The pomp and circumstance of the American presidency can often mask its dark underbelly. And when it comes to that underbelly, presidential sex scandals are almost as old as the nation itself.
Sometimes, it takes the cold eye of history to understand a scandal in full — like Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with his slave, Sally Hemings. Other times, the country has watched a scandal unfold before their eyes — like Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Every scandal is different. But each one fascinates because they prove that, behind the presidential seal, the leader of the free world is not infallible.
Thomas Jefferson And Sally Hemings
Wikimedia CommonsThomas Jefferson allegedly had six children with Sally Hemings, an enslaved woman who could not consent.
Shortly after Thomas Jefferson entered the White House in 1801, a journalist named James T. Callender published an explosive exposé. The president, Callender declared, had had a sexual relationship with one of his slaves.
“Her name is Sally,” Callender wrote in 1802. Calling her Jefferson’s “concubine,” Callendar claimed that the president had had, “several children by her.”
The subsequent scandal fizzled into nothing. Callendar had a well-known grudge against Jefferson and a reputation as a drunk. Indeed, he died the next year while drunkenly trying to bathe in the James River.
For two hundred years, Callendar’s allegations remained a rumor. But a 1998 DNA test published in Nature proved him right. Jefferson had indeed enslaved a woman named Sally Hemings and her descendants had traces of his DNA.
Public DomainThough James T. Callender broke the story, it took two centuries for Jefferson’s relationship with Hemings to become accepted fact.
The story of this presidential sex scandal likely started in the 1780s. By 1784, Jefferson was a recent widower serving out a diplomatic mission in Paris. He brought an enslaved woman, Hemings, to Paris to help him take care of his daughter Maria, (nicknamed “Polly.”)
There, Jefferson’s eye fell on 14-year-old Hemings, who happened to be the half-sister of his deceased wife Martha. By the time they returned to the United States, Hemings was pregnant.
According to Hemings’s son Madison, however, Hemings had only agreed to leave France — where she was free — after making a deal with Jefferson. The future president “made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years.”
“She gave birth to four others,” Madison explained, “and Jefferson was the father of all of them. Their names were Beverly, Harriet, Madison (myself), and Eston.”
Though Jefferson avoided serious scandal in his lifetime, modern eyes have reevaluated his relationship with Hemings, recognizing it for what it was: rape. As an enslaved woman, Hemings could not have given consent. Although her children were freed, Hemings herself was never officially released from the bonds of slavery.
Ultimately, after Jefferson’s death in 1826, his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph allowed Hemings to leave Jefferson’s estate.
Grover Cleveland And Maria Halpin: One Of The First Presidential Sex Scandals
Wikimedia CommonsA cartoon from the scandal labels Cleveland as “Grover the Good,” since he was seen as politically moral but personally immoral.
When Grover Cleveland ran for president in 1884, jeering crowds often greeted him with an infamous chant: “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” By then, the nation was captivated by the allegation that Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock.
Actually, the allegations were worse than that. The Buffalo Evening Telegraph claimed in July 1884 that Cleveland had gotten a woman named Maria Halpin pregnant — possibly by rape — then sent her to an insane asylum and put up their child for adoption.
“Halpin said that Cleveland had pursued her relentlessly, and that she finally consented to join him for a meal at the Ocean Dining Hall & Oyster House,” reported the Chicago Tribune in October after interviewing Halpin. “After dinner, Cleveland escorted her back to her boarding house.
“In an 1874 affidavit, Halpin strongly implied that Cleveland’s entry into her room and the incident that transpired there was not consensual — he was forceful and violent, she alleged, and later promised to ruin her if she went to the authorities.”
Cleveland, however, insisted that Halpin had slept with lots of men in his circle. Though his presidential campaign admitted that he and Halpin were “illicitly acquainted,” the future president and his campaign suggested that he’d only claimed paternity because his friends were married.
Wikimedia CommonsGrover Cleveland’s sex scandal shocked Americans across the country.
In the end, voters judged Cleveland as less corrupt than his opponent, James G. Blaine. After his presidential victory, Cleveland’s supporters smugly answered the “Ma, Ma, Where’s My Pa?” chant with “Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha!”
Cleveland drew headlines for another reason when he became the first president to get married at the White House. His bride, 21-year-old Frances Folsom, was his best friend’s daughter and 27 years Cleveland’s junior.
Although Cleveland lost reelection in 1888, he won the presidency again in 1892. That makes him the only president to serve non-consecutive terms and one of the only presidential candidates that triumphed despite a presidential sex scandal.
The post The True Stories Behind Nine Presidential Sex Scandals That Shocked America appeared first on All That’s Interesting.
