The audacity of Madeline Pollard's suit utterly shocked the nation. When it didn't, she sued Breckinridge for breach of promise - and thereby revealed their affair, her past pregnancies, and her now-sullied reputation. Breckinridge, a handsome, married, moralizing lawyer running for Congress, called on Madeline Pollard, a young student at the Wesleyan Female College, thus beginning a lengthy affair, one Pollard thought might someday end in marriage. It was the culmination of a scandal ten years in the making. In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller unveils and explores the unknown story of Madeline Pollard, whose suit illuminates a crucial moment in the history of women's rights.
The New York World asked, "Is It Blackmail?" and the Cincinnati Enquirer declared, "Nothing in recent years has created such a social agitation." "A Sensational Suit," cried Washington, D.C.'s Evening Star. In the summer of 1893, headlines across the United States screamed of one thing: a virtually unknown woman was suing a well-respected congressman for fifty thousand dollars. Bringing Down the Colonel: A Sex Scandal of the Gilded Age, and the "Powerless" Woman Who Took on Washington by Patricia Miller
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