WILLIAM O'NEAL kept at Washington for many years a large old-fashioned tavern, where members of Congress, in considerable numbers, boarded during the sessions of the national legislature. William O'Neal had a daughter, sprightly and beautiful, who aided him and his wife in entertaining his boarders. It is not good for a girl to grow up in a large tavern. Peg O'Neal as she was called, was so lively in her deportment, so free in her conversation, that, had she been born twenty years later, she would have been called one of the "fast" girls of Washington. A witty, pretty, saucy, active tavern-keeper's daughter, who makes free with the inmates of her father's house, and is made free with by them, may escape contamination, but not calumny.

When Major Eaton first came to Washington as a Senator of the United States in the year 1818, he took board at Mr. O'Neal's tavern, and continued to reside there every winter for ten years. He became acquainted, of course, with the family, including the vivacious and attractive Peg. When General Jackson came to the city as Senator in 1823, he also went to live with the O'Neals, whom he had known in Washington before it had become the seat of government. For Mrs. O'Neal, who was a remarkably efficient woman, he had a particular respect. Even during his presidency, when he was supposed to visit no one, it was one of his favorite relaxations, when worn out with business, to stroll with Major Lewis across the "old fields" near Washington to the cottage where Mrs. O'Neal lived in retirement, and enjoy an hour's chat with the old lady. Mrs. Jackson, also, during her residence in Washington in 1825, became attached to the good Mrs. O'Neal and to her daughter.

In the course of time Miss O'Neal became the wife of purser Timberlake of the United States Navy, and the mother

of two children. In 1828 came news that Mr. Timberlake, then on duty in the Mediterranean, had cut his throat in a fit of melancholy, induced, it was said, by previous intoxication. On hearing this intelligence, Major Eaton, then a widower, felt an inclination to marry Mrs. Timberlake, for whom he had entertained an attachment quite as tender as a man could lawfully indulge for the wife of a friend and brother-mason. He took the precaution to consult General Jackson on the subject. "Why, yes, Major," said the General, "if you love the woman, and she will have you, marry her by all means." Major Eaton mentioned, what the General well knew, that Mrs. Timberlake's reputation in Washington had not escaped reproach, and that Major Eaton himself was supposed to have been too intimate with her. "Well," said the General, "your marrying her will disprove these charges, and restore Peg's good name." And so, perhaps, it might, if Major Eaton had not been taken into the Cabinet.

Eaton and Mrs. Timberlake were married in January, 1829, a few weeks before General Jackson arrived at the seat of government. As soon as it was whispered about Washington that Major Eaton was to be a member of the new Cabinet, it occurred with great force to the minds of certain ladies, who supposed themselves to be at the head of society at the Capital, that, in that case, Peg O'Neal would be the wife of a cabinet minister, and, as such, entitled to admission into their own sacred circle. Horrible to contemplate! Forbid it, morality! Forbid it, decency! Forbid it, General Jackson!

Among those who were scandalized at the appointment of Major Eaton was the Rev. J. N. Campbell, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Washington, which the General and Mrs. Jackson had both attended, and which, it was supposed, President Jackson would attend. Not caring to speak with the General himself on the subject, Mr. Campbell communicated the ill things he had heard of Mrs. Eaton to the Rev. E. S. Ely, of Philadelphia, who had known General Jackson in his mercantile days, and had come to Washington to wit

ness the inauguration of his old friend. Dr. Ely desired to converse with General Jackson on the subject, but finding no opportunity to do so in Washington, wrote to the General, after his return to Philadelphia, a very long letter, in which he detailed all the charges he had heard against Mrs. Eaton. He informed the President that she had borne a bad reputation in Washington from her girlhood; that the ladies of Washington would not speak to her; that a gentleman, at the table of Gadsby's Hotel, was said to have declared that he personally knew her to be a dissolute woman; that Mrs. Eaton had told her servants to call her children Eaton, not Timberlake, for Eaton was their rightful name; that a clergyman of Washington had told Dr. Ely, that a deceased physician had told him, that Mrs. Timberlake had had a miscarriage when her husband had been absent a year; that the friends of Major Eaton had persuaded him to board elsewhere, for the sake of getting him away from Mrs. Timberlake; that Mrs. Jackson herself had entertained the worst opinion of Mrs. Timberlake; that Major Eaton and Mrs. Timberlake had traveled together, and recorded their names on hotel registers as man and wife, in New York and elsewhere.

For your own sake, said the reverend doctor, for your dead wife's sake, for the sake of your administration, for the credit of the government and the country, you should not countenance a woman like this.

This letter was dated March 18th, 1829. General Jackson replied to it immediately, and in a manner peculiarly characteristic. Indeed, all his most peculiar traits were exhibited in the course of this affair.

GENERAL JACKSON TO REV. DR. ELY.

"WASHINGTON, March 23, 1829.

"DEAR SIR: Your confidential letter of the 18th instant has been received in the same spirit of kindness and friendship with which it was written.

"I must here be permitted to remark that I sincerely regret you did not personally name this subject to me before you left Washington, as I

could, in that event, have apprised you of the great exertions made by Clay and his partisans, here and elsewhere, to destroy the character of Mrs. Eaton by the foulest and basest means, so that a deep and lasting wrong might be inflicted on her husband. I could have given you information that would at least have put you on your guard with respect to anonymous letters, containing slanderous insinuations against female character. If such evidence as this is to be received, I ask where is the guarantee for female character, however moral-however virtuous?

"To show you how much you have been imposed upon, and how much Mrs. E. has been slandered, I am warranted in the positive contradiction of the very first charge made against her- that she was in ill-fame before Mr. Eaton ever saw her'-from the united testimony of the Hon. John Rhea, Dr. Hogg, and others who boarded with Mr. O'Neal, long before Mr. Eaton was a member of Congress. If you feel yourself at liberty to give the names of those secret traducers of female reputation, I entertain no doubt but they will be exposed and consigned to public odium, which should ever be the lot of those whose morbid appetite delights in defamation and slander.

"As to the information of Mr. of Baltimore, I will barely remark that he may be a respectable man; but surely you will agree with me, that a charge so malignant in its character, unless accompanied with indubitable evidence of the criminality of the act, should not have been made, and shows him at once to be destitute of those just, manly, and charitable feelings, which should be characteristic of every good and virtuous man. In contradiction of Mr. — -'s information to you, I have many letters from Baltimore, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other States, congratulating me and the nation on the selection of Mr. Eaton as one of my Cabinet. Besides these, many members of Congress, and among them the leading members of the New York delegation, expressed personally their high gratification at his appointment. You were assuredly justified in stating to my friends that I have no information, nor ever had, on which any reliance ought to be placed, of any infamous conduct of Mrs. Eaton.

"One observation on the bank conversation. The place where the remark was made is sufficient evidence, to my mind, that it emanated from Clay or his satellites, with a view of completing what he had here begun. I am fully warranted in charging Mr. Clay with circulating these slanderous reports, from information derived from a very intelligent lady, who met Mr. Clay and his wife on her way to this city. This lady says Mr. and Mrs. Clay spoke in the strongest and most unmeasured terms of Mrs. Eaton. She inquired of them to know upon what grounds these charges rested. 'Rumor, mere rumor,' was the answer. So far from this attempt to injure Mrs. Eaton on the part of these personages having the effect intended, the lady, as soon as she arrived, sought to become acquainted

with her and Mr. Eaton. Now, my dear sir, justice to female character, justice to me, and justice to Mr. Eaton, require that these secret agents in propagating slander should be made known to Mr. Eaton, that he may be enabled to defend the character of his wife against such vile and unprincipled attacks. Would yon, my worthy friend, desire me to add the weight and influence of my name, whatever it may be, to assist in crushing Mrs. Eaton, who, I do believe, and have a right to believe, is a much injured woman, and more virtuous than some of her enemies?

'It is due to me to be made acquainted with the names of those bank directors who have dared to throw an imputation on the memory of my departed wife. Men who can be base enough to speak thus of the dead, are not too good secretly to slander the living; and they deserve, and no doubt will receive, the scorn of all good men. Mr. Eaton has been known to me for twenty years. His character heretofore, for honesty and morality, has been unblemished; and am I now, for the first time, to change my opinion of him, because of the slanders of this city? We know, here, that that none are spared. Even Mrs. Madison was assailed by these fiends in human shape. Mrs. Commodore has also been singled out as a victim to be sacrificed on the altar of defamation, because she left this city and traveled precisely in the way agreed on by Commodore not promulgate to the gossips here. I speak advisedly in relation to this matter, for I have seen a letter from Commodore ——, giving an exposé of this whole transaction, justifying his wife's conduct and vindicating her innocence. He expresses a determination, when he returns to this country, to investigate the affair, and punish the defamers of his wife's character; and I sincerely hope he may live to do it, for I am disgusted even to loathing at the licentious and depraved state of society. It needs purifying.

but did

"You were badly advised, my dear sir, when informed 'that Mrs. Jackson, while in Washington, did not fear to put the seal of reprobation on such a character as Mrs. Eaton.' Mrs. Jackson, to the last moment of her life, believed Mrs. Eaton to be an innocent and much injured woman, so far as relates to the tales about her and Mr. Eaton, and none other ever reached her or me. As Mrs. J. has been introduced into this affair, and as she loved truth while living, and she and myself have taken the (illegible) Psalm for our guide, to which I refer you, I will give you a concise history of the information which I and Mrs. Jackson possessed upon this subject. First, let me remark that Major O'Neal is a mason, Mr. Timberlake was a mason, and Mr. Eaton is a mason; therefore, every person who is acquainted with the obligations of masons, must know that Mr. Eaton, as a mason, could not have criminal intercourse with another mason's wife, without being one of the most abandoned of men. The high standing of Mr. Eaton, as a man of moral worth and a mason, gives the lie direct, in my