How did US President Andrew Jackson commit accidental bigamy?

looney_tunes

Turned out that his wife wasn't actually divorced (although she thought she was) when they married. 'Rachel and Andrew were living as husband and wife for two years before they found out that her first husband had actually never completed the divorce. She was still technically married to Lewis Robards. This made Rachel Jackson a bigamist and an adulteress and Andrew Jackson a man of questionable character. Robards did finally move forward and obtain a divorce in 1793. For the record, Andrew and Rachel married in Nashville in 1794.' http://www.wnpt.org/productions/rachel/campaign/mudsling.html Oct 14 10, 4:05 AM

Zbeckabee

Another tidbit: Divorce: The ultimate divorce of Rachel Jackson from her first husband would come to shatter all precedent in presidential history. It was the first time that such a deeply personal event would be used against a presidential candidate in a campaign and it was also the first large public consideration of the conceptual ideal of what kind of personal background a First Lady should ideally possess. It thus unwittingly played one of the first and important public debates in the history of First Ladies. Lewis Robards and his defenders would claim that his former wife had shamelessly flirted and that he asked her brother to remove Rachel from her marital home, but that he later sought reconciliation. Upon his return to Nashville, they claimed he found her in an inappropriately close relationship with Andrew Jackson, a circuit lawyer boarding with the Donelsons who then eloped with her in Natchez, Mississippi in an illegal marriage. This resulted in his seeking and gaining a divorce. In contrast, the Donelsons and Jacksons claimed that Robards had physically abused Rachel and that she ran first to her mother's home and then - when word came that Robards was coming to take her back to their Kentucky home - fled for fear of her life to Natchez with friends, a married couple, all of them guided and protected by Jackson. They further claim that when Jackson returned to Nashville alone that he was told that Robards had boasted that he had successfully processed a divorce from Rachel, thus leaving her open to marry Jackson. The Jackson defenders would suggest that Robards had purposely misled them so that if Andrew and Rachel Jackson did marry and live together that it would make the union an adulterous one that was all the proof needed for Robards to then gain a divorce. The Jackson evidence was weakened by the fact that no legal marriage of theirs could be legitimized in then-Spanish-ruled Mississippi because they were Protestant and only Catholic wedding ceremonies were recognized as legal unions. Robards did follow the law by first obtaining a required legislative grant to file a divorce. He then did so based on the fact that Rachel had openly committed adultery, and the divorce was granted on TK to him, she found to be guilty of abandonment as well. The Jacksons remarried legally in Tennessee, but the incident had made Rachel Jackson a bigamist and adulterer. http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=7 Oct 14 10, 7:05 AM