rachel's death, Emily stepped in. She decided it was time to coax her uncle out of his despair and

spk_0 into the light of some of the fun that his new presidential position offered. And so on January

spk_0 1st, 1830, Emily threw D, social event of the season, a new year's party that still to this day

spk_0 is considered one of the biggest and grandest events to take place in the White House.

spk_0 It was a new decade, and the bivacious Emily wanted Andrew and the rest of the country to find

spk_0 joy in the potential of the years ahead. Emily served as the first lady surrogate for five years,

spk_0 expertly handling the details of receptions, welcoming official guests, and arranging important

spk_0 dinners. And she's widely regarded as one of the most effective of the White House hostesses,

spk_0 but towards the end of her time there a social scandal drove a wedge between her and president Jackson.

spk_0 And Emily also began to feel ill and returned home to Tennessee where she sadly

spk_0 died from tuberculosis at the two young age of 29. Andrew Jackson replaced Emily with his

spk_0 daughter-in-law, Sarah York Jackson, who stepped in to take over hostess duties.

spk_0 And that social scandal that saw Emily and Andrew Jackson at odds with each other before her death,

spk_0 it would go on to have far-reaching consequences for the trajectory of Washington DC politics.

spk_0 And even directly influence the next presidential election.

spk_0 Thank you so much for being here with me today. I'm so glad we could learn about Rachel and Andrew

spk_0 Jackson. He may be my favorite, least favorite president, but his life truly was fascinating.

spk_0 I'll see you soon.

spk_0 Thank you so much for listening to Hear's where it gets interesting. If you enjoyed today's

spk_0 episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show that helps podcasters out so much?

spk_0 I'm your host and executive producer Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie

spk_0 Buck Parks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon.

The Scandalous Second Marriage of Rachel Jackson

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