John Eaton (politician)

John Henry Eaton (June 18, 1790 – November 17, 1856) was an American politician and diplomat from Tennessee who served as U.S. Senator and as Secretary of War in the administration of Andrew Jackson. He was 28 years old when he entered the Senate, making him the second-youngest U.S. Senator in history after Armistead Thomson Mason. Eaton resigned as Secretary of War as part of a strategy to resolve the Petticoat affair, a social scandal that involved Eaton and his wife, Peggy, and hindered the effectiveness of the Jackson administration.

John Eaton was born on June 18, 1790 near Scotland Neck, Halifax County, North Carolina to John and Elizabeth Eaton. His father was a coroner and member of the state legislature, while his uncle, Major Pinkerton Eaton, had been killed in the Revolutionary War. Eaton's father owned a large amount of land in middle Tennessee, and the 1790 census lists him as the owner of 12 slaves. The younger Eaton attended the University of North Carolina from 1802 to 1804.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina, Eaton became a lawyer. He served in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812.

Public service

From 1815 to 1816, he was a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. In 1818, he was elected Senator from Tennessee, serving until 1829. His age of 28 at the time of his entry to the Senate was notable; it contradicted the US Constitution's requirement that all Senators be at least 30 years old.

Unlike many Southerners, Eaton supported the Missouri Compromise of 1820. On March 11, 1820, in a letter to Major General Andrew Jackson, he claimed that "it has preserved piece and dissipated angry feelings, and dispelled appearances which seemed dark and horrible and threatening to the interest and harmony of the nation."

Eaton was a close personal friend of Jackson, and while in the Senate supported the Jacksonian movement. He urged Jackson to accept appointment as Governor of the newly-acquired Territory of Florida in 1821. After Jackson became President, Eaton and Amos Kendall, who served as Postmaster General in Jackson's second term, were part of his informal circle of advisors; Jackson detractors called them his "Kitchen Cabinet". (Apparently this group did, in fact, frequently meet in the White House kitchen.)

Secretary of War

Eaton resigned his Senate seat in 1829 to accept appointment as Jackson's Secretary of War, and served from 1829 to 1831. Respectable women in Washington social circles led by Floride Calhoun, the wife of Vice President John C. Calhoun, snubbed the Eatons because they married soon after her husband, John B. Timberlake's, death, rather than waiting for the usual mourning period; there were rumors that they had been having an affair prior to her first husband's death. The disruption penetrated the Cabinet as wives and cabinet member ostracized the Eatons, which angered Jackson. The controversy, known as the Petticoat affair, contributed to the political rise of Martin Van Buren, a member of Jackson's cabinet who supported the Eatons.

After Van Buren resigned as Secretary of State to help Jackson resolve the controversy, Jackson was able to end it by asking for the resignations of most of his other cabinet members. Eaton resigned as Secretary of War on June 18, 1831.

Following his resignation, he received appointments that took him away from Washington, DC, first as Governor of Florida Territory from 1834 to 1836, and then as ambassador to Spain from 1836 to 1840.

Upon returning from Spain, Eaton made the surprising announcement that he was unwilling to support Van Buren's campaign for reelection to the presidency in 1840. The declaration deeply upset Jackson, who accused him of having "apostatised and taken the field with the piebald opposition of abolitionists, antimasons and blue light federalist."

Eaton died in Washington, D.C. on November 17, 1856. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery, Washington, D.C.

His first wife was Myra Lewis, who died before 1818. Eaton married his second wife Peggy O'Neill Timberlake (1799–1879), a longtime friend and newly bereaved widow, in 1829, years after meeting her and her husband in Washington, DC.

Legacy

Eaton County, Michigan, is named in his honor.