The ghost of the Peggy Eaton affair could never be permanently exorcised. Timberlake had not only died penniless and in debt but left his official accounts in confusion, and a year or two later it was discovered that he had been a defaulter. His bondsman resisted payment of the shortage, accusing Lieutenant Robert B. Randolph, who had taken over Timberlake’s papers, of the actual responsibility for it. Randolph, in demanding a court-martial, committed a technical breach of discipline for which the President dismissed him summarily from the service. One day Jackson was a passenger on a river steamboat which stopped briefly at a wharf in Alexandria. He was sitting alone, when a stranger approached him as if to shake hands. Jackson, seeing him drawing off one of his gloves, said amiably, “Never mind your glove, sir,” and stretched out his own hand. But the stranger, instead of taking it, made a violent lunge at Jackson’s face, exclaiming: “I am Lieutenant Randolph, whom you have wronged and insulted, and I came here to pull your nose!” Startled by the noise, two or three gentlemen ran forward and sprang upon Randolph, who, in the struggle that followed, reached the gangplank and freed himself. The President, convinced by later developments that the Lieutenant had really suffered an injustice, offered to reinstate him if he would apologize for the nose-pulling; but he scornfully rejected the proposal. The Cabinet, as reorganized in consequence of pretty Peggy’s fight, did not hang together long. Secretary Eaton intimated presently that he would like to retire, Van Buren seemed of the same mind, so the President appointed the former Governor of Florida and the latter Minister to England. The Senate confirmed Eaton’s appointment with good enough grace, but balked at that of Van Buren, who, having gone to England in good faith to enter upon his duties, was put to the humiliating necessity of coming home again. Jackson was angry, regarding this as a blow at himself. “If they don’t want him for Minister,” he thundered, “we’ll see if they like him any better as President!” He therefore laid out a program beginning with his own reëlection with Van Buren as his Vice-president, and ending with Van Buren’s election as his successor. The plan carried; and, as Jackson’s affection for Van Buren had grown largely out of the latter’s stanch loyalty in the Cabinet quarrel, Mrs. Eaton may be said to have shaped American history for a considerable term of years.