Bringing Down the Colonel

by Patricia Miller

  “like a gally [sic] slave”: JAT to Mary Tucker, May 31, 1894, TFP.

  “very faithful and helpful”: SPB to WCPB, June 7, 1894, BFP.

  “prolonged brain rest”: Preston B. Scott to WCPB, June 13, 1894, BFP.

  “had no parallel”: “Col. Breckinridge’s Defeat,” WP, Sept. 17, 1894.

  “The women are aroused”: “Pollard, Another Story of the Source of the Funds,” KL, May 24, 1894.

  “insulting”: “Villainous Threat,” Cincinnati Tribune, June 11, 1894.

  “feeble woman”: SPB to WCPB, July 20, 1894, BFP.

  “The Breckinridge business floats”: “A Chicago Woman,” KL, Aug. 23, 1894.

  “what your relations”: WCPB to H. H. Gratz, May 11, 1894, BFP.

  “eighty sheep, eleven [cows]”: Fuller, “Congressman Breckinridge and the Ladies,” 7.

  “who all through the course”: “Owens, Owens, Owens,” KL, Aug. 23, 1894.

  “to tell you some truths”: “Miss Desha’s Appeal,” WP, Aug. 28, 1894.

  “one of the wickedest”: Carpenter, Carp’s Washington, 3.

  “parade Pennsylvania Avenue”: Ibid., 110.

  “It is an open secret in Washington”: “Declare War on Gay Congressmen,” CDT, April 16, 1894.

  “shocking her friends”: “Miss Desha’s Appeal,” WP, Aug. 28, 1894.

  “It has been greatly complemented”: Julia C. Blackburn to Mary Desha, Aug. 30, 1894, Mary Desha Papers, the University of Kentucky.

  “against Breckinridge is so bitter”: Mary Mitchell Foster to Mary Desha, Aug. 29, 1894, Mary Desha Papers, the University of Kentucky.

  “Any woman who would”: “Cut to Death,” LMT, Aug. 31, 1891.

  “Everyone looks like”: “Ready to Snap,” LCJ, Sept. 14, 1894.

  “What a time”: Susan B. Anthony to Laura Clay, Sept. 21, 1894, Laura Clay Papers, University of Kentucky.

  “I feel it would be”: Quoted in Hay, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, 35.

  “Like myself I suppose you”: Julia Blackburn to Mary Desha, Sept. 11, 1894, Mary Desha Papers, the University of Kentucky.

  “social duties”: “She’s All Right,” LCJ, Sept. 11, 1894.

  “Never before in any canvas”: “Silver Tongue Silenced,” CE, Sept. 16, 1894.

  “there is a place”: Anthony and Harper, The History of Woman Suffrage, 667.

  “most promising”: Fuller, Laura Clay, 57–59.

  “comedy-drama”: “Miss Pollard’s Plans,” KL, Aug. 16, 1894.

  “a novel nearly completed”: “Madeline Pollard’s Plans,” WP, Oct. 24, 1894.

  “a ruin that is complete”: “Falls Like Lucifer,” KL, March 29, 1894.

  “The fall of Breckinridge”: Tapp and Klotter, Kentucky, 337.

  “a mediocre representative”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “It is a step toward”: SPB to WCPB, Sept. 8, 1894, BFP.

  “To say she did right”: Fayette Lexington, The Celebrated Case, 18.

  the second woman: (Lewiston, ME) Weekly Journal, Oct. 4, 1894.

  18. REFUSING TO BEHAVE

  “startled the whole country”: “Kentucky Men Are Agitated,” New York Herald, March 24, 1894.

  “shattering Nineties”: Foraker, I Would Live It Again, 7.

  “the most significant event”: O’Neill, Everyone Was Brave, 148.

  “Sex o’clock in America”: Reedy, “Sex O’Clock in America,” 1.

  “teachers, lecturers, novelists”: Repplier, “Repeal of Reticence,” 298.

  “There would have been no scandal”: WCPB to A. W. Macklin, Feb. 26, 1894, BFP.

  “testimony as a woman of social standing”: “Our Wealthy Widows,” WP, Dec. 9, 1894.

  “support and encouragement”: WCPB to A. W. Macklin, Feb. 26, 1894, BFP.

  “honor was involved”: “Miss Pollard’s Story of Col. Breckinridge,” NYW, Sept. 17, 1893.

  Women’s Auxiliary: “The Women’s Auxiliary Ex-Confederate Aid Society,” WP, Nov. 16, 1891.

  “the first one I talked to”: Tucker, TRMP, 262.

  “he had the case”: “They May Follow Breckinridge,” WP, Dec. 27, 1894.

  “directly or indirectly”: “Motion Filed,” LCJ, April 18, 1894.

  “a widow, a Kentuckian”: “For the Defense,” WES, March 22, 1894.

  “a man who made such a profession”: “Miss Pollard’s Backers,” NYW, March 27, 1894.

  Columbia Working Girls’ Club: “Home for Working Girls,” NYT, Dec. 14, 1893.

  “How a Girl’s Life Can Be Transformed”: “The Social World,” NYT, Feb. 8, 1894.

  “traveling companion”: “Madeline Pollard to Go Abroad,” Sentinel (Fort Wayne, IN), April 25, 1895.

  “one of the few rich”: “Women at the World’s Fair,” WP, Oct. 23, 1892.

  “noted philanthropist”: “Under Fire Today,” WP, April 3, 1894.

  suit was organized: “The Pollard Fund,” Cincinnati Tribune, May 20, 1894.

  “Nothing has ever yet been”: “Madeline Pollard’s Hope,” New York Sun, April 18, 1894.

  “one of the richest”: JAT to William Worthington, March 9, 1894, TFP.

  one of the city’s most desirable debutantes: “The New Spanish Minister,” NYT, June 11, 1899.

  In the spring of 1895: “Days of Romance Not Past,” Lewiston (ME) Daily Sun, June 24, 1895.

  “expenses incurred”: “Money for Trial Expenses,” LCJ, March 21, 1894.

  “furnished her by lady friends”: Tucker, TRMP, 86.

  19. REDEMPTION

  “troublesome voters upon whom”: Breckinridge, “Issues of the Presidential Campaign,” 274.

  “We lost zest after that”: Foraker, I Would Live It Again, 151.

  caught a bad cold: Klotter, Breckinridges of Kentucky, 184.

  suffered a stroke and suffered a second: “W.C.P. Breckinridge Ill,” “Col. Breckinridge Stricken Again,” NYT, Sept. 30 and Nov. 17, 1904.

  November 19: Kentucky Death Records, 1852–1964 (database online). Ancestry.com.

  Louise died in 1920: U.S. Find a Grave Index, 1600s–Current (database online). Ancestry.com.

  “He was defeated for renomination”: “W.C.P. Breckinridge Dead,” NYT, Nov. 20, 1904.

  “The [Breckinridge] name has been connected”: WCPB to SPB, Nov. 16, 1902, BFP.

  “some woman’s rights gang”: JAT to Mary Tucker, March 2, 1894, TFP.

  “regular hotbed”: Deutsch, Women and the City, 104.

  “I’ll bet they were glad”: JAT to Mary Tucker, Dec. 11, 1904, TFP.

  “terrible stupid and prosy”: JAT to Mary Tucker, Dec. 7, 1905, TFP.

  “sassed”: JAT Obituary, April 29, 1964, TFP.

  “such pigeons as one”: JAT to Arthur Warren, Dec. 22, 1908, TFP.

  “The world is wide”: JAT to Mary Tucker, June 28, 1898, TFP.

  “hard head”: JAT Obituary, April 29, 1964, TFP.

  “the question of my health”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “did not have the money”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “He assembled two other justices”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “inherits her love for the law”: “Miss Breckinridge a Lawyer,” NYT, Jan. 26, 1897.

  reported erroneously in 1892: “Congressman Breckinridge’s Daughter’s Legal Studies,” NYT, Nov. 28, 1892.

  only exam Nisba took: 1897 Kentucky Court of Appeals Order Book 73, 376.

  “special women’s interests”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “I am growing quite famous”: WCPB to SPB, June 17, 1904, BFP.

  “the system which differentiates”: quoted in Klotter, Breckinridges of Kentucky, 194–95.

  “social politics”: Goodwin, Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform, 6.

  “to the bearing and raising of children”: Ibid., 94.

  “virtue is in peril”: Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade, 185.

  Chicago Orphan Asylum: Wright, “Three Against Time,” 47.

  “mother’s pensions”: See Goodwin, Gende
r and the Politics of Welfare Reform.

  “between lack of political equality”: Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade, 194.

  “An attempt to give a course”: Travis, “Sophonisba Breckinridge,” 112.

  “a hectic round of meetings”: “Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge,” Notable American Women, 1607–1950, vol. 1.

  “I came to the university”: Travis, “Sophonisba Breckinridge,” 112.

  “If we come out of the depression”: Lenroot, “Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge,” 89.

  seventh Pan-American Conference: “Roosevelt Limits Montevideo Talks,” NYT, Nov. 10, 1933.

  ranked the top ten American political dynasties: Stephen Hess, “America’s Top Dynasties,” WP, Nov. 13, 2009.

  “able, eloquent and public spirited”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “municipal housekeeping”: See Porter, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge.

  pro-suffrage pamphlet: Breckinridge, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, 22.

  had been having an affair: Porter, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, 209.

  “toward a more modern”: Breckinridge, Madeline McDowell Breckinridge, viii.

  long, dark dress: Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade, 215.

  “more honest and simpler”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “the access of women”: Breckinridge, Women in the Twentieth Century, 107.

  “afraid of life”: SPB Autobiography, SBP.

  “died in a way”: Ibid.

  “I have wanted to write”: Ibid.

  “outstanding figure”: “Miss Breckinridge Dies in Chicago,” NYT, July 31, 1948.

  “thoroughly disgraced woman”: “Madeline Pollard’s Hope,” New York Sun, April 19, 1894.

  “in good circumstances”: “Madeline Pollard in London,” WP, June 20, 1897.

  “writer of fiction”: 1901 England Census (database online). Ancestry.com.

  Madeleine Urquhart Pollard: 1911 England Census (database online). Ancestry.com.

  good part of the mid-1920s: U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925 (database online). Ancestry.com.

  returning to New York: “Paris” from Plymouth to New York, May 23, 1928, New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957 (database online). Ancestry.com.

  “I am sure that it is providential”: Madeline Pollard to Nicholas Murray Butler, July 3, 1936, Nicholas Murray Butler Papers, Columbia University.

  “I have asked”: “Miss Pollard Speaks of Her Past, Present, and Future,” The News (Frederick, MD), Dec. 29, 1894.

  December 9, 1945: England and Wales Civil Registration Death Index, 1916–2007 (database online). Ancestry.com.

  November 30, 1863: Olympic from Southampton to New York, May 12, 1931, New York, Passenger Lists, 1820–1957 (database online). Ancestry.com.

  Bibliography

  The primary sources for Bringing Down the Colonel are contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal and trial in ten major newspapers, the letters of the Breckinridge and Tucker families, Sophonisba Breckinridge’s unpublished autobiography, Eleanor Breckinridge Chalkley’s autobiography Magic Casements, and Jennie Tucker’s account of her time at the House of Mercy and friendship with Madeline Pollard, The Real Madeleine Pollard: A Diary of Ten Weeks’ Association with the Plaintiff in the Famous Breckinridge-Pollard Suit.

  The trial records of the five-and-a-half-week trial in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia are not extant, although they are listed as being in the records of the court held at the National Archives. According to the Federal Judicial Records archivist Robert Ellis, this is not the first instance of files from high-profile cases like sex scandals or divorces mysteriously disappearing before the records are accessioned into the National Archives. And Willie Breckinridge did have friends in high places. Fortunately for historians, both the New York World and the Cincinnati Enquirer had stenographers present in the courtroom and provide detailed transcriptions of much of the testimony, which, when cross-referenced with the other newspaper coverage, provides an accurate account of the proceedings. All newspaper articles referenced are on file with the author.

  A key source for understanding the complex history of the Breckinridge family and its politics and the political rise of Willie Breckinridge is James Klotter’s essential The Breckinridges of Kentucky: 1760–1981. The most important works about the legacy of Sophonisba Breckinridge are Ellen Fitzpatrick’s Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform and Joanne Goodwin’s Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform. Melba Porter Hay’s Madeline McDowell Breckinridge and the Battle for the New South provides key insights into both Nisba and Desha Breckinridge’s politics and the social milieu in which the scandal occurred.

  MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS

  Breckinridge Family Papers (BFP). Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  Breckinridge, Sophonisba Papers (SBP). University of Chicago.

  Butler, Nicholas Murray Papers. Columbia University, New York.

  Clay, Laura Papers. University of Kentucky, Lexington.

  Desha, Mary Papers. University of Kentucky, Lexington.

  Green Family Papers. Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green.

  Hay, John Papers. Brown University, Providence, RI.

  Tucker Family Papers (TFP). Historic New England, Boston.

  NEWSPAPERS

  Chicago Daily Tribune: CDT

  Cincinnati Commercial Gazette: CCG

  Cincinnati Enquirer: CE

  Kentucky Leader: KL

  Lexington Morning Transcript: LMT

  Louisville Courier-Journal: LCJ

  New York Times: NYT

  New York World: NYW

  Washington Evening Star: WES

  Washington Post: WP

  BOOKS, ARTICLES, AND DISSERTATIONS

  Abbott, Edith. “Sophonisba Preston Breckinridge over the Years.” Social Service Review 22 (Dec. 1948): 417–23.

  Adams, Henry. The Education of Henry Adams: A Centennial Version. Edited by Edward Chalfant and Conrad Edick Wright. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2007.

  Adams, John. Diary and Autobiography of John Adams. Vol. 1, edited by Lyman Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961.

  Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: Macmillan, 1910.

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  Allen, Frederick James. The Law as a Vocation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1924.

  Andrew, Charles B. “Sea and River Fishing: The President as an Angler.” Forest and Stream, June 17, 1886, 411.

  Anthony, Susan B. “Social Purity.” In The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony. Vol. 2, edited by Ida Husted Harper, 1004–12. Indianapolis, IN: Bowen-Merrill, 1898.

  Anthony, Susan B., and Ida Harper, eds. The History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 4. Rochester, NY: Susan B. Anthony, 1902.

  Aron, Cindy Sondik. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Civil Service: Middle-Class Workers in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

  Aurand, A. Monroe. Little Known Facts About Bundling in the New World. Harrisburg, PA: Aurand Press, 1938.

  Baird, Nancy Disher. Luke Pryor Blackburn: Physician, Governor, Reformer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1979.

  Benson, Susan Porter. Counter Cultures: Saleswomen, Managers, and Customers in American Department Stores, 1890–1940. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

  Block, Mary R. “An Accusation Easily to Be Made: A History of Rape Law in Nineteenth-Century America.” Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 2001.

  Bowen, William, ed. “Dr. Kinsley Twining.” Independent, vol. 53, 2727.

  Brands, H. W. The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

  Breckinridge, Robert J. Papism in the XIX Century, in the United States. Baltimore: David Owen and Son, 1841.

 
Breckinridge, Sophonisba Preston. Madeline McDowell Breckinridge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1921.

  ________. “Mary Desha.” New York State News Sheet, Oct. 1942, 1–4.

  ________. Women in the Twentieth Century: A Study of Their Political, Social and Economic Activities. New York: McGraw Hill, 1933.

  Breckinridge, W.C.P. “Issues of the Presidential Campaign.” North American Review 154 (March 1892): 257–80.

  Brown, Richard C. The Presbyterians: Two Hundred Years in Danville, 1784–1984. Danville, KY: Presbyterian Church, 1983.

  Bureau of Labor. “Report on the Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States,” vol. 9. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911.

  Bushnell, Kate. The Woman Condemned. New York: Funk and Wallace, 1886.

  Carpenter, Frank G. Carp’s Washington. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960.

  Carr, Lois Green, and Lorena S. Walsh. “The Planter’s Wife: The Experience of White Women in Seventeenth-Century Maryland.” William and Mary Quarterly 34 (Oct. 1977): 542–71.

  The Celebrated Trial: Madeline Pollard vs. Breckinridge. New York: American Printing and Binding Company, 1894.

  Censer, Jane Turner. The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865–1895. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003.

  Chalkley, Eleanor Breckinridge. Magic Casements. Frankfort: Kentucky Historical Society, 1982.

  Chudacoff, Howard P. The Age of the Bachelor: Creating an American Subculture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

  Clarke, Edward H. Sex in Education; or, a Fair Chance for Girls. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1873.

  Cook, May Estelle. “Notes and Comments by the Editor.” Social Service Review 23 (March 1949): 93–96.

  Cott, Nancy F. “Passionless-ness: An Interpretation of Victorian Sexual Ideology.” Signs 4 (Winter 1978): 219–36.

  Dahlgren, Madeleine Vinton. Etiquette of Social Life in Washington. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1881. Reprint, London: Forgotten Books, 2015.

  Dall, Caroline Wells Healey. Women’s Rights Under the Law. Boston: Walker, Wise, and Company, 1861.

  Davies, Margery W. Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter: Office and Office Workers, 1870–1930. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982.