Bringing Down the Colonel

by Patricia Miller

  As the depositions proceeded, the spectators thinned then dwindled to a few hardy souls. Gath thought some of the jurors looked like they were wondering, “What has this to do with the white-haired Kentucky Colonel’s promise to marry Madeline Pollard?” The reliance on so many depositions was more necessity than strategy. Breckinridge simply didn’t have the funds to bring more than a few well-chosen witnesses to Washington. The money crunch had only become more acute as the trial progressed and expenses for stenographers and other necessities piled up. Breckinridge’s bank account was overdrawn. Jennie had to beg for money to pay her board. “My finances are in a state of total collapse,” she wrote in desperation to Worthington.

  Nonetheless, as the trial adjourned for the long Easter weekend, Breckinridge’s team felt somewhat optimistic, finally having gone on the defensive and believing it had yet to play its strongest hand. Jennie wrote home that the trial was “the great topic everywhere at present.” She thought “people have been a bit surprised at the evidence of the defense” so far and were more inclined to think Breckinridge may win. “Practically, I have won the case,” Breckinridge assured a friend, saying that “whatever the technical verdict,” he would win reelection because the people of his district wouldn’t elect the “beneficiary of the blackmail suit brought by a wanton.”

  Breckinridge hinging his defense on painting Madeline as a “wanton,” however, wasn’t without risks, as the Evening Star warned. It noted that even if he “succeeds in blackening the reputation of the plaintiff it will convict the defendant of putting upon Mrs. Blackburn an affront such as could not be forgiven under the Kentucky … code of honor.”

  The New York Herald struck a darker note, reporting that Breckinridge was “politically dead.” One prominent Kentuckian said that if Breckinridge had acknowledged his fault up front, he would have “fallen in public esteem for awhile” but bounced back: “Folks would have said, ‘Oh, that is Breckinridge you know, but he was honest about it anyway.’ But when he made a general denial, and was then forced into the sort of defense he has made, why, that kills him. Adam made that defense, you know. It didn’t go in Eden then and it won’t go today in Kentucky.”

  Breckinridge spent Good Friday writing to supporters to reassure them he was “as game as a game cock” and confident of success and reelection. William Owens, a former state legislator who had the backing of the powerful Blue Grass Hemp Trust, had announced he would challenge Breckinridge in the Democratic primary. Nevertheless, Breckinridge told supporters he wouldn’t wage a “defensive canvas” and would campaign in his usual low-key manner. He already had compiled lists of Democratic voters from his cronies and appointees at the local post offices and sent some five hundred letters announcing he would be a candidate for reelection no matter what. He told one supporter that he believed the jury would see through Madeline’s “acting” and “not lose sight of the fact that she has been [as] willing to live since 1883 on her shame as any woman does who lives in a bawdy-house.” Above all else, he told them, despite the terrific ordeal he was undergoing, he was profoundly relieved, “for I have no secret of which I am afraid, no skeleton in my closet which chains me.”

  But at the same time, Breckinridge was writing other, more desperate letters. He, in fact, had no secret store of evidence, no bombshell revelation beyond a collection of smears and innuendo from a bevy of unsavory witnesses. There was only one place he could turn for rescue—to other men. Breckinridge had heard through a friend of a friend that Mississippi congressman John Allen had claimed that Madeline had approached him after he made a speech on the House floor and “introduced herself and congratulated him over his able speech and gave him her card and insisted on him calling.” When he didn’t call on her, he said she came to his boardinghouse and summoned him to the parlor, where she chastised him for failing to visit her. Allen “put her off by agreeing to call” but supposedly “remarked to this friend that all she wanted was for him to take her to his room.”

  Breckinridge begged Allen to testify about the encounter. His colleague confirmed the story but insisted he not be dragged into the scandal. “Now you have my sympathy and I wish very much that I could be of service to you,” Allen wrote, but said he doubted his testimony “would amount to anything.” He said he mentioned the encounter with Madeline to friends only “in an effort to convince them you were not as bad as there was an effort to paint you,” and he would be “very unhappy” if his attempt to support him resulted in “embarrassing notoriety.”

  There was one other man Breckinridge could turn to. But to do so was politically fraught, not only for himself, but for the entire Cleveland administration, which already was battered by the depression. Rumors had been bouncing around Washington since the previous summer—the fateful summer of 1893—that Madeline had “endeavored to make an assignation” with Treasury Secretary John Carlisle, the former House Speaker who had given his fellow Kentuckian Breckinridge a leg up in the House. Carlisle had gossiped to Breckinridge’s partner John Shelby and his cousin Congressman Clifton Rhodes Breckinridge that Madeline had sent him a letter proposing a meeting “couched in such terms that it was evident that Miss Pollard’s intentions were unduly kind,” according to the Enquirer. “I can easily believe it,” Breckinridge said when he heard the rumor at a Fourth of July picnic.

  Carlisle was the most popular and influential member of Cleveland’s cabinet and a critical component of sensitive negotiations over currency and tariffs; Cleveland “considered him a likely successor in 1896,” according to the historian Hal Williams. Breckinridge had asked Carlisle several times to testify to Madeline’s purported advances, which, coming after his promise of marriage, would automatically release him from any breach of promise claim since Madeline had already breached such promise. But Carlisle refused. The matter was apparently so sensitive to Carlisle that he had a go-between hand deliver a message to Breckinridge right after the scandal broke in August warning him that “this case must not come to a trial.”

  Now, Breckinridge wrote one last, desperate letter to Carlisle. “I need not say that it is with very sincere reluctance that I again insist upon you appearing as a witness,” he wrote. “I would not do it if the exigencies of the case did not seem to me to require it.” He assured Carlisle that such testimony would not damage him personally, since he had ignored Pollard’s letter, but said it might be the only means of rescuing him “from the net which has been so assiduously and skillfully woven.” He told him he wouldn’t hesitate to help him if the circumstances were reversed and hinted at political revenge, telling Carlisle that his failure to testify might “subject you to adverse criticism” at home in Kentucky.

  It wasn’t an idle threat. Carlisle was believed to be eying a run for the presidency. But he was weak among Kentucky Democrats given his failure to attend to political patronage at home. The Enquirer reported that Breckinridge was promising to throw his considerable influence in the Kentucky Democratic machine behind Carlisle in exchange for his testimony. And, if Carlisle’s presidential bid faltered, Breckinridge supposedly was offering to back him in a challenge to Joe Blackburn’s Senate seat—a seat that Breckinridge himself had been expected to eventually seek. Even the gubernatorial race was tied up in the machinations, with Cassius Clay, Jr., of the politically powerful Clay family, backing a bid for Blackburn’s seat by the current governor John Young Brown in alliance with Breckinridge’s primary opponent Owens so that Clay might ascend to the governor’s office.

  It appeared that the political fortunes of the three most powerful families in Kentucky—the Breckinridges, the Blackburns, and the Clays—as well as the upcoming presidential election—hinged on what Carlisle decided. But he didn’t take the bait. In fact, according to the Morning Transcript, he said that if “Breckinridge forced him to testify in the sensational case he would resign his place in the Cabinet,” potentially destabilizing the entire administration in the midst of a financial crisis. Breckinridge was forced to go without his testimo
ny.

  * * *

  On Monday morning Breckinridge looked more chipper in court than he had in some time, maybe because his hair and beard had been trimmed in keeping with the old custom of cutting one’s locks on “shere Thursday” during Holy Week. It was a good morning for the defense. Breckinridge’s biggest concern was that Judge Bradley would rule out a majority of the depositions regarding Madeline’s early life and supposed sexual antics because Pollard’s lawyers claimed the depositions had been improperly taken. But Bradley ruled that most of the defense depositions could be submitted, with the exception of Dr. Lewis’s about the abortion he was supposedly asked to procure for Colonel Swope, which was thrown out as hearsay. Bradley, however, noted rather pointedly that he would suppress some of the depositions if he could “on the grounds they were too filthy to be read” and implored the press to “suppress the disgusting details” for “the sake of the community and families.”

  In the morning, Stoll read a seemingly endless series of depositions attesting to Breckinridge’s presence at various trials in Versailles, Winchester, and other places around Kentucky during the spring and summer of 1884, which were supposed to provide an alibi of sorts, but it wasn’t made clear how they comported with Pollard’s story. In the afternoon the depositions of William Wood, who was engaged briefly to Madeline when she lived with her aunt outside Lexington, and Alex Julian, the “groom” at the mock wedding at Squire Tinsley’s Christmas party, were read.

  Tuesday brought the first live witness—Major Moore, who was brought back to testify about his two encounters with the couple in May 1893. Shelby asked him if Breckinridge had admitted to fathering Madeline’s children, calling the situation, as Madeline contended he did, “one of life’s tragedies.” Moore answered succinctly, “No.” But on cross-examination, he admitted that Breckinridge could well have said such a thing but that he didn’t record it in his shorthand notes.

  Two handwriting experts testified that the disputed letter purportedly from Pollard to Breckinridge regarding her trouble with Rhodes appeared genuine. William Worthington, Breckinridge’s stenographer, testified that he found the letter the previous September in a dusty old file case in Breckinridge’s Lexington office. The letter was important because it appeared to show that it was Madeline who had invited Breckinridge to Wesleyan and that initially he declined to come. “I am glad you told me it would be inconvenient for you to come out here in the college, for if you had gone to even such a little trouble to listen to what sometimes overburdens a schoolgirl’s mind you might be inclined to be provoked with yourself,” it read. What Breckinridge’s team thought the most damning was the part that read: “A preacher’s opinion of my little affair of mine would cause premature gray hairs, when your opinion might clear away all doubts and fears … I think I have prepared you for a divorce case, but, listen: it is far worse than that.”

  But then the writer goes on to clearly state that she was referring to the deal she made with Rhodes, that he would advance her tuition for three years “under the promise that I marry him at the expiration of that time.” What she wanted to know was if he could “do anything if I would not marry him, but teach and refund all he had advanced?” The letter closed with Madeline purportedly writing: “I liked your face and I am sure I would like you, and if at any future time you are in the city and would care to come around, remember that home faces are always welcome.” It was signed Madeline B. Pollard. While the letter didn’t appear particularly damaging, Madeline had denounced it as a fraud. Wilson disputed the credentials of both expert witnesses and got one, E. B. Hay, to admit the method he said he used to compare the handwriting in the letter to Madeline’s handwriting was directly opposite the method he had used recently in a high-profile congressional investigation.

  On Wednesday, Rankin Rossell appeared in the flesh to testify that Madeline had sat on his lap and allowed him to kiss her in the front parlor at Wesleyan and that he had broken his engagement to her because he “didn’t like the way she allowed me to hug and kiss her.” He claimed that Madeline told him she was born in November 1863 and provided five tintypes they had taken together in Cincinnati several months before she met Breckinridge. The pictures showed Madeline as a “very young and undeveloped girl” with frizzy bangs and a dress that reached only to her boot-tops. Kaufman’s and Brand’s depositions were read regarding Madeline’s reported presence at Lena Singleton’s house of ill repute.

  On Thursday morning the crowds again had swelled in anticipation of seeing Breckinridge. It was standing room only; the weather had turned warm and the courtroom had an “unwholesome smell.” Madeline’s lawyers presented two rebuttal witnesses—out of order because they were in town only for a short time—who testified that no one named Lena Singleton occupied a house in the Lexington neighborhood where Madeline and Rhodes were said to be frequent visitors. Mollie Shindlebower, the former prostitute, testified in her deposition that she had known Madeline when she lived at her aunt Mary Stout’s house in 1877 and said she was a fast girl who had gentlemen callers at irregular hours, wore long dresses, and appeared to be sixteen or seventeen.

  After lunch, there was an expectant hum in the courtroom as the bailiff rapped the court to order. Stoll finished reading the Shindlebower deposition. Breckinridge took the stand at 1:47. The jurors roused themselves from their deposition-induced stupor; heads craned to get a better look at the snowy hair, the ruddy face, the black frock coat with the little white gull wings of Breckinridge’s shirt peeping out as he solemnly swore his oath on a “fresh, new Bible.” There was a moment of commotion as one of Carlisle’s clerks ran out of the courtroom and across the street to fetch Madeline from his office and a collective intake of breath as she entered the room; all eyes followed her as she made her way to the plaintiff’s table and sat right in front of Breckinridge. He stood as he testified, with one elbow propped casually on Bradley’s bench, striking a “minor key of tenderness and pathos” as he spoke.

  Breckinridge ran through his biography—college and law school, his first marriage, the Ninth Kentucky Cavalry, his second marriage, his law practice, his election to Congress. “When did you first meet the plaintiff?” Butterworth asked. Breckinridge said it was sometime in April 1884, on the train from Lexington to Frankfort. He said it was a cool morning and he had an overcoat with him that he left on the seat when he went forward on the train. When he returned to get it, a young woman called to him. He said he replied, “I suppose I ought to know you, but when people reach my time of life you find young folks growing up so around you that you don’t recognize them.” She said that he didn’t know her, but that she knew him because “everybody knows you.” She said that her name was Madeline Breckinridge Pollard and that her father, J.D. Pollard, was a great admirer of John Cabell Breckinridge. He told her he remembered her father and asked how he was, and apologized for his forgetfulness when she said he had died some years ago. She told him she was going “to the bedside of her sister at Frankfort, who was dying of consumption.”

  Breckinridge said the next time he heard from her was when he received a letter asking him to call on her regarding advice about some unnamed difficulty and then when he received a second letter giving more specifics of her problem. At that, Wilson objected to the admission of the disputed letter, and Breckinridge sat down while the lawyers hashed it out. Finally, Bradley ruled that the letter could be admitted. Breckinridge continued his story about having business in Covington, across the river from Cincinnati, that first Friday in August 1884 and staying overnight in Cincinnati, as Covington had no decent hotels, and deciding to call on Madeline in reply to her letter. He told about their discussion about Rhodes and his assurance that she couldn’t be compelled to “marry a man if she did not want to.” But then, he said, she told him there was another consideration that made the situation “much worse than a real marriage.” He said Madeline told him that Rhodes was “anxious and jealous and very much in love” with her. Someone had warned him that Made
line wouldn’t want to marry him once she was educated, so, Breckinridge said, she said that “she gave him higher proof of her intention to keep my contract”—meaning she had sacrificed her virginity. He said he told her she “ought to marry him” before “things come out” and she was ruined, but she told him that now that she was getting an education and had seen “what she was capable of,” she couldn’t imagine marrying him. He said he told her, “No young girl can afford not to marry after what you have told me, no matter the marriage be happy or unhappy.” As he spoke, Madeline stared at him, at first resting her head in her hands and then “vigorously wield[ing] a fan” in the stuffy air.

  Breckinridge told about the concert and the carriage ride, both of which he said were Madeline’s idea. He said he hailed the first carriage in line at the hack stand near the old Post Office and made no excuse for the closed carriage because there was “no reason for any excuse.” He said it was Madeline who suggested they skip the concert, saying she would “prefer to ride rather than go to a place where there is hot gas … so we took the road to the left.” After they had driven about fifteen or twenty minutes, with Madeline “talking about her desires to be an authoress,” he said she took off her hat and “I put my arm around her and drew her to me.” He said, “There were no protestations on my part, no offer of love. What occurred then was—I was a man of passion, she a woman of passion. There was no outcry by her, no resistance. I, man as I was, took liberties with her person.”