Bringing Down the Colonel

I'd heard a snippet about Madeline Pollard on a podcast and Nisba Breckinridge was mentioned in the same breath. I wonder now if the host had read this book. Maybe Encyclopedia Womanica? I digress.

This is an excellent overview of the Pollard v. Breckinridge case from the 1890s. Over a hundred years before the #metoo movement was even a thought, one woman dared to have her name ruined to put her much older, much more powerful abuser on trial. She was a young Kentuckian of minimal importance and he was one of the most powerful politicians of his day. The case was a sensation at the time and I feel like it's not talked about enough today, if at all.

I'd recommend this book if you're interested in the sufferage movement or Gilded Age politics. It also has a dual function as a very kind if slim biography of Nisba Breckinridge, the accused's daughter who was a remarkable woman in her own right.

This quote really stuck with me. This is recounting a conversation with the nun running the asylum where one of their out of wedlock children was taken.

Butterworth moved to the Norwood Foundling Asylum, asking if it was true that Sister Agnes had told her she was a bad woman. “She said to me ‘Why on earth do you want to ruin that poor old man in his old age?'” Madeline said. “I asked her why should that poor old man have wanted to ruin me in my youth?” She said Sister Agnes pleaded with her to consider Breckinridge's daughters. “I said he did not consider me, and I was somebody's daughter, and that he did not consider the little daughter of his and mine whom he had compelled me to give away,” she said, the words now coming in a torrent like some long-dammed stream had burst. “I said there was such a thing as justice, and it should be done. He should have his share and I should have my share, and I believed there was a principle involved as to whether a man had a right to do as he chooses without suffering the consequences, while the woman must be bowed down with her shame. I said I believed the time would come when there would be a change of feeling on that part, and I said the time was near and it must come.”