led the ears of the devoted President. The objections
urged were not against Major Eaton, but against his beautiful
and accomplished wife. Rumors of an exceedingly uncomplimentary
character, that had measurably died out with time, were suddenly
revived against Mrs. Eaton, and gathered force and volume with each
passing day. It is hardly necessary to say that this hostility was,
in the main, from her own sex. To all remonstrances and
appeals, however, President Jackson turned a deaf ear. The kindness
shown by the mother of Mrs. Eaton to the wife of the President
during a former residence, and while he was a Senator, in Washington,
had never been forgotten. It will be remembered that during the
late Presidential contest not only had Jackson himself been the
object of merciless attack, but even his invalid wife did not
escape. Divorced from her first husband because of his cruel
treatment, she had married Jackson, when he was a young lawyer
in Nashville, many years before. As the result of the aspersions cast
upon her, the once famous duel was evolved in which Charles Dickinson
fell by the hand of Jackson in 1806.

After his election, but before his inauguration, Mrs. Jackson died,
the victim of calumny as her husband always believed. A few
days after he had turned away from that new-made grave, he was
in the turmoil of politics at the national capital. With the past
fresh in his memory, it is not strange that he espoused the cause of
his faithful friend, and the daughter of the woman who had befriended
one dearer to him than his own life. Thoroughly convinced of the
innocence of Mrs. Eaton, he made her cause his own, and to the end
he knew no variableness or shadow of turning.

The new administration was not far upon its tempestuous voyage
before the trouble began. The relentless hostility of the leaders
of Washington society against Mrs. Eaton was manifested in every
possible way. Their doors were firmly closed against her. This, of
itself, would have been of comparatively little moment, but serious
consequences were to grow out of it. From private parlors and
drawing-rooms the controversy soon reached the little coterie that
constituted the official family of President Jackson. While this is
almost forgotten history now, one chapter of Jackson's biography
published soon after the events mentioned, was headed, "Mr. Van
Buren calls upon Mrs. Eaton." As is well known, the creed in action
of the most sua