Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury

Visitors to Charleston, South Carolina quickly become familiar with two names: Ashley and Cooper. The Charleston peninsula, where the town was situated after 1680, is surrounded by the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, which according to a local joke, come together to form the Atlantic Ocean. Ashley Ave. is one of the major thoroughfares on the peninsula.  

If you live in Charleston or have lived there, you will be familiar with all this. You will more than likely know that Ashley and Cooper form part of the name one of the founders of the Carolina Colony: Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury. There is also a Shaftsbury Lane in Charleston, but someone apparently forgot the "e". 

The names Ashley, Cooper, and Shaftesbury abound in Charleston in other places and ways:  businesses, shops, apartments, schools, and more. Ashley and Cooper are common names in the region. 

Why did AAC get so much local publicity? He must have been an important guy in the Carolina Colony. In fact, he never set foot in the place. Yet he was important. 

Cooper was a leading politician in England before and during the reign of Charles II (1660-1685), for whom Charles Town* was named. In the 1660s, Charles granted the land of Carolina* to eight men, known as the Lords Proprietors [hereafter, LPs]. Originally, Carolina denoted all the land between Virginia and Florida. 

In making this grant, Charles' was rewarding these aristocrats for remaining loyal to his father, Charles I, or helping to restore the monarchy in 1660. Being able to mount the throne and the ladies of the court after 11 years of republican rule made Charles II a very Merry Monarch. He wanted to share his good fortune and keep these fellows loyal.

Cooper was one of the LPs who had opposed Charles I during the Civil War of the 1640s. He had also served in the government of the Republic (1649-1660), dominated by Oliver Cromwell. After the death of Cromwell, however, he worked for the restoration of the monarchy. The alternative, he believed, was another civil war or military dictatorship. [Image: Anthony Ashley Cooper as a young man, miniature by Samuel Cooper, c.1650]

No one asked the Native Americans what they thought about Charles II's grant of Carolina to the LP's, of course. Nor were the Spanish consulted, although they had claimed the territory a century before. That led to trouble.

AAC, or Lord Ashley, as he then was, was one of the LPs. He had a strong influence on the early development of the colony. He and his secretary, the philosopher John Locke, wrote the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, the legal blueprint for the colony. The colonists were unhappy with certain aspects of the document, especially the power it granted to the LPs, and they often contested or ignored them. That led to more trouble. 

During the formative years of Carolina, AAC had troubles of his own at home. In 1661, a happy Charles II had made him a Baron, Lord Ashley. In the early 1670s, he was one of an inner council of five men the king relied on to implement his policies. The five became known as The Cabal, an acronym formed from their names. In 1672, Charles raised him to a higher rank in the peerage as First Earl of Shaftesbury. [Image: Shaftesbury by John Greenhill, 1672-73]

Shaftesbury's close relationship with the king did not last. In the later 1670s, a political and religious crisis arose in Britain. The Exclusion Crisis, as it was known, centered on the succession to the throne. Charles II, famed for his mistresses, had not managed to father a legitimate heir. 

After his death, the law of succession meant the Crown would pass to his nearest male relative, his brother James, Duke of York. That was problem for many political leaders because James had recently become a Roman Catholic and married a Catholic, Mary of Modena. 

Shaftesbury became suspicious of James' intentions in the early 1670s. He feared that James intended to establish arbitrary rule and force Catholicism on the country with the aid of Louis XIV of France. He believed correctly that Charles was helping him. 

AAC was a trained lawyer and a firm advocate of the rule of law. He had opposed Cromwell's adoption of military rule in the 1650s and now he opposed the danger of an absolute monarchy. 

In the later 1670s, Shaftesbury helped establish a political movement to exclude James from the throne and limit the power of the monarch. The movement's supporters in Parliament became known as Whigs. Their opponents, who supported James, became known as Tories. 

Charles II supported his brother and lashed out against the Whigs. In 1682, fearing arrest, Shaftesbury fled to the Netherlands, where he died early the next year. The Whig Party lived on, however, as did the Carolina Colony he helped found. 

*Carolina was not named for Charles II, but his father Charles I, best known for starting the English Civil War and having his head removed by the victors. In the early 18th century, the Carolina Colony was divided into South and North Carolina. 

Charles Town (or Charlestown) was renamed Charleston in 1783.

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Whatever Happened to the Whigs?

In a recent post I explained why British Conservatives are known colloquially as "Tories." The name goes back to 17th century British politics, as does the name "Whig." The Whigs represented the rival party or outlook to that of the Tories. "Tory" remains in common use politically in the UK, but "Whig" has disappeared. Why is that?

The names Whig and Tory emerged at the end of the 1670s during what became known as the Exclusion Crisis. The crisis arose from the efforts of some leading politicians to exclude James Stuart, Duke of York, from following his brother Charles II to the throne. 

Charles had fathered no legitimate heir. According to the normal rules of succession, James was next in line to be monarch. Supporters of James called his opponents Whigs, then a term denoting a sect of extreme Scots Protestants.

The Tories were firm supporters of strict hereditary succession. They defended James's right to succeed Charles, despite the fact he had converted to the Roman Catholic faith. 

The Tories were also firm supporters of the Protestant Church of England, so the choice was not easy. The great majority of the British people then were not only Protestant but fervently "anti-papist." Many of them belonged to recently emerged and politically radical sects like Baptists and Congregationalists. Whig efforts to prevent James from becoming king thus rested on broad public support.

But the Tories and the King prevented the Whig Exclusion Bill from being enacted in Parliament. In the aftermath, the Whigs were greatly weakened. Their leader Lord Shaftesbury fled to the Netherlands, where he died shortly after. [Image: Anthony Ashley Cooper, First Earl of Shaftesbury]. 

James became king upon Charles' death in 1685, but his reign was short. He appointed Catholic allies to key positions in the government, the army and navy, and the courts. Some leading Tories, fearing that he intended to restore Catholicism as the established religion, turned against him. 

They joined with leading Whigs who feared James intended to rule as an absolute Catholic monarch in the style of Louis XIV of France. At the time, large numbers French Protestants (Huguenots) were migrating into England, bringing tales of their persecution in France. 

The timing could not have been worse for James. The same was true of the recent birth of a son to James and his second, Catholic wife. James had two Protestant daughters from his first marriage, Mary and Anne, but the male baby would take precedence in the line of succession.  

With the prospect of a Catholic dynasty before them, a group of Whig and Tory leaders secretly appealed to William of Orange, the Protestant Stadtholder of the Netherlands, to intervene. William was married to James' eldest daughter Mary, and was himself descended from Charles I. 

William concocted a bold and risky plan. He assembled an army and fleet and landed them in the West of England on November 5, 1688.  He began a march toward London. James prepared for battle but lost his nerve and fled to France. Thus began the "Glorious Revolution."

After a great deal of negotiation, Parliament installed William and Mary as joint monarchs. The arrangement was a clear violation of the law of hereditary succession and laid the ground for future conflicts. Parliament, not God, had decided who should rule.

William at first employed both Tories and Whigs in his government. But he gradually leaned more heavily on the Whigs, who were more comfortable with the results of the "Revolution." 

Whig dominance in British politics increased in the early 18th century after the death of Queen Anne (1702-1714). Anne was the last of the Protestant Stuart line. She had many children, but all died at birth or not long after. [Image: Queen Anne]

Parliament addressed this issue at the beginning of her reign with an Act of Succession. It declared that on her death the Crown should pass to her closest Protestant relative. At the time that was a German princess, Sophia of Hanover. 

Sophia died before Anne, however. Her son George became King of England and Scotland in 1714. George suspected that the Tories were behind efforts to restore the Catholic Stuarts to the throne. Some were. He and his son George II generally chose their ministers from the Whigs. 

The period 1714-1760 is often known as the Whig Supremacy, so dominant were Whig politicians. The Tories were virtually eliminated as a political force. It was not until the early 19th century that a new Tory Party emerged and held power. It changed its name officially to Conservative in the 1830s, but the old name stuck.

The use of Whig as a political term, however, gradually disappeared. In part this was due to the emergence of a lose group of Radicals who favored extension of democracy and modernization. It was also due to a split in the Conservative Party. The key issue was free trade, which some Tories supported, and others opposed. The division came to a head in 1846, during the Irish Famine. 

The Tory Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, decided that it was necessary to abolish the Corn Laws (tariffs on imported grain) to ensure supplies of food for the masses. The majority of Tories opposed him. His free trade bill passed only with the support of Whigs and Radicals. 

The Tory majority kicked Peel and his supporters out of the party. For a time, they sat together as "Peelites." In the 1850s, they gradually merged with the Whigs and Radicals to form what became known as the Liberal Party. 

The Liberals enjoyed great political success during the next few decades, especially under the leadership of William Gladstone. But "Whig" soon disappeared from political usage in the UK. [Image: W. E. Gladstone]

PS. In other posts I have referred to the use of "Whig" and "Tory" in the context of the American Revolution. I should add that in the 19th century, a Whig Party thrived in the USA between the 1830s and 1850s. The Whigs were the rivals of the Jacksonian Democrats. Their party fell apart in the early 1850s.Its place was taken by the new Republican Party that elected Abraham Lincoln in 1860. In Liberia, the "True Whig Party" was the dominant party for about a century after being founded in 1869. In recent decades, post-modern historians have used the term "Whig" to describe a progressive, linear, triumphal concept of history. 

 

        

   

  

  

Loyalist by Marriage: Sarah Izard Campbell

In Revolutionary South Carolina, people became Loyalists for various reasons. Some held office under the British government and/or had taken oaths of loyalty to it. Some felt gratitude toward the Crown for granting them land or mercantile privileges. 

Others became Loyalists because the neighbors they hated had joined the other side. For them the war was a continuation of old family feuds. Many enslaved persons supported the British government because they believed it might bring them freedom. For thousands, it did. Native Americans, mainly the Cherokee in South Carolina, sided with Britain because it tried to limit the movement of whites onto their lands.   

Sarah Izard became a Loyalist through marriage. Genealogical sources on her are conflicting. She was born in South Carolina, around 1745, the daughter of planter Ralph Izard and his wife Rebecca. Sarah's cousin Ralph Izard (1742-1804) made his name as a Patriot, Senator, and American Diplomat. * Her life took a far different trajectory. 

She was a teenager, about 18, when she met and fell in love with a Royal Navy captain who arrived in Charleston in 1762. Lord William Campbell, commander of HMS Nightingale, was the 4th son of Scotland's most powerful aristocrat, the Duke of Argyll. The British were engaged at the time in the Seven Years War, known as the French and Indian War in British North America.

Sarah and William married in April 1763. The notice in the South Carolina Gazette mentions that she was "a young lady esteemed one of the most considerable fortunes in the province." In other words, a fine catch for the 4th son of a duke. But the 4th son of a duke was also a good catch for the daughter of a provincial planter. 

By the time they married, the war was officially over, and the couple moved to Britain in 1764. She was now Lady William Campbell and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted her portrait.

[Image: Miniature watercolor of Sarah by Charles Fraser in the Collection of the Gibbes Art Gallery, Charleston, SC. Fraser listed it in 1834 as a copy of a painting by "Sir Joshua." The original would have been painted sometime before 1775. Sarah is pictured with one of her pet whippets. I have been unable to locate Reynolds' original.] 

Back in Britain, Lord William served a term in Parliament as MP for his family's seat in Argyllshire. In 1766, the government appointed him royal governor of Nova Scotia. He remained in the post until 1773.  

For some time, he had been lobbying for the position of royal governor of South Carolina. Sarah wanted to return to her home and family. William was suffering from an eye problem he blamed on the climate.

Family influence got him the South Carolina appointment. The couple arrived in Charleston in June 1775 to a cold welcome. Rumors had spread before their arrival that their ship was carrying thousands of guns and munitions to distribute to the "slaves" and "savages." In fact, the most dangerous weapons it carried were probably Sarah's whippets.

Opponents of the British colonial policy in South Carolina had taken over the reins of government several months before. Lord William found himself virtually powerless and eventually physically threatened. 

In September the last royal governor of South Carolina fled to a British ship in the harbor. Sarah, who also faced harassment, joined him a few weeks later. They sailed away in late December 1775. Sarah would never return to South Carolina. 

Lord William did come back, and it proved his undoing. He served on a Royal Navy ship during the British assault on Sullivan's Island in June 1776. He was wounded in the side, a festering wound that his doctors believed the cause of his death two years later. Sarah lived out her life as a widow and mother of three children in Britain, presumably supported by William's wealthy family. She died in 1784.   

*Online sources on Sarah and her family are conflicting and sometimes hilarious. Some genealogy sites say her mother was nine years old when she gave birth to Sarah! Others says Sarah was the daughter of Ralph and Alice DeLancey Izard, who were born in the same decade as she was. Some say that Ralph was her brother. To add to the confusion, Sarah had a brother named Ralph Izard, but not that Ralph Izard, the other one! 

History is Messy: Memo to FOX news

History is messy. It is often unpleasant. It is seldom as simple as we would like it to be. Historical myth is the opposite: neat, generally pleasing -- at least to our prejudices --, and comfortably black and white. 

The myths are essentially "alternative facts" or "fake history." Not surprisingly, myths tend to dominate if not obliterate actual history in the popular consciousness. FOX news could not survive if this were not the case, and Donald Trump would long ago have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

By "actual history" I do not mean the "truth" but the result of painstaking historical research, writing, and interpretation. Often the result is only an approximation of the truth. In that sense, history resembles science, although science is a more exact business. 

Scientists can use repeated experiments to confirm their hypotheses. Historians do not have that tool. They cannot repeat history, and in general they would not wish to!

Historian Sir Lewis Namier wrote that the writing of history "is not a visit of condolence." He might have added that the same is true of reading it. Learning our history is often troubling and confusing. If it never is, we are reading the wrong stuff. 

Some people avoid all the trouble by ignoring history. The inventor and businessman Henry Ford is supposed to have said, "history is bunk." He didn't say exactly that, but he did reject the past as dead and meaningless, not worth thinking about. 

Abraham Lincoln would have disagreed. In his Second Inaugural Address he declared, "My Fellow Americans, we cannot escape history." He understood that the terrible war that was nearing its end was the direct result of the country's failure to abolish slavery. * 

Novelist William Faulkner held a similar view: "The past isn't dead. It is not even past." His characters are prisoners of their history, in this case the history of the Deep South. 

Karl Marx wrote in much the same vein in one of his lesser-known works, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Marx prefaced that statement with "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

You don't have to be a Marxist to agree with that viewpoint. Like it or not, our history like our biology constrains us. And that is not necessarily bad. It is a cliche by now, but an awareness of evils past can help us to repeat the same mistakes. True, we seem to keep repeating many of them anyway, but things could be far worse if we lacked any awareness of the past. 

People do learn lessons from history: some good, some bad, some irrelevant. The difficulty is to learn the proper lessons, the ones that will improve life on this planet -- and not just for humans. 

History often resembles a chaotic scene, like this 19th century Christmas cartoon by George Cruikshank, "At Home in the Nursery." But the party goes on and tomorrow it will have a history.

   

*Comparing Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address to that of Donald Trump in 2017 provides a good measurement of how far the Republican Party has fallen since the days of the first Republican president. 

Why Are UK Conservatives Called Tories?

The Conservative Party in the UK is known colloquially as the Tory Party. Its supporters are generally called Tories. Why? 

Many Americans may assume that it derives from the American Revolution. In the USA, the term "Tory" is generally associated with the War for Independence. People who supported the British government during the war were generally called Tories by their "Patriot" enemies.

American "Tories" did not embrace that term. Instead, they called themselves "Loyalists." The Patriots often called themselves "Whigs." Both Tory and Whig derived from British politics of the previous century, from a succession crisis during the reign of Charles II (1660-1685). 

Charles had no legitimate heir. According to the rules of hereditary succession, the Crown would pass on his death to his brother, James, Duke of York. [Images: Charles II and James II, by Sir Peter Lely]

 

Normally, James's succession would not have been a problem. What made it a problem was that James had converted to Catholicism. The great majority of people in England and Scotland were by this time Protestants of one kind or another. (Ireland was a different matter).

The Protestants generally feared and detested the "Papists." In their view, the Roman Catholic faith was not only religiously wrong, but politically dangerous. They associated it with the royal absolutism of Louis XIV of France. Many of them wanted James to be excluded from the thrones of England and Scotland. 

In the late 1670s a group within Parliament mounted a campaign to exclude James. Opponents of their "Exclusion Bill" called them Whigs, then a word used to describe fanatical Scots Presbyterians. 

The Whigs opposed what they saw as a trend toward absolute monarchy in Britain. They supported religious toleration for all Protestant sects, but not Catholics. The Whigs called their opponents in Parliament Tories. Tory was then a term used for Irish bandits. As political labels, both Whig and Tory originated as terms of insult. 

The Tories in Parliament were Protestant. But they were staunch defenders of the established Church of England who opposed any form of religious toleration. They were also firm royalists who did not want the monarch's power to be too restricted.  

The Tories foiled the Whig attempt to exclude James from the throne. Some radical Whigs plotted against the government, which struck back with arrests and executions. The Whig leader Lord Shaftesbury fled to the Netherlands where he died soon after. [Image: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, by John Greenhill]

James became king when Charles died in 1685. But three years later Whig and Tory leaders cooperated to force James from power in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. Some leading Tories had also become alarmed by James's arbitrary and pro-Catholic actions.   

In the aftermath of the Revolution, Whigs and Tories continued to compete for ascendancy in Parliament. Between 1714 and 1760 the Whigs all but eliminated the Tory opposition, a period known as the Whig Supremacy. 

The Supremacy collapsed after George III came to the throne in 1760. He believed the Whigs had gained too much power and had corrupted the political system. He sought the support of "new men" outside the Whig oligarchy. Many of them were disaffected Whigs. 

The Old Whig establishment blamed George III for their decline. They claimed he was bent on tyranny, which was not the case. He considered his role to be that of a constitutional monarch, although he sometimes acted in a clumsy and ill-advised manner. (George wasn't "mad" either until almost 30 years later).

British Whig attacks on King George influenced events in North America. The colonists' real problem was not with the king, but with the British Parliament, which claimed the right to tax them. But the American Whigs adopted the rhetoric of their British namesakes and attacked the king. They called his supporters Tories, although none of them used or accepted that term. 

By the 1780s, what some historians call the Second Tory Party was emerging. Its supporters did not call themselves Tories but "Independent Whigs" or "Pittites," after their leader, William Pitt the Younger. It was only around 1812 that Pitt's successors began to use the term "Tory" to describe themselves. 

The Tories of the early 19th century are the true ancestors of the present-day Conservatives. In 1834, they changed their name officially to the Conservative Party. In the 1880s, they officially became the Conservative and Unionist Party, after a merger with Liberals opposed to Irish Home Rule. That bulky term is little used nowadays. But everyone still calls them Tories, a term they use themselves. 

"Whig" is no longer used to describe a political party. Why not? That is a subject for another post.

   

   

The Mysterious Dr. Kilpatrick

In 1717, a man calling himself James Kilpatrick (sometimes spelled Killpatrick) arrived in Charleston, South Carolina. His exact date of birth is unknown but was sometime in the 1690s. He joined his uncle, David Kilpatrick, who already lived in the colony. 

James Kilpatrick claimed to be a native of Ireland. He set himself up as a doctor, a profession in demand in the feverish colony. He had studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh but had not completed the MD.  

His lack of a medical degree was not a significant problem in the young colony, which lacked any kind of licensing system. The medical "profession" in Charleston at the time included people with little formal medical training, or none at all.   

Kilpatrick achieved some financial success. St. Philip's Parish vestry appointed him visiting physician to the parish poor. He established a pharmacy in the early 1730s -- something that modern doctors cannot do. 

In 1727 he wed Elizabeth Hepworth, an heiress and the daughter of the secretary of the colony. They were married at St. Philip's Church. A few years later he received a joint grant of more than 200 acres, and presumably engaged in a bit of rice planting. 

During Charleston's smallpox epidemic in 1738 Kilpatrick was one of the first doctors to employ the practise of inoculation. One of his children had died of the disease, and he decided to inoculate the rest of his family. He then inoculated several hundred residents. 

He vigorously defended his use of the procedure in the town's newspaper and in pamphlets. His efforts aroused controversy but enhanced his reputation in the long term. 

Upon the outbreak of war with Spain later that year -- the wonderfully named War of Jenkins' Ear -- he enlisted as ship's surgeon. He accompanied General James Oglethorpe's failed expedition in 1740 against St. Augustine, the Spanish stronghold in Florida. [Image: James Oglethorpe]

Around 1742, Kilpatrick moved to London with his wife and children. He established himself in medical practise and completed an MD from Edinburgh. Mysteriously, he also changed his name from Kilpatrick to Kirkpatrick.  

Why did he change his name? An old argument is that he decided that a name that began with "Kill" was not a good one for a doctor. That may be, but there is a more compelling reason: Kirkpatrick was his real name. 

That raises another question: Why did he change it to Kilpatrick on coming to South Carolina? The answer lies in British politics in the early 18th century. The Kirkpatricks were a Scots family who backed the wrong side in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.

The aim of the rebellion, and a couple more that followed, was to place the Catholic Stuart claimant "James III" (The Old Pretender) on the British throne, in place of the Hanoverian George I, who had just arrived from Germany.

The rebellion failed. People who had supported it, or were even suspect, were denounced as rebels. Many fled or tried to change their identity. James Kirkpatrick seems to have done both. 

He claimed to have been born in Ireland. Perhaps he was. But his family was Scottish, and he may have been born in Scotland. He attended Edinburgh University shortly before the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion. 

Did he take part in it? Possibly, or perhaps he was assumed to have done so because others in his family did. In any case, the political danger may have made a change of name seem like a good idea. The same goes for his migration to South Carolina. In a frontier colony, it was easier bury one's past and start afresh. The colony's promoters welcomed white men to a place where enslaved Africans already made up a majority of the population.  

When Kilpatrick changed his name back to Kirkpatrick, nearly 30 years had passed since the rebellion in which he may have been involved. Another, and more serious Jacobite rebellion took place in 1745, but no one could argue that he had taken any part in that. In any case, the Jacobite threat ended with the defeat of the army of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" at Culloden in April 1746. It was the last battle fought on British soil. [Image: Culloden]

 

Moreover, while in South Carolina, he had demonstrated his loyalty to the British government by serving as a naval surgeon in the Oglethorpe Expedition to St. Augustine. 

After arriving in London, he published an account of the 1738 smallpox epidemic in Charleston, highlighting the success of inoculation in the epidemic and his own role within it. 

When a smallpox epidemic broke out in London in 1746, Kirkpatrick helped found the innovative Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital, believed to be the first in Europe to specialize in that area. It provided free treatment to the working class. [Image: Smallpox and Inoculation Hospital,  Coldbath Fields, London]

Kirkpatrick collaborated on the hospital project with Isaac Maddox, Bishop of Worcester. Maddox later helped him to publish The Analysis of Inoculation (1754), a treatise on its history, theories, and practise. The book was translated into several languages and gained him a reputation as an expert on the subject. 

In the Analysis, he claimed to have revived inoculation in Britain after it had fallen into disuse. This was exaggeration, but he did help to popularize it, especially in France and the Continent. He inoculated members of the French and British aristocracies. 

Kilpatrick/Kirkpatrick harbored poetic as well as medical ambitions. He used them to celebrate the maritime and naval achievements of the British Empire, in a long poem entitled The Sea-Piece. He had composed it, he said, in South Carolina between 1717 and 1738. He published it in London in 1750. 

He praised the works of Alexander Pope, whom he called the poetic lord of the British empire. He wrote several poems commending and defending Pope and an elegy on Pope after his death in 1744. 

Kirkpatrick died in London in 1770. His son James became a high-ranking officer in the British East India Company. He was known as the "Handsome Colonel." Two of the colonel's sons, William and James Achilles Kirkpatrick, also attained high rank in the Company. 

James married an Indian princess in Hyderabad. The marriage ended in tragedy; a story superbly told by William Dalrymple in White Mughals.  

Further Reading: 

James Kilpatrick, An Essay on the Small-Pox Being Brought Into South Carolina in the Year 1738. (London, 1743)

James Kirkpatrick, The Analysis of Inoculation. (London, 1754). 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. (New York and Cambridge: 2011, 2014)

William Dalrymple, White Mughals. (London, 2002)

David S. Shields, Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690-1750. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1990)

 

Politicians Helped by Sexual Accusations

If you pay any attention to politics these days, you know that accusations of sexual impropriety, or worse, against political leaders are the stuff of everyday media reportage. Two obvious recent examples are Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. 

The accusations may be true, false, or exaggerated. The issue here is, how have they affected political careers?  Trump and Johnson are both out of power -- now -- but there is little evidence that their alleged sexual indiscretions had much to do with their fall from political grace. In some perverse way the accusations may even have helped them with some voters.

This seems to have been true for two 19th century politicians: President Grover Cleveland of the USA and Prime Minister Lord Palmerston of the UK.

Where's My Pa? 

Grover Cleveland, lawyer and Democratic governor of New York, ran for president in 1884. He had a reputation for honesty and integrity that appealed to reform-minded voters. But Republicans had held the Presidency for more than twenty years. [Image: Grover Cleveland in early 1880s, when he was Governor of New York]

Seeking to soil Cleveland's spotless reputation, Republicans accused him of fathering an illegitimate child with a young widow, Maria Halpin, ten years before. A famous cartoon published during the campaign of 1884 shows the child in the arms of his weeping mother bawling at Cleveland, "I Want My Pa!"

Cleveland blunted the charge by admitting that he might have been the boy's father. He told his campaign aides, "Tell the Truth." But his story was that Halpin had been "intimate" with several of his friends as well. Any one of them might have been the father.  The boy was named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Oscar Folsom was Cleveland's law partner. 

In an interview in 1884, Halpin denied that Folsom had anything to do with her pregnancy. She insisted that Cleveland was the father, and that he had threatened to ruin her if she told anyone about what happened. He was then the sheriff, so his threat would have carried some weight. At least one historian has recently argued that Cleveland had in fact raped her.   

Whatever the truth about that, when Halpin became pregnant, Cleveland allegedly accepted responsibility and provided financial support for the child. Halpin was admitted to a lunatic asylum soon after the birth. Her admission was irregular, and Cleveland may have arranged it to keep her quiet. One of the doctors who had examined her adopted the boy.  

The doctors decided that she was not insane but had been drinking. Perhaps she was suffering temporary post-partum depression. She was discharged after a few days. Eventually, Halpin and Cleveland agreed a settlement and she disappeared, only to resurface in 1884. Cleveland's supporters branded her a liar, a drunk, a lunatic, and a harlot. [Image: Maria Halpin]

During the campaign a popular chant rang out at Republican events, went "Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa?" His opponent, James G. Blaine, had been involved in scandals of his own, but involving bribery, not sex. Take your pick. 

Cleveland won the election, although by the slimmest of margins. After the results were in, Democrats added another line to the Republican chant: "Going to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!" The couplet even inspired songs.

The Republicans' sexual accusation against Cleveland does not seem to have hurt his run for the Presidency. It may even have helped with some voters. 

Cleveland was a bachelor when he became President. He married soon after. His wife Francis Folsom, daughter of his best friend, Oscar Folsom. At 21, she was the youngest ever First Lady and the first to be married in the White House. Cleveland was 49. Perhaps he was trying to stifle future accusations?

Maria Halpin remarried and lived a private life until her death in 1902. Her son faded from the public view. Speculation has it that he changed his name to that of the doctor who had adopted him and became a gynecologist, dying in 1947.  

Lord Cupid

Another political leader across the Atlantic may have benefited from stories about his illicit affairs. Henry John Temple, Third Viscount Palmerston, had held several high positions in the British government during his long and often controversial career. 

He was notorious for his bellicose "gunboat" diplomacy while serving as Foreign Secretary, but the British public admired him for standing up for the national interest. They called him by the affectionate nickname "Pam."

Palmerston served two terms as Prime Minister, 1855-1858, and 1859-1865. He was the first PM of the newly formed Liberal Party. He was already 70 years when he first became PM: the oldest person to assume that office. But he was far from done. [Image: Palmerston in 1855, by Francis Cruikshank.]

Palmerston had a reputation as a ladies' man. He is alleged to have fathered at least seven illegitimate children. In 1839, he was caught trying to force himself on one of Queen Victoria's ladies in waiting at Windsor Castle. He said he had "accidentally" gone into the wrong bedroom because he was drunk. It may have been true, but the bedroom he was heading for was later said to be that of his current mistress and later wife, Lady Cowper.

The Queen was not amused. Victoria was no prude, but she was appalled by Palmerston's behavior. Unfortunately for her, he was more popular than she was with the British public. 

Members of Parliament called Palmerston "Lord Cupid" due to his many affairs. His most famous and longest lasting was with Lady Emily Lamb Cowper, sister of another Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. 

It was no mere fling. The affair lasted twenty years. They married in 1839, two years after her husband's death. It proved to be a strong political and personal alliance. Emily Lamb was a social and intellectual asset to her husband.  [Image: Emily Lamb in the 1830s, by John Lucas]

In 1862, Palmerston was cited as a co-respondent in a divorce case. The case was brought by a journalist, Thaddeus O'Kane, who accused the Prime Minister of having an adulterous affair with Mrs. O'Kane. She claimed she had never been married to O'Kane, and thus could not be guilty of adultery. 

The court eventually dismissed the case, and the judge remarked that "no stain should fall on [Palmerston's] character." But it was reported on in major newspapers. 

Ironically, the leader of the Conservatives, Benjamin Disraeli, wanted the story supressed. He feared it would increase Palmerston's popularity! Palmerston's image was that of a man of vigor and energy, particularly in defending British interests. 

Some sources argue that Palmerston himself encouraged gossip about the case for the same reason Disraeli wanted it ignored. He was about to call a general election and he believed rumors about his amours real and imagined would actually boost his chances.  

Apparently, the voters agreed. A popular cry in the music halls of the day was "she may be Kane but is he Abel?" Perhaps the public concluded that an old man with such sexual vigor was definitely able for the job of PM. 

The Liberals won the election handily and increased their majority. A letter to the editors of the New York Times after the election stated that the newspapers that had publicized the accusations against Lord Palmerston had done him an "unintentional kindness."

Unfortunately for Palmerston, he died a couple of months after the election. A story soon circulated that he died while trying to seduce a servant, though the official cause of death was listed as a "chill." Perhaps Pam was not quite so vigorous after all. [Image: Palmerston in 1863, photo from his calling card]

His wife Emily died four years later, in 1869. One wonders what she thought of it all.