‘Bringing Down the Colonel’
retaliated with a “breach of promise” lawsuit, which enabled Victorian-era women to seek legal redress after a broken engagement. Although Pollard’s suit cited $50,000 in damages, she wasn’t interested in money (Breckinridge was famously broke). Her motivation was to challenge the Victorian double standard that judged women’s sexuality while celebrating men’s. Such a case had never been tried before, and she naturally encountered public opposition. “Why on earth do you want to ruin that poor old man in his old age?” a nun scolded Pollard, to which she countered, “I asked her why should that poor old man have wanted to ruin me in my youth?”
Miller spends a significant amount of time providing historical and societal context, relaying fascinating anecdotes that illuminate the evolution of the sexual double standard and the difficulty of Pollard’s endeavor. Beginning with the surprisingly egalitarian mores of colonial times (both mother and father faced nine lashes if a child was born too soon after marriage), Miller delves into the mid-18th-century practice of “bundling,” whereby couples were encouraged to sleep together and pregnancy signified a de facto marriage, and traces the transition to the harsher conventions of the Industrial Age.
By the early 1800s, men delayed marriage to pursue education and employment, and an out-of-wedlock child could thwart their upward mobility. Women who had premarital sex now risked social ostracization and ruin, a hazard that persisted into the Victorian era, when their chastity became, in the words of the Middlesex Washingtonian, a “priceless jewel.” By admitting that she had engaged in premarital sex, Pollard was setting herself up for the Gilded Age equivalent of slut-shaming; Breckinridge reasoned that he wouldn’t need to prepare a proper defense, since Pollard’s wicked history should be enough to exonerate him.
The trial itself devolved, as these things do, into a sprawling tangle of he-saidshe-said allegations. Miller deftly sorts through them, but one wishes she had re-created the more cinematic events as they happened, giving the narrative a Rashomon-like quality that highlighted the drama while examining the often subjective nature of truth. The trial does yield some surprises, not least of which is the public’s near-universal condemnation of Breckinridge’s behavior and support for Pollard (fast-forward 125 years, and she might be in hiding after a barrage of death threats).
Anyone emboldened by the #MeToo movement to come forward owes a significant debt to Pollard. Soon after the trial, Miller reports, a letter signed “Many Women” was published on the front page of the Lexington Morning Transcript, urging Democratic Party leaders to withdraw their support of Breckinridge. “Let him sink into the oblivion” of his guilt, they demanded. “Let his voice be silent.” Karen Abbott is the author, most recently, of “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy.” Her next book, “The Ghosts of Eden Park,” will be published in October.