CHARLES HAMMOND
Ms. Andrew Jackson’s divorce from her first husband was not done following all the legal requirements of the time. Technically, she was therefore a bigamist and an adulteress at the same time. While most Americans had no problem with this, there was then as there has been ever since a small, religiously driven, cultural conservative movement who objected to a President who was living with an adulteress in bigamy. Hammond was one of them. Just as Bill Clinton was very popular despite his sexual, moral transgressions, so was Jackson. However the conservatives of Washington DC made her life socially miserable.
Ms. Andrew Jackson’s divorce from her first husband was not done following all the legal requirements of the time. Technically, she was therefore a bigamist and an adulteress at the same time. While most Americans had no problem with this, there was then as there has been ever since a small, religiously driven, cultural conservative movement who objected to a President who who had wronged his neighbor by committing adultery with the neighbor’s wife and was living with an adulteress in bigamy. Hammond was one of them. Just as Bill Clinton was very popular despite his sexual, moral transgressions, so was Jackson. However the conservatives of Washington DC made her life socially miserable.
Charles Hammond was a lawyer, newspaper editor, and state legislator in Ohio in the early nineteenth century. He attained renown in his time as both a lawyer and a journalist, but was largely neglected later. Hammond is best known today for his role as the intellectual leader of Ohio's ultimately failed opposition to the Second Bank of the United States.
