Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy
The Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy was a long-running frontier sex scandal that began in the 1790s in what was then the far west of the newly established United States of America. The parties were Lewis Robards of Kentucky and his young wife, Rachel Donelson, daughter of Tennessee pioneer settler John Donelson. After several years of childless and apparently unhappy marriage to Robards, Rachel left him and went to the Natchez District of West Florida (Spanish Mississippi) with a young lawyer from the Carolina Piedmont named Andrew Jackson, who had business in the lower Mississippi River valley, where he traded horses and slaves. Robards later filed for divorce on grounds of abandonment and adultery. Andrew Jackson and Rachel eventually settled in the Nashville area and after the Robards-Donelson divorce was finalized, they were legally married in 1794 and lived happily for many years at a plantation called the Hermitage.
Although the circumstances of the end of Rachel Donelson's relationship with Lewis Robards and her transition to a relationship with Andrew Jackson were publicly known before 1828, the issue was put before the voting public as a campaign issue during the vitriolic 1828 U.S. presidential election that pitted Jackson against incumbent U.S. president John Quincy Adams. Rachel was accused of bigamy and adultery, abetted by Jackson.
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Personal Military career 7th President of the United States
Tenure Presidential campaigns |
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The Jackson campaign committee led by John Overton created and publicized an exculpatory narrative to paper over the irregular marriage that had occurred almost 40 years prior. Overton's timeline and his characterization of the three parties to the "love triangle" was carried forward by later presidential biographers; in the late 20th century historians began to reassess the evidence and charge the Jackson campaign with a less-than-honest rendering of the facts. In current historical analysis, the end of Rachel Donelson's first marriage and the beginning of the Andrew-Rachel relationship is typically framed as a purposeful series of actions intended to free young Rachel from an unhappy household headed by allegedly abusive patriarch Robards.