Bringing Down the Colonel

by Patricia Miller

  By late March, however, Louise’s notes take a dark turn. She tells Breckinridge that she has received a letter that has “disturbed her peace of mind”—perhaps a warning about Pollard. She seems distraught when she doesn’t hear from him. By mid-April, she’s under a doctor’s care and confined to bed. She writes of an illness that came on “like a cyclone” and was like “a tempest while it lasted” but then seemed to subside. For a time after their July marriage, which came exactly one year and four days after Issa’s death, she seemed better, but once the scandal broke, she was again unwell, and she declined throughout the fall and into the winter. In February, Breckinridge summoned her sister from Illinois, who stayed for ten days. Shortly before the trial started, he confided to Desha that Louise seemed “weaker instead of stronger.”

  Now, with the trial under way, the pressure on Louise was even greater; the papers were full of gossip about her marriage, most recently that her brother Preston had forced Breckinridge to marry her because their relationship “had aroused comment.” Breckinridge claimed that he had made “a full statement to my wife prior to the trial,” and, knowing that she likely would hear the details anyway from her gossiping friends, he probably had confessed the full extent of the relationship—at least to the degree he was planning to testify in court. The revelation of how thoroughly he had duped and betrayed her must have been devastating and destabilizing. She began lashing out. Nisba described a “nervous affliction that manifested itself sometimes in attacks of a hysterical character.” Louise wrote of periods when her brain wasn’t “clear.”

  Nisba said she found that if she could get to her in time, “by sheer will power and prayer” she could “carry her through” these attacks of hysteria. If she didn’t, “the results were quite dreadful,” she said, and “she became very abusive especially about my father.” Dutiful as ever, Nisba took on the role of caretaker to her unhinged stepmother while her brother was where she likely wanted to be: in the courtroom with her father. The newspapers pressed, but she remained steadfastly loyal to her father and refused to comment on the trial or Pollard. Now just a month shy of her twenty-eighth birthday and still rudderless, it seemed that the family claim exerted more of a hold on Nisba than ever.

  * * *

  On Friday, March 9, men were lined up in front of the courtroom doors like “crowds before the box office of a theater,” said the Courier-Journal. Madeline was among the first to arrive. She was tastefully attired in a plainly trimmed black dress with a perfectly tailored bodice with two neat little rows of buttons that converged at her waist, emphasizing her slender figure. The only jewelry she had on was a circular gold hatpin worn like a brooch on her stand-up collar, and she had added a demure dotted veil to her black velvet hat. She looked, most of the reporters thought, around thirty, not beautiful according to conventional standards—they judged her features not dainty enough; her nostrils too wide; her mouth too broad—but attractive enough in her way. “She is of the style a middle-aged man would be attracted to,” opined Gath of the Enquirer.

  Madeline was accompanied by Miss Ellis—who did sewing for the House of Mercy, although many assumed the elderly woman dressed in black was a nun—and Dr. Belle Buchanan, one of the doctors who had helped her after her first pregnancy in Cincinnati. She made her way to the plaintiff’s table and took the seat closest to the jury box. Soon after, Breckinridge entered and threaded his way through the courtroom to the defense table. It was the first time they had been in the same room in almost a year; their last encounter had been the previous May, before Breckinridge left Washington for a speaking tour, when Madeline still hoped they might be married. Breckinridge took a seat diagonally behind Madeline, nonchalantly stuffing his red leather satchel under the table as he assiduously ignored her.

  The court came to order. Calderon Carlisle stood before the jury and began outlining Madeline’s case, pitting Breckinridge, “a man of family, of political prominence, high in the councils of the Presbyterian Church, famous throughout the country as an orator,” against “a friendless young woman.” As he spoke, Madeline turned in her seat to look at Breckinridge, raising her veil as she did so. She half rose and seemed on the verge of saying something when Miss Ellis touched her arm and stopped her. The movement caught Breckinridge’s attention; he glanced up and flashed what Gath thought was a “careless, contemptuous, recognizing” smile before dropping his gaze.

  Carlisle continued, unaware of the drama that was playing out steps away. “There are three credible witnesses who will testify that the promise to marry was made,” he said. He told the story many already had read of Madeline’s impoverished childhood, her desperate arrangement with Rhodes, the train ride when her sister was taken ill, and how “Col. Breckinridge brought a closed carriage to the college when it was nearly dark.” Finally, he got to the seduction and described how “by wiles and artifices, the defendant lured her on, and eventually accomplished Miss Pollard’s ruin in Lexington.”

  As he described her intimacy with Breckinridge, Madeline “trembled violently, while the tears burned their unceasing way down her cheeks,” said the Evening Star. Carlisle told of the birth of her two children. He told of the last day of August 1892, after the death of Issa Breckinridge, when Breckinridge met Madeline at the train station and said he could finally fulfill his promise to marry her. And Carlisle revealed a detail that many newspapers had either omitted from their coverage of the lawsuit or so obscured with euphemisms that it was easily missed: Madeline had again become pregnant last spring, sometime around March, and Breckinridge had promised to marry her on May 31. Carlisle asserted that Breckinridge postponed the marriage, and Madeline subsequently had a miscarriage. After he wrapped up, Breckinridge’s lawyer Phil Thompson said the defendant would reserve his opening statement for later.

  The first witness was Julia Blackburn. Pale, plump, and steely, a pretty gray-haired woman in rich black silk and a plush black cape with feathery fur frizzes, she impressed everyone as a lady of substance and rank as she made her way to the witness stand. She gave essentially the same testimony she provided in her deposition. In a clear voice, staring directly at Breckinridge, she told how he and Madeline insisted on seeing her on Good Friday in 1893 and how Breckinridge said, “I shall make her Mrs. Breckinridge. I have brought this young lady with me to ask for your care and protection.” She said Breckinridge asked her if she and her sister were going to Europe that summer “and if so, would we kindly take Miss Pollard with us,” which she declined to commit to, although she said she did agree with Breckinridge that it might be best for Madeline to go away until they were married to avoid any hint of impropriety.

  Blackburn also testified that Breckinridge denied to her face rumors that he was to marry Louise Wing and asked her to do something to counter Madeline’s jealousy about the matter. She said when the Wing rumors persisted, she advised Madeline to give him up. “If Mr. Breckinridge wishes to act the villain I think you are powerless to prevent him,” she said she told her. Finally, she said, she saw Breckinridge and Madeline together one last time at her apartment. That’s when Madeline placed her arms around “Willie” and asked him to tell Blackburn when they would be married. “Owing to present circumstances I cannot do it now, but I’ll return and tell Mrs. Blackburn, and we will arrange the day, and my marriage will be with the girl I told Mrs. Blackburn I was engaged to,” he said, according to Julia. Later, after Julia found out that they were in New York City together, she said she “scolded” Breckinridge about the potential damage to Madeline’s reputation because of the way “in which he followed Miss Pollard around.”

  As evidence of the frequent communication between Breckinridge and Blackburn that spring regarding Madeline, Carlisle produced two telegrams from Breckinridge to Julia advising her where she could reach Madeline in New York, where Julia had gone on some financial business, and where Madeline was supposed to meet her.

  Phil Thompson handled the cross-examination. He got off to a poor start, asking J
ulia if she was the widow of the late governor Luke Blackburn, to which she replied tartly, “You know that as well as I do.” He asked her how she met Madeline, getting her to state that it was through her friend Mrs. Fillette, not Breckinridge, and that she had known Madeline for about three years. She said, however, that she had asked Breckinridge about her. “When I asked the Colonel who Miss Pollard was and he said she was from Kentucky, my feelings went out to her because she was from my own state,” she said. “He said that her people were not what would be called fashionable, but they were industrious, upright, respectable people.”

  Thompson kept circling back to Madeline’s behavior, probing the extent of Julia’s closeness with her. “I extended to Miss Pollard only the protection I would extend to any unprotected woman from my own state of Kentucky,” she insisted. “And always in my presence she acted like a perfect lady and I thought”—here she broke off and glared at Breckinridge—“that Col. Breckinridge was a gentleman.” Still Thompson pressed, asking if Madeline had a nickname for her. Julia admitted that Madeline sometimes called her “the Duchess” but said that didn’t mean they were particularly close. “Well, what were your relations?” pressed Thompson. With tears in her eyes and quivering lips she shot back that she felt sorry for Madeline. “I am sorry for any woman who has to make her way alone in the world, just as I am sorry to have to come here. If I had my husband to defend me it would never have been necessary for me to be here,” she spat. The courtroom grew very silent. Breckinridge flushed. Everyone knew what she meant. The insult he had given her by letting her chaperone Madeline around town was so great that her husband surely would have defended the Blackburn name in the traditional Kentucky manner—outside of any court of law.

  Thompson barreled ahead, asking Blackburn if it was true that her friend Mrs. Fillette had said derogatory things about Pollard. She said that Mrs. Fillette told her that she disliked Madeline because she had stolen her friends and allowed Charles Dudley Warner to stay at her house without her permission. Thompson continued to grill Blackburn about dates and particulars of her various meetings with Breckinridge until she burst out: “I have told you everything I know about the case. It is only my sense of duty to God and man that has moved me in this matter,” she said, again close to tears. “I have told you everything and spoken frankly through all this fearful ordeal.” The last thing Thompson got her to admit before she stepped down was that she had told both Breckinridge and Madeline last May that she had “washed her hands” of them because she found them in New York together.

  Blackburn’s testimony had been widely expected, although delivered with a force and clarity that impressed the men in the courtroom, but the next two witnesses were a surprise. First came Mollie Desha, Breckinridge’s estranged sister-in-law, dressed in green lizard silk with black trim, nervous and troubled-looking. Carlisle handed her a small wicker sewing basket and asked her if it was the basket she got for her sister in Nantucket, which Madeline claimed Breckinridge had given to her following Issa’s death. “Yes,” Desha said, “she used it all the time.” When the time came for cross-examination, Breckinridge said sternly, “No cross-examination for her.”

  The next witness was Col. William Moore, superintendent of the Washington Metropolitan Police, who looked like a French marshal with his stupendous gray mustache and curled goatee. Referring to his shorthand notes, Moore said that on May 13 of last year the door of his office had burst open and in came Breckinridge and a young lady he identified as Pollard. Breckinridge told Moore he needed his protection as “the lady had threatened him with death.” Moore said that the young woman was “very excited and insisted that they should be married at once.” She then “held up her hands and said those were her only weapons.” Breckinridge then promised to marry her on May 31 “if Providence in its wisdom should not intervene.” Moore said he warned Madeline not to make any more threats, and they left his office.

  Four days later the couple came back. Breckinridge told Moore what he had suspected from their last visit: that “Miss Pollard was in a delicate condition.” Breckinridge said that Madeline was going to New York to “prepare for the event” and that he wanted Moore to witness an agreement to the effect that they would be married after the baby was born. “He and Miss Pollard clasped hands over it, and with his disengaged hand Breckinridge took mine,” Moore said, noting it was one of the most solemn moments he had ever witnessed. After they had sworn to the agreement to marry, he said Madeline “drew from her bosom a revolver, and said should it be necessary she would use it on Col. Breckinridge and on herself.” Moore said he took the gun from Madeline.

  Moore said that beginning in late June he had received a series of letters and telegrams from Breckinridge asking him to intercede with Pollard to prevent a scandal because she had returned from New York after only a short time and was threatening to go public. Breckinridge sent him a check for one hundred dollars to give Madeline, but he was unable to deliver it because she had left town. A ripple went through the courtroom as the onlookers did the math and realized the date Breckinridge gave him the check—July 31—was two weeks after his marriage to Wing.

  Thompson began his cross-examination. He asked Moore if it was true that Breckinridge had told him that Madeline couldn’t accuse him of seduction. At that, Madeline sprang from her chair. “No, no—it is not so,” she cried. Moore said that the first time they came to his office, Breckinridge told him, “Miss Pollard could not say he had seduced her, for on their first meeting he had taken liberties with her person, and the second night had intimate relations with her full consent.” Madeline sobbed softly in her seat as he spoke. The question went to the heart not of the legal case against Breckinridge, which was whether or not he made a promise of marriage that he broke, but of the moral one. As Carlisle had noted in his opening argument, Madeline couldn’t sue Breckinridge for seduction because women couldn’t sue for seduction under District of Columbia law. But the language of her complaint, which charged that Breckinridge had taken advantage of Madeline’s “youth and inexperience” through “wiles and artifices and protestations of affection” mirrored that of many states’ seduction statutes and clearly was designed to suggest that Breckinridge had acted in a sexually predaceous manner.

  The last witness was Nathan S. Lincoln, one of the city’s best-known doctors. He testified that he also had received a visit from the couple in mid-May of last year—right between the two visits to Moore, it turned out—at which time he confirmed to Breckinridge that Madeline was indeed pregnant. Breckinridge, he said, told him that he “intended to make it alright with her.” It was the capstone testimony of a day the press agreed was very favorable to Pollard. With the trial adjourned for the weekend, the capital was abuzz, especially regarding Blackburn’s remark about her husband dealing with Breckinridge. Jennie wrote to Stoll aghast at what she thought was their too-gentle cross-examination of Blackburn about her relationship with Madeline, telling him that any woman “who volunteers to become the chief witness in a case of this kind” should not expect their social position to exempt them from rigorous questioning. She wrote to her mother, with whom she was increasingly less circumspect about her involvement in the trial, “The opening does not look very well for Mr. B … It was a good day for her case but the other side has not yet shown its hand.”

  That Sunday, when Jennie was leaving church, she ran into Sister Ella, one of the nuns from the House of Mercy. When she mentioned that she wanted to make a milk punch to build Madeline up for her ordeal of testifying, Jennie volunteered to contribute a bottle of whiskey to the cause as an excuse to come by. That evening she arrived at the House of Mercy with a bottle of bourbon she had procured from Breckinridge. She sat with Madeline as she drank the punch, helpfully adding more whiskey when she complained it was tasteless—“she evidently likes her punch to be clearly defined in its flavoring,” Jennie noted. Madeline was thrilled with Blackburn. “She was dressed so perfectly and she looked the lady so thoroughly. Then he
r manner, and the way she gave her testimony, was so fine,” Madeline told Jennie, adding that she had been with her lawyers all day Saturday, working through “things that might be brought up to confront us.” Before she could ask for any specifics, Sister Ella hurried Jennie away so Madeline could get some sleep.

  Monday morning brought more large crowds to the courtroom, and for the first time, some of the spectators were women. This surprised reporters; one noted that for “obvious reasons, the impression was general that the trial would be one which would attract few, if any, members of the gentler sex.” At the time, women were a rarity in courtrooms as either lawyers or spectators, most especially so when matters of sex were dealt with. As Susan B. Anthony had complained nearly twenty years earlier, when it came to the “laws regulating … marriage and divorce, for adultery, breach of promise, seduction, rape, bigamy, abortion, infanticide—all were made by men. They, alone, decide who are guilty of violating these laws and what shall be their punishment, with judge, jury and advocate all men, with no woman’s voice heard in our courts, saving as accused or witness.”