The rats leaving a falling house

1831

This cartoon commemorates "the time Jackson's cabinet resigned over the Peggy Eaton scandal, 1831.The cabinet members are portrayed as rats with human heads, and Jackson, seated in a collapsing chair, has his legs outstretched and his right foot on the tail of van Buren. The latter, being a widower, was not under such feminine pressure as were the cabinet members, whose wives objected to the favoritism shown by Jackson to Peggy Eaton, the wife of his Secretary of War, who had a curious if not dubious past."