Unwise Passions: A True Story of a Remarkable Woman---and the First Great Scandal of Eighteenth-Century America
Unwise Passionstraces the trajectory of aristocrat Nancy  Randolph's tempestuous life, beginning with her privileged birth in 1774,  continuing through a series of scandals that eventually sent her North, and  concluding with her death in 1837. But this engaging, accessible biography also  serves as group portrait of the Virginia aristocracy--and of its declining  fortunes, as the colonial oligarchy was supplanted by an unrulier democracy.  When she was only 18, Nancy was accused of having borne a child to her own  sister's husband, Richard Randolph, who then allegedly murdered the newborn.  Defended by Revolutionary legend Patrick Henry, Richard and Nancy were  acquitted, and she returned to live with him and her sister. But the rumors  persisted, and Richard's sudden death in 1796 only made them uglier. Many of the  ugliest rumors were voiced by Richard's younger brother, Jack; Nancy's former  suitor. Jack improved the debt-riddled family estates while he pursued a  political career as a fiery states-rights congressman (a career that gets nearly  as much of the author's attention as Nancy's life). Virginia-based journalist  Alan Pell Crawford doesn't conclude definitively whether or not Jack actually  believed Nancy had murdered his brother and had sexual relations with a slave,  but the congressman certainly hated her enough to throw her off the family farm  and repeat those stories later to her husband. At age 34, reduced to poverty and  living in New York, the long-suffering Nancy married Gouverneur Morris, another  wealthy veteran of the Revolutionary generation. Their happy union produced one  child and endured until his death. Crawford, also the author ofThunder on  the Right, pens a lively narrative that vividly evokes his characters:  kindhearted, rather frivolous Nancy; urbane, unshockable Morris; irascible,  overwrought Jack; and a host of cousins who are scattered throughout America's  inbred, gossipy high society. Good fun and good history, to boot.--Wendy  Smith--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.