There may have been instances before this time, there certainly have been many since, when the decision of our chief legislature was influenced by the charms of a woman; but the case of Peggy O'Neill and Martin Van Buren stands as the unique instance of the selection of the president of the United States resulting from a purely feminine cause. Not only is the incident thus singular, but it is equally suggestive; it speaks trumpet-tongued of the power which had by that time been won by the social element at the national court and it illustrates the changes which had come into American society as exemplified in its highest and most typical circles.
Chronology has been neglected in order to give prominence to an instance so illustrative of the development of the power of society during the period which is now under consideration; but let us return to find the causal influences which led to such result. When the War of 1812 came to its unsatisfactory and indecisive end the city of Washington resumed its sway among social circles, and this time held its sceptre with firmer grasp. Thither flocked most of the aspirants for social fame. Not that in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other growing cities there were not women whose repute was equal to that of most of the individual leaders of Washington society, but that the latter was invested in its mass with a dignity which was wanting in unofficial circles. It was the court society of the country and thus held as representative. It was composed of concentric circles, centring in the White House and thence extending, through the wives and daughters of cabinet officials and foreign ministers, to those who hung upon the outer border and peered wistfully through the crowd for a glimpse of the sacred inner precincts. The war, though marking a period in the history of womanhood in our country, had been but an interlude in the chronicle of society, and the latter had but gathered strength and zest during its period of enforced rest.
In 1825, Mrs. Jackson, the wife of the hero of New Orleans, whose own place in Washington society was at first a little precarious because of some irregularity in her marriage, till the noble character of the woman silenced her detractors,--thus wrote to Mrs. Kingsley of Nashville, giving her first impressions of the capital: