"[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 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 anotherwoman. 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 Using newspaper articles, personal journals, previously unpublished autobiographies, and letters, Bringing Down the Coloneltells the story of one of the earliest women to publicly fight back.

"It's impossible to read [ Bringing Down the Colonel ] without it feeling familiar the clear parallels to Trump, Weinstein, Kavanaugh, and other figures in the 'he said, she said' dramas of our own time." The Boston Globe

Patricia Miller

"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.

CONTENTS

1. Gold to Be Made 3
2. A Bright and Brainy Woman 9
3. A Bastard Catch'd 24
4. The Left-Hand Road 37
5. The Wanton Widow 52
6. Not So Easily Handled 74
7. What Shall We Do with Our Daughters? 91
8. For the Likes of Me 101
9. The Needle, the School Room, and the Store 117
10. A House of Mercy 133
11. A Good Woman 149
12. Miss Pollard's Ruin in Lexington 165
13. Somebody's Daughter 187
14. A Man of Passion 200
15. Hindered, Not Ruined 215
16. The Front Parlor and the Back Gate 230
17. The Cavalier and the Puritans 256
18. Refusing to Behave 280
19. Redemption 289

Notes 301
Bibliography 341
Acknowledgments 349
Index 353