After serving in the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1815 and 1816, in 1818 Eaton was elected to the U.S. Senate, though he had not yet reached the constitutionally mandated age of 30.

Eaton resigned as Secretary of War as part of a strategy to resolve the controversy; he later received appointments as Governor of Florida Territory and U.S. Minister to Spain.

Upon returning to the United States in 1840, Eaton refused to endorse incumbent Martin Van Buren for reelection to the presidency, angering Jackson.

[3] The elder John Eaton was a furniture maker who served as county coroner and member of the North Carolina House of Representatives.

[5] Eaton's father owned a large amount of land in middle Tennessee, and the 1790 census lists him as the owner of 12 slaves.

[9] He supported Jackson's controversial decision in November 1814 to attack Pensacola in Spanish Florida, claiming that Spain had put herself in a belligerent position by allowing its territory to be occupied by British soldiers.

On March 11, 1820, in a letter to Jackson, he claimed that "it has preserved piece and dissipated angry feelings, and dispelled appearances which seemed dark and horrible and threatening to the interest and harmony of the nation.

[7] In 1822, Eaton and his brother-in-law William Berkeley Lewis attempted to nominate a candidate before the Tennessee legislature to oppose incumbent U.S.

[25][29] Petticoat politics emerged when the wives of cabinet members, led by Mrs. Calhoun, refused to socialize with the Eatons.

"[29] In his view, the dishonorable people were the rumormongers, in part because he was reminded of the attacks that had been made, particularly in the 1828 election, against his wife over the circumstances of their marriage.

[33] Jackson also believed that John Calhoun fanned the flames of the controversy as a way to gain political leverage for a growing anti-Jackson coalition.

[34] Duff Green, a Calhoun protégé and editor of the United States Telegraph, accused Eaton of secretly working to have pro-Calhoun cabinet members Samuel D. Ingham (Treasury) and John Branch (Navy) removed from their positions.

[35] Jackson biographers Richard B. Latner and Robert V. Remini believe that the hostility towards the Eatons was rooted less in questions of morality and proper behavior than in politics.

Eaton had been in favor of the Tariff of Abominations, which Calhoun bitterly opposed and which led him to elucidate the doctrine of nullification.

He was also close to Secretary of State Martin Van Buren, another supporter of the tariff and Calhoun's main rival for who would succeed Jackson as president.

Calhoun may have wanted to expel Eaton from the cabinet as a way of boosting his anti-tariff agenda and increasing his standing in the Democratic Party.

Many other cabinet members were Southerners and may have felt similarly, especially Ingham, a close Calhoun ally who supported his presidential aspirations.

In the spring of 1830, reports emerged accurately stating that Calhoun, while Secretary of War, had favored censuring Jackson for his 1818 invasion of Florida.

This gave Jackson the opportunity to reorganize his cabinet by asking for other resignations, and he was able to replace the anti-Eaton secretaries; only Postmaster General William T. Barry remained.

"[47] However, Calhoun only made Van Buren seem the victim of petty politics, which were rooted largely in the Eaton controversy.

Jackson enlisted the help of longtime supporter Francis Preston Blair, who in November 1830 established a newspaper known as The Washington Globe, which from then on served as the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party.

[50] In the summer of 1830, following the passage of the Indian Removal Act, allowing for the transportation of the "Five Civilized Tribes" from their homes in the South to lands being given to them in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), Jackson, Eaton, and General John Coffee negotiated with the Chickasaw, who quickly agreed to move west by agreeing to the Treaty of Franklin in August.

Their tactics typically worked, and the chiefs signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, agreeing to move west.

"[60] He also indicated that Mrs. Eaton engaged in spreading gossip about Van Buren, and that her manner was forward enough that the Spanish government considered her to be the "real" minister.

Supposedly, this action was rooted in Eaton's displeasure over the way he was allegedly treated by Van Buren while serving as Ambassador to Spain.

[59] The declaration deeply upset Jackson, who in a letter to Blair went so far as to accuse Eaton of having "apostatised and taken the field with the piebald opposition of abolitionists, antimasons and blue light federalists.

The book contains scarcely a period of good English, but makes amends by abundance of fulsome adulation, by the omission of many disgraceful acts and the palliation of others.

"[42] Washington chronicler Benjamin Perley Poore called Eaton's biography "the recognized textbook for Democratic editors and stump speakers, and although entirely unreliable, it has formed the basis for the lives of General Jackson since published.

It noted that after his death Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a Jackson appointee, had adjourned a session of the Supreme Court early in order that those present could attend the funeral.

Owsley attributes many of the unfavorable reviews of Eaton's work to people using the later editions and not realizing the extent to which they were revised from the original.