260 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS years. Meanwhile it was reported and believed in the west that a divorce had been granted, and, act ing upon this report, Jackson, whose chivalrous interest in Mrs. Robards s misfortunes had ripened into sincere affection, went, in the summer of 1791, to Natchez and married her there, and brought her to his home at Nashville. In the autumn of 1793 Capt. Robards, on the strength of the facts that undeniably existed since the act of the Virginia legislature, brought his case into court and obtained the verdict completing the divorce. On hearing of this, to his great surprise, in December, Jackson concluded that the best method of preventing future cavil was to procure a new license and have the marriage ceremony performed again; and this was done in January. Jackson was certainly to blame for not taking more care to ascertain the import of the act of the Virginia legislature. By a carelessness peculiarly striking in a lawyer, he allowed his wife to be placed in a false position. The irregularity of the marriage was indeed atoned by forty years of honorable and happy wed lock, ending only with Mrs. Jackson s death in De cember, 1828; and no blame was attached to the parties in Nashville, where the circumstances were well known. But the story, half understood and maliciously warped, grew into scandal as it was passed about among Jackson s personal enemies or political opponents ; and herein some of the bitterest
