ePub Fighting the Death Penalty: A Fifty-Year Journey of Argument and Persuasion by Eugene G. Wanger in History

Description

Born Betsy Bowen into grinding poverty; the woman who reinvented herself as Eliza Jumel was raised in a brothel; indentured as a servant; and confined to a workhouse when her mother was in jail. Seizing opportunities and readjusting facts to achieve the security and status she so desperately craved; she obtained a fortune from her first husband; a French merchant; and nearly lost it to her second; the notorious vice president Aaron Burr. Divorcing Burr promptly amid lurid charges of adultery; she lived on triumphantly to the age of ninety; astutely managing her property and public persona. By the end of her life; “Madame Jumel” was one of New York’s richest women; with servants of her own; an art collection; an elegant mansion; a summer home in Saratoga Springs; and several hundred acres of land. After her death; a titanic battle over her estate went all the way to the United States Supreme Court . . . twice. As the feud over her fortune riveted the nation; family members told of a woman who earned the gratitude of Napoleon I and shone at the courts of Louis XVIII and Charles X. Their opponents painted a different picture; of a prostitute who bore George Washington’s illegitimate son; a wife who defrauded her husband and perhaps even plotted his death. Now Eliza Jumel’s real story—so unique that it surpasses any invention—has finally been told.