Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took On Washington

by Patricia Miller

Overview

“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.”

In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man—and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality—to trial. And, surprisingly, she won.

Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard’s hand—and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally.

Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women’s sexual morality. And in the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, we’ve witnessed fraught public reckonings with a type of sexual exploitation unnervingly similar to that experienced by Pollard. Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Colonel tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250234919
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	03/03/2020
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	1,110,876
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Patricia Miller is a journalist and an editor who has written extensively about the intersection of politics, sex, and religion. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Salon, The Nation, The Huffington Post, RH Reality Check, and Ms. magazine. She is a senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches, where she writes about the politics of sexuality and the Catholic Church. She was formerly the editor of Conscience magazine and the editor in chief of National Journal’s daily health-care briefings, including the Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report and American Healthline. She has a master’s in journalism from New York University and is based in Washington, D.C.

Patricia is the author of Good Catholics: The Battle Over Abortion in the Catholic Church and Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took On Washington.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS

1. Gold to Be Made 3
2. A Bright and Brainy Woman 9
3. A Bastard Catch’d 24
4. The Left-Hand Road 37
5. The Wanton Widow 52
6. Not So Easily Handled 74
7. What Shall We Do with Our Daughters? 91
8. For the Likes of Me 101
9. The Needle, the School Room, and the Store 117
10. A House of Mercy 133
11. A Good Woman 149
12. Miss Pollard’s Ruin in Lexington 165
13. Somebody’s Daughter 187
14. A Man of Passion 200
15. Hindered, Not Ruined 215
16. The Front Parlor and the Back Gate 230
17. The Cavalier and the Puritans 256
18. Refusing to Behave 280
19. Redemption 289

Notes 301
Bibliography 341
Acknowledgments 349
Index 353

Editorial Reviews

[A] tantalizing and beautifully researched book . . . Anyone emboldened by the #MeToo movement to come forward owes a significant debt to Pollard.” —Karen Abbott, The Washington Post

“What better time for a story about a prominent man taken totally aback when he discovers that the rules about what we can get away with have changed? . . . After a while, [the Breckenridge-Pollard] saga vanished from the national memory. Congratulations to Patricia Miller for bringing it back.” —Gail Collins, The New York Times Book Review

“In today’s #MeToo world, ‘Bringing Down the Colonel’ reverberates in unexpected ways.” —Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal

“Though the sexual exploitation of women has been well documented, stories of women successfully bringing down their abusers have, until recently, been few and far between. Journalist Miller reaches back into the past to resurrect one woman's compelling odyssey from victim to victor . . . A fascinating examination of a historical #MeToo episode.” —Booklist

“Miller dusts off a long-forgotten scandal that gripped the nation’s capital in the late 19th century [and] seamlessly weaves in the stories of other unmarried women connected to the case . . . This book will enthrall readers interested in women’s and political history.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ms. Miller shows how the scandal laid open previously taboo topics—adultery, illicit pregnancies, abortion and sexual hypocrisy . . . her wide historical lens makes it a valuable, timely addition to discussions of gender and power, not to mention an eerie echo of recent news.” —The Economist

“A story from the 19th century that rumbles and resonates with our own.” —The New York Times

“It’s impossible to read [Bringing Down the Colonel] without it feeling familiar — the clear parallels to Trump, Weinstein, Kavanaugh, and other figures in the ‘he said, she said’ dramas of our own time. Miller’s compelling account is both shockingly relevant and a grim reminder that, when it comes to double standards, we haven’t advanced all that far since the Victorian era.” —The Boston Globe

"A panoramic examination of women's changing roles and of women's efforts to provide for themselves and make their way in the largely male public sphere. Good, timely history for the #MeToo moment." —Kirkus Reviews

"Bringing Down the Colonel reads as if it were ripped from today's headlines. Deeply researched, beautifully written, the story of Madeline Pollard brings alive a period when sexual mores were beginning to change from Victorian to modern. But as Madeline's story makes all too clear, the more things change, the more they stay the same: vulnerable women and powerful men are not that different more than a century later. Madeline uses her beauty and fierce intelligence to come out ahead, with all of us rooting for her." —Kristin Luker, Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor Emerita of Law, University of California-Berkeley

“History shows how often yesterday’s sex scandal is tomorrow’s sexual revolution. Patricia Miller’s timely and exhilarating book shows how a supposedly 'fallen' and 'ruined' woman in 1890s Washington shockingly took a powerful man to court to demand reparations. You’ll cheer for the woman who spoke out, brought down the colonel, and struck an early blow against the double sexual standard.” —Elaine Showalter, Professor Emerita of English, Princeton University

"Polite society deemed Madeline Pollard a 'ruined woman' when her long-time lover, Kentucky Congressman William Breckinridge, refused to marry her as promised. Here's the surprising tale of how she sued and roused a generation of women to throw him out of office." —Meryl Gordon, author of Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend

"A meticulously researched and deftly written narrative about the epic struggle between a wronged woman and the powerful man who abused her. Bringing Down the Colonel puts a colorful cast of characters on stage in a gripping courtroom drama that folds in large swaths of American social and political history at a moment of national transition. In many ways, as Miller demonstrates, the monumental case of Pollard v. Breckinridge was an important catalyst for the nascent women’s movement and a precursor of today’s #MeToo phenomenon. An entertaining and informative read." —Tom Sancton, author of The Bettencourt Affair: The World’s Richest Woman and the Scandal that Rocked Paris

From the Publisher

Miller began working on [Bringing Down the Colonel] more than a decade ago, long before the revelations and reckonings of #MeToo, but what she found is a story from the 19th century that rumbles and resonates in our own…Her book is a lucid guide to a story that became far more consequential than the titillation supplied by its salacious bits…What Miller depicts so well are the larger cultural changes that bore down on the case, even if whatever emancipation was set in motion remains unfinished still.

The New York Times Book Review - Jennifer Szalai

09/10/2018
In her full-length debut, journalist Miller dusts off a long-forgotten scandal that gripped the nation’s capital in the late 19th century, expertly revealing it as “an important chapter in the history of the social, political, and sexual emancipation of women.” Madeline Pollard, a young woman with no social standing, sued prominent Kentucky congressman William Breckinridge in 1894 for breach of promise. At a time when women’s security was linked to well-chosen spouses, women could instigate lawsuits against men who reneged on matrimonial proposals, though few women chose to endure such public scrutiny. Due to the pervasive sexual double standard, the certain revelation that Pollard had been Breckinridge’s mistress made this a risky venture. Yet she brought suit after Breckinridge, who had repeatedly promised to marry her if he ever became free, wed someone else. Miller seamlessly weaves in the stories of other unmarried women connected to the case, illuminating how and why, by the 1890s, attitudes about women and sexuality were changing enough to give Pollard a chance at victory. The story’s momentum slows when Miller recounts the trial, though she pops in enough courtroom surprises and insightful analyses to keep it from collapsing. This book will enthrall readers interested in women’s and political history. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Narrator Christina Delaine delivers this true story in a steady, engaged voice. In the late nineteenth century, society held fast to a double standard in sexual matters between women and men. Americans believed that God intended women to be the guardians of virtue; men were excused from corrupting that virtue. That idea began to change when Madeline Pollard won a breach-of-promise suit against a famous Kentucky congressman with whom she had had a relationship that left her a “ruined woman.” Delaine presents the documentary evidence, such as letters and newspaper accounts, dispassionately and maintains an overall evenhanded presentation while still creating suspense when the verdict is delivered. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile

Narrator Christina Delaine delivers this true story in a steady, engaged voice. In the late nineteenth century, society held fast to a double standard in sexual matters between women and men. Americans believed that God intended women to be the guardians of virtue; men were excused from corrupting that virtue. That idea began to change when Madeline Pollard won a breach-of-promise suit against a famous Kentucky congressman with whom she had had a relationship that left her a “ruined woman.” Delaine presents the documentary evidence, such as letters and newspaper accounts, dispassionately and maintains an overall evenhanded presentation while still creating suspense when the verdict is delivered. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

FEBRUARY 2019 - AudioFile

2018-08-21

Journalist Miller (Good Catholics: The Battle over Abortion in the Catholic Church, 2014) unearths a juicy 19th-century sex scandal.

For years, Willie Breckenridge, a beloved congressman from Kentucky, carried on a long-term extramarital affair with Madeline Pollard, a women of modest origins—and then was sued for breach of contract when, after his wife died, he married a well-connected widow rather than his mistress. Adultery, of course, was not uncommon. What was new was Pollard's insistence that having behaved less-than-virtuously did not mean she should be treated like trash—and her demand that the powerful man she'd slept with not get off scot-free. The press went wild, reporting on every breath drawn in court and dissecting the meaning of the suit after the jury found for the plaintiff. Miller, a senior correspondent for Religion Dispatches, argues that the Breckenridge-Pollard drama was a turning point of sorts. She credits the case and its attendant publicity with "making it acceptable to talk openly about sex" and with eroding the double standard whereby men could stray sexually without damaging their reputations, but women who transgressed norms of chastity and fidelity were ruined. Even the (male) editor of the Ladies' Home Journal responded to the case by criticizing "a code of morality" that burdened women with "all the responsibility for purity and all the penalty for wrong-doing." As engaging as Miller's central story are the minor characters, including Jennie Tucker, a young secretary hired by the Breckenridge team to spy on Pollard; and Breckenridge's daughter, Nisba, who, after the scandal receded, became the first woman to be admitted to the Kentucky bar and the first woman to receive a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago. Nisba's and Jennie's stories, far from being filler, transform what might have been merely an account of a racy scandal into a panoramic examination of women's changing roles and of women's efforts to provide for themselves and make their way in the largely male public sphere.

Good, timely history for the #MeToo moment.

Kirkus Reviews