Robards–Donelson–Jackson relationship controversy

Although the circumstances of the end of Rachel Donelson's relationship with Lewis Robards and her transition to a relationship with Andrew Jackson were publicly known before 1828, the issue was put before the voting public as a campaign issue during the vitriolic 1828 U.S. presidential election that pitted Jackson against incumbent U.S. president John Quincy Adams. Rachel was accused of bigamy and adultery, abetted by Jackson.

The Jackson campaign committee led by John Overton created and publicized an exculpatory narrative to paper over the irregular marriage that had occurred almost 40 years prior. Overton's timeline and his characterization of the three parties to the "love triangle" was carried forward by later presidential biographers; in the late 20th century historians began to reassess the evidence and charge the Jackson campaign with a less-than-honest rendering of the facts. In current historical analysis, the end of Rachel Donelson's first marriage and the beginning of the Andrew-Rachel relationship is typically framed as a purposeful series of actions intended to free young Rachel from an unhappy household headed by allegedly abusive patriarch Robards.

A brief history of Andrew & Rachel, and Lewis

Lewis Robards and Rachel Donaldson (Rachel Donelson) were married in 1785 in Kentucky, in what was then the legal jurisdiction of the U.S. state of Virginia. (Kentucky would not become a separate state until 1792.) Rachel was about 18, Robards was about 27. The marriage bond was signed by Rachel's father John Donelson with Willis Green clerk of court.

Andrew Jackson did business deals with two of Rachel Donelson's brothers, Stockley Donelson and William Donelson, in the 1780s. The evidence shows that Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards took a flatboat to Natchez together via Cumberland River to the Mississippi River, sometime between July 1789 and their return to the Cumberland plateau of middle Tennessee in July 1790. John Overton's account of the marriage mentions Rachel traveled south with a Colonel Stark; Spanish records have Stark arriving in the Natchez District in January 1790. Some sort of ritual, or something (handwaves), may have taken place in July 1790 as Robards' complaint states that "Rachel Robards did, on the — [sic] July, 1790, elope from her husband, said Lewis, with another man." Natchez resident George Cochran sent his regards to "Mrs. Jackson" in a letter of November 3, 1790. Robards filed for divorce in December 1790. The Jacksons later claimed to have been married in Natchez in 1791, but no documentary evidence of this ceremony has ever been found. Rachel was listed as Rachel Jackson in the January 1791 inventory of her father's estate. The Donelson–Robards divorce was granted on grounds of adultery in September 1793. Robards unofficially remarried, to his second wife, Hannah Winn, in December 1792, and he officially married her in November 1793. Rachel Donelson Robards and Andrew Jackson were officially married by Rachel's brother-in-law Robert Hays of Haysborough, Southwest Territory, on January 18, 1794, approximately five years after they first met, and four months after her divorce was approved. (The Southwest Territory became the U.S. state of Tennessee in 1796.)

According to all available evidence, young Andrew Jackson and Rachel Donelson were "passionately in love with each other" in their youth and remained wholeheartedly devoted to one another for the rest of their lives. Adam Rothman, a historian studying Jackson's military and diplomatic exploits of the 1810s noted, as have others before him, "...the tenderness of Andrew Jackson's letters to Rachel contrasts sharply with his harshness toward his own soldiers and, of course, his Red Stick foes." Their marital affection and warmth persisted until her death in 1828; as historian Patricia Brady put it in 2011, "They really still loved each other when he was described as being a toothless skeleton and she was a fat little dumpling."

Historians including Robert V. Remini and Ann Toplovich argue that the official Jackson version of their meeting and marriage, as presented during the U.S. presidential campaign of 1828 was, for the most part, inauthentic. Remini, Jackson's major 20th-century biographer, included a timeline in the first volume of his biographical series. The entry for Jackson–Donelson reads: "1790/1791: 'Marries' Rachel Donelson Robards," with the scare quotes strongly implying the marriage was Biblical but not legal. For roughly 150 years the party line was that Rachel was "accidentally" a bigamist, or that Jackson was the third party to adultery because they were confused about how divorce law worked in Virginia, but since the 1970s historians have generally agreed that Jackson and Rachel Donelson Robards left Tennessee together to "force" Robards to file for divorce.

Representatives of the couple later claimed they thought Robards had been granted a divorce when they were allegedly married by a friend at a friend's house, but since Jackson was a lawyer with rank roughly equivalent to a federal prosecutor today, that claim is unconvincing. According to historian Andrew Burstein, "A look-the-other-way frontier (or Scotch-Irish) bridal abduction tradition did exist" but as a man of ambition, Jackson likely determined that "the ambiguity (in Nashville) of what they were doing in Natchez made their situation less of a concern" for both his career prospects and the reputation of the Donelson family. More than likely, explains Burstein in The Passions of Andrew Jackson, the Jacksons were "willing adulterers, which sounds harsh, but in fact what they did was reasonable and expedient—and not unheard of on the frontier. The desertion and adultery approach was a well-planned stratagem for people living at such a distance from any state capital; it was the easiest (nearly the only nonviolent) justification for a formal divorce. He and Rachel needed to be named as adulterers if she was to be divorced. As prosecutor, Jackson knew the laws of the land well enough to act discreetly to secure his and Rachel's happiness." Back in 1887, presidential historian John R. Irelan was unwilling to credit Jackson with any kind of plan whatsoever: "At this date Attorney Jackson had done one other thing which was of great benefit to him, while it never ceased to be the source of most of his troubles; he had married the wife of Lewis Robards. That Jackson's skirts were entirely clear in the circumstances which made this marriage desirable, it may not be easy to demonstrate; but that his conduct was that of a lawyer, or even of a person ordinarily considerate of consequences, it would be useless to maintain."

One of Robards' descendants, grandson William J. Robards, defended his grandfather's honor into the 20th century, as retold by the Louisville Herald in 1904:

"Andrew Jackson despoiled my grandfather's home, stole his wife and married that woman two years before a divorce had been obtained," exclaimed Mr. Robards with emphasis, "and this after receiving the hospitalities of my grandfather's home. My grandfather was one of the highly esteemed men of his time in Kentucky, and his family was one of the most prominent in the territory, equal to, if not better, than that of the woman to whom he first married."

The relationship between Jackson and Robards is the least understood aspect of the triangle.

• In 1806, during the leadup to the Jackson–Dickinson duel, Nathaniel McNairy wrote a letter to Thomas Eastin that was printed in the Impartial Review, in which he charged Jackson with "cowardice, citing his attacks on Swann and Sevier and his firing a pistol at '...a man that has none, and driv[ing] him off to Kentucky...'," which may be a reference to Robards.

• Jesse Benton claimed in an anti-Jackson pamphlet in 1824 that "Tradition tells us, that some thirty years ago, he made an attack upon an unarmed man, named Roberts, himself literally loaded with arms."
• In 1828 a political opponent stated that "The General had been but a short time residing in West Tennessee near Nashville, before he had a rencontre with the late Lewis Roberts, who swore his life against him, and Jackson was bound over to keep the peace by Col. Robert Weakly, who is now living—Roberts had not then separated from the present Mrs. Jackson. I could add many circumstances illustrative of this matter—but do not wish to injure the feelings of any unnecessarily, especially as I have always considered Mrs. Jackson ever since my acquaintance with her in 1814, as a female of virtue, and upright walk in life."
• In 1854, a resident of Rodney, Mississippi, who went by the pseudonym Idler, wrote, "One of the primitive settlers, who further stated that they were married in either Jefferson or Claiborne county, though Old Mock, the miller, who resided near Danville, Ky., doubts the marriage, and he says Jackson stole Roberts' [sic] wife and afterwards paid him for her and that Roberts was delighted to get rid of her on such easy terms. But whether married or not, they lived together happily for many years, and when she died he mourned as one who had lost all that gave value to life."
• John R. Irelan in his 18-volume history of presidential administrations claimed, "Lewis Robards had had Jackson arrested at Nashville for threats upon his peace and life, and he afterwards chased Robards with a butcher-knife, and ran him out of the settlement because Robards persisted in regarding his conduct as dishonorable towards Mrs. Robards."
• Folklore presented as such, but recited nonetheless by the Robards genealogy, states, "...when Robards returned home and found that his wife was gone with Jackson, he followed in hot pursuit with his body servant until they reached a stream near the Tennessee line called Bear Wallow. Here he found that they had crossed the stream by ferry, which was detained on the other side, cutting off his farther progress. His servant, to the day of his death gave graphic accounts of the chase, and stated that Robards and Jackson exchanged shots from the opposite sides of the river, and Jackson, fearing for the safety of the woman, hastened on his journey, while Robards returned home to consider his future course. The people living in the vicinity of Bear Wallow used to point out to strangers a tree upon the bank of the river scarred, they said, by the shots."

The only surviving documentation of the relationship between Jackson and Robards are letters that do not mention Rachel but relate to business. In 1797 Jackson bought a place called Hunter's Hill that was Robards' original land grant in Tennessee and where Mr. and Mrs. Robards were to settle. There is also a letter from Robards to Robert Hays, Jackson's brother-in-law, about the dispensation of John Donelson's estate.