By Tom Morrow

During his time before and during his presidency, Andrew Jackson fought a number of duels, primarily in defense of his wife, Rachel. Her husband’s dueling and vehement arguing was the ultimate in protection of his lady’s honor.
Rachel Donelson Robards Jackson, born Rachel Donelson on June 15, 1767, was the wife of Andrew Jackson, the 7th President of the United States. She lived with him at their Nashville, Tenn., home, known as “The Hermitage.” Ironically, Rachel died just days after her husband’s election and before his inauguration in 1829, therefore she never served as First Lady. Nonetheless, Jackson’s detractors kept sniping at him about his “adulteress” wife, continuing to call them out. In those days, he didn’t have Twitter so his dueling challenges made him the ultimate fighting president.
Rachel was married at first to Lewis Robards in Nashville. In about 1791, she eloped with Andrew Jackson, believing that Robards had secured the couple a divorce. However, it was later revealed Robards had not, meaning that her marriage to Jackson was technically bigamous. They were forced to remarry in 1794 after the divorce had been finalized.

She had a close relationship with Jackson and was usually anxious while he was away tending to military or political affairs. During the deeply personal prelude to the 1828 election, Rachel was the subject of extremely negative attacks from the supporters of Andrew Jackson’s opponent, John Quincy Adams. Jackson believed these attacks hastened her death, and thus blamed, even challenged his political enemies.
Her love for her husband was unmistakable. She languished when he was away for politics, fretted when he was away at war, and doted on him when he was at home. Unlike her husband, Rachel never liked being in the spotlight of events. She would consistently warn her husband to not let his political accomplishments rule him. After Jackson’s legendary victory at the Battle of New Orleans, she warned his subsequent popularity would tempt him to value his glory over his family.
During the process of Rachel and her first husband’s divorce, Kentucky became a state instead of a territory of Virginia and North Carolina. Territorial management, including Tennessee, was turned over to the Federal Government. These complicating factors were understood by locals and the unusual circumstances of the Jackson marriage were not greatly discussed in Nashville society.
In 1793, when Andrew and Rachel learned the divorce had never been granted, it technically made Rachel a bigamist and an adulterer in the eyes of the law. Further complicating situation, the legitimacy of the Jackson marriage came into question because they were married in then-Spanish-controlled Natchez, Mississippi. The Jacksons were Protestants, and only Catholic marriages were recognized as legal unions in Mississippi. After the divorce was finally legalized in 1794, Andrew and Rachel wed again in a quiet ceremony in her mother’s home.
According to the Tennessee Historical Society, John Quincy Adams’ presidential campaigns targeted Jackson’s “passion and lack of self-control” in both 1824 and 1828, “making it central to the argument that he would devastate the integrity of the Republic and its institutions.” (Does that sound familiar?) One newspaper ran an article asking, “‘Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?”
The publicity surrounding her and the public knowledge of what was considered a very private matter caused Rachel to sink into depression. She reputedly told a friend “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace in Washington.” Adding to her stress, in 1828, Their adopted son, Lyncoya Jackson, died at the Hermitage. Between the scandal, her son’s death, and a heart condition she spent much of the campaign depressed and crying.
Rachel died suddenly on Dec. 22, 1828, probably of a heart attack. That her death came immediately before the newly elected president left for Washington was more than an inconvenience; it was crippling. He held her body tightly until he was pulled away, lingering at the Hermitage until the latest possible date.
Even though her maladies began as early as 1825, Jackson always blamed his political enemies for her death. “May God Almighty forgive her murderers,” Jackson swore at her funeral. “I never can.”
She was buried on the grounds at The Hermitage wearing the white dress and shoes she had bought for the Inaugural Ball. Her epitaph reads: “A being so gentle and so virtuous slander might wound, but could not dishonor.”
Rachel Jackson was the title character of a 1951 historical novel by Irving Stone, The President’s Lady, which told the story of her life with Andrew Jackson. In 1953, the novel was made into a film of the same name starring Susan Hayward and Charlton Heston as the Jacksons.

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