Bringing down the Colonel
Published October 1, 2018
“Bringing Down the Colonel,” by Patricia Miller, casts timely light on a forgotten 19th-century saga in which a powerful man was held accountable for his exploitative treatment of a young woman.”
About
“I’ll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his.”
In Bringing Down the Colonel, the journalist Patricia Miller tells the story of Madeline Pollard, an unlikely nineteenth-century women’s rights crusader. After an affair with a prominent politician left her “ruined,” Pollard brought the man―and the hypocrisy of America’s control of women’s sexuality―to trial. And, surprisingly, she won.
Pollard and the married Colonel Breckinridge began their decade-long affair when she was just a teenager. After the death of his wife, Breckinridge asked for Pollard’s hand―and then broke off the engagement to marry another woman. But Pollard struck back, suing Breckinridge for breach of promise in a shockingly public trial. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged equally.
Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, America is still obsessed with women’s sexual morality. And in the age of Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, we’ve witnessed fraught public reckonings with a type of sexual exploitation unnervingly similar to that experienced by Pollard. Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Colonel tells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.
Reviews
“[A] tantalizing and beautifully researched book . . . Anyone emboldened by the #MeToo movement to come forward owes a significant debt to Pollard.” ―Karen Abbott, The Washington Post
“What better time for a story about a prominent man taken totally aback when he discovers that the rules about what we can get away with have changed? . . . After a while, [the Breckenridge-Pollard] saga vanished from the national memory. Congratulations to Patricia Smith for bringing it back.” ―Gail Collins, The New York Times Book Review
“In today’s #MeToo world, ‘Bringing Down the Colonel’ reverberates in unexpected ways.” ―Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal
“Though the sexual exploitation of women has been well documented, stories of women successfully bringing down their abusers have, until recently, been few and far between. Journalist Miller reaches back into the past to resurrect one woman's compelling odyssey from victim to victor . . . A fascinating examination of a historical #MeToo episode.” ―Booklist
“Miller dusts off a long-forgotten scandal that gripped the nation’s capital in the late 19th century [and] seamlessly weaves in the stories of other unmarried women connected to the case . . . This book will enthrall readers interested in women’s and political history.” ―Publishers Weekly
“Ms. Miller shows how the scandal laid open previously taboo topics―adultery, illicit pregnancies, abortion and sexual hypocrisy . . . her wide historical lens makes it a valuable, timely addition to discussions of gender and power, not to mention an eerie echo of recent news.” ―The Economist
