In  1790  not  even  prophesy  foresaw  our  modern  day
of  stage-weddings,  foot-light  honeymoons  and  divorces
between  the  acts.  The  absurd  simplicity  of  the  fathers
and  the  mothers  vanished  when  American  duchesses  be-
came a  staple  of  the  export  trade  and  when  our  million-
aire-market of  matrimony  was  selected  by  bankrupt
dukes  as  a  hunting-ground  of  fortune.  But,  as  this
work  is  not  a  treatise  on  moral  philosophy  or  even  a
tract  denouncing  vice  in  high  life  and  advocating  reform,
comparison  between  social  tenets  then  and  now  may  be
omitted.  On  that  point  it  suffices  to  say  that  Andrew
Jackson  married  a  divorced  woman  when  divorces  were

VOL.  I. — 7  97


98       HISTORY    OF    ANDREW    JACKSON

extremely  rare,  and  every  effort  of  society,  both  in  Church
and  State,  was  to  impede  if  not  prevent  them.
In  this  particular  case  was  the  additional  and  extraor-
dinary complication  caused  by  ignorance  of  or  inatten-
tion to  the  nature  and  operation  of  the  divorce-law  itself ;
with  the  result  that  the  marriage  began  before  the  divorce
was  ended.  This  is  a  brief  statement  of  facts  beyond
dispute.  But  neither  Jackson  nor  his  bride  had  the  least
suspicion  that  the  divorce  was  not  complete  when  they
married.  They  knew  both  by  common  report  and  official
advertisement  that  the  proceedings  required  by  the  laws
of  Virginia  had  been  instituted;  and  they  did  not  know
that  the  proceedings  instituted  had  yet  another  stage  to
pass  before  the  record  would  be  complete.  In  this  neg-
lect Jackson  was  at  fault.  He  was  a  lawyer  and  upon
him  devolved  the  responsibility  of  ascertaining  beyond
doubt  that,  when  he  married  Rachel  Donelson  Robards,
she  was  not  still  in  the  eyes  of  the  law,  the  wife  of  another
man.
