Mrs. Andrew Jackson

President Andrew Jackson's wife, born Rachel Donelson, had been married before meeting him, and there was a legal question about the validity of their marriages - marriages plural, because they had marry a second time after her divorce was finalized. During the presidential campaign of 1828 Jackson's political opponents repeatedly (and unfairly) attacked her along with him. She died between the election and his inauguration, and so was never a First Lady. Both the "Appendix Compson" and Requiem for a Nun use the same ironic phrase to describe this situation: Jackson believed in "the principle that honor must be defended whether it was or not since, defended, it was, whether or not" (326, 85).