On April 1, 1884 Kentucky Congressman William C. P. Breckinridge introduced himself to a young woman on a train headed from Cincinnati, Ohio to Frankfort, Kentucky. A distinguished orator, the forty-seven year old politician told the woman that her face looked familiar. They engaged in a conversation during which Breckinridge mentioned that he knew her parents. Three months later, she wrote to this lawyer-turned-politician to ask his advice about a contract she had entered into with a man who had promised to pay her expenses at Cincinnati's Wesleyan Female Seminary in exchange for her promise either to marry him or to pay him back. In August, Colonel Breckinridge responded to the letter by appearing at the Seminary in person. He assured the woman that no court could force her to marry this man- then proceeded to become romantically attached to her himself. When Breckinridge's wife later died in 1892, he proposed to the young woman and she promptly accepted. Breckinridge betrayed her, however, by secretly marrying his own cousin on April 29 , 1893, one month before they were to become husband and wife.

This sad story of love and betrayal, at least, is what Madeline Vinton Pollard alleged in her suit against Breckinridge for breach of promise to marry. Like other "heartbalm" torts, such as seduction and criminal conversation, the action for breach of promise had its roots in late seventeenth-century England. In 1818, Chief Justice Parker of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts reviewed the tort's history and rationale, firmly establishing it as a viable action in nineteenth-century America. Plaintiffs began to bring more of these suits in the years immediately following his decision. The second half of the century, however, witnessed an explosion in the number of these cases as well as in the size of the verdicts awarded. Not surprisingly, they attracted an extraordinary amount of attention. Spectators flocked to courtrooms to hear lawyers recount alternatively sentimental and sensational stories of failed courtship, while newspapers printed a steady stream of articles and editorials about them.

The Pollard-Breckinridge trial of 1894 offers a window into the contentious world of breach of promise in late nineteenth-century America. The case received even more coverage than usual because of Breckinridge's prominent political position. In addition to daily reports in the local and national press, there exists a rich trial transcript as well as a lengthy fictional work purporting to probe the mystery behind the elusive heroine, titled A Diary of Ten Weeks' Intimate Association with the Real Madeleine Pollard. In this paper, I closely analyze these printed sources, reconstructing the stories that swirled around the sensational affair both inside and outside the courtroom. I focus on the ways in which Pollard's character became Central to the trial, exploring the anxieties that defense lawyers expressed at the specter of a deceitful, mercenary woman. I examine the ways in which the case blurred the boundaries between public and private, money and marriage, contract and sentiment, connecting the concerns that surfaced at the trial to larger cultural concerns over counterfeiting and imposture in a society steeped in promises and contracts. I conclude by reviewing some of the public's responses to this sensational trial as well as to the thorny problems posed by breach o promise, more generally, and by briefly looking ahead to the tort's demise in the early twentieth century.