Petticoats and Kitchen Cabinets: A Capital City Shake-Up

Here's Where It Gets Interesting

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On this episode of Here's Where It Gets Interesting, we discuss someone whose defiance of social and moral convention irrevocably shaped the nation’s political stage during the Antebellum years. In the 1800s, the role of Victorian women–especially the wealthy wives of prominent political figures–was to serve as protectors of our nation’s values. Those values centered around the home and church: wives were dutiful, modest, faithful, and charitable. But there are always rule-breakers, aren’t there? Today, we talk about the Petticoat Affair.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome.
0:06.1	Welcome to Here's where it gets interesting.
0:08.9	In the 1800s, the role of Victorian women was to serve as protectors of our nation's
0:15.6	values, especially the wives of prominent political figures.
0:20.4	And for women, these values centered around the home and church.
0:26.9	And it's referred to as the cult of domesticity by historians.
0:32.5	Wives were supposed to be dutiful, modest, faithful, and charitable.
0:37.8	But there are always rule-breakers, aren't there?
0:42.4	People who don't let moral or social conventions dictate the way they live their lives.
0:49.3	They shake things up.
0:50.6	People whisper and they talk, and sometimes the ripple effect is so great that it alters
0:55.6	the course of history.
0:58.7	We'll talk about the petticoat affair.
1:02.4	I'm Sharon McMahon.
1:04.4	And here's where it gets interesting.
1:08.5	A New Year's Day in 1829, our favorite Washington DC gossip columnist, Margaret Bayard Smith,
1:15.4	penned a few short paragraphs that would irrevocably shape the nation's political stage
1:22.6	for the next decade to come.
1:25.0	She wrote, Tonight, General Eaton, the bosom friend and almost adopted son of General
1:33.4	Jackson, is to be married.
1:37.3	To a lady whose reputation, her previous connection with him both before and after her husband's
1:44.4	death, has been totally destroyed.
	...

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