There have many well know cases of ruptures between politicians and their children due to the stress of living a public life. The difficulties of Ron Reagan and Patti Davis with their family have been well documented and many of the children of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were estranged for most of their father’s administration. But the worse case of family squabbling can be found in the severed relationship of the 7th Vice President of the United States, John C. Calhoun and his daughter Rory.
Although the Vice President had a loving relationship with his wife Floride they became estranged. First by the trouble she created when she to ostracize the wife of the Secretary of War John Eaton. She claimed that his wife Peggy had actually begun an affair with Secretary Eaton while still married to her first husband Justin Timberlake. Since President Jackson’s own wife Rachel had been the subject of vile rumors he did not take kindly to this friction in his Cabinet, he severely rebuked Vice President Calhoun and cut him out of all Cabinet meetings. This drove a wedge between Calhoun and his wife Floride which widened into a chasm when he misspelled the name of the new state he helped usher into the Union which was supposed to be called Floride but was misspelled as Florida.
This wedge was further exacerbated when Calhoun began an affair with a young woman journalist from New York named Barbara Walters. Rory hated her father and he wrote her off. She was as dead to him as most of Joe Biden's kids.
Young Rory took her mothers side and they both left the crotchety politico to move to Stars Hollow Connecticut where they operated a bed and breakfast and stop on the Underground Railroad to infuriate the proslavery Calhoun. They spent the rest of their lives having meaningless conversations where they talked so fast and over each others voices so much that they were totally incomprehensible for the rest of their lives.
(Alice Roosevelt Longworth Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: The Sexuality of Political Children by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Playboy Press 2008)
6 comments:
If they are gonna have some friction in the cabinet then these people need some training in Affirmative Consent.
It's for real.
And so is Smart Power
Anybody watching Texas vs Toronto?
HOLY SHIT!
You forgot the Taylor Davis fued.
Jefferson Davis married Zachary Taylor's daughter against Dad's wishes. When she died of malaria a few years later, Taylor never forgave him.
Fast forward to the Mexican War and the battle of Buena Vista. Taylor's flank is wide open and a crack Mexican cavalry regiment is riding down on it. The only thing standing in their way is the Mississippi Rifles, commanded by Jefferson Davis. As soon as the Mexicans get in range, he orders his men to open fire, stopping the Mexicans dead in their tracks and throwing them into a quandry as cavalry has never been stopped by infantry fire.
As the Mexicans mill around, trying to figure out what to do, Davis orders the charge.
(yeah, the guys on foot are charging the guys on horses)
The Mississippians pull the cavalrymen off their horses, despatch them with their Bowie knives, the day is saved, the battle is won.
As Davis, wounded in the fight, awaits his turn in the hospital tent, in comes the army commander, Zachary Taylor.
He shakes Davis' hand saying, "I am gratified to see, sir, that my daughter was a far better judge of men than I".
I always suspected Timberlake was a vampire!
Too funny ! Loved it.
lol
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