Bridget

“Why can't he make it easier for us?" the staff asked, cursing under their breath as sifted the covers and floors on their hands and knees. "Why do we always have to be searching for blonde hair and blonde bobby pins? Why can't he get himself a steady brunette?"

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this story is that the staff picked hairs off the sheets instead of changing them. Which leads us to ponder how many sets of sheets the White House possessed. Perhaps not enough to keep up with JFK's constant soiling of them? Fresh sheets would have offered the added advantage of whisking away all those leftover panties, like the ones the first lady found wadded up underneath her pillow.”
― Eleanor Herman, Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House

“By the time Jefferson prepared to return to Virginia [from Paris], the lovely girl was 16. Here was a young woman who never could have emasculated him, never could have threatened him, never could have left him. She could not demand marriage from him, and make him break his promise to his late wife. A man could not marry his slave. Legally, she was required to do his bidding as long as she lived. Sally, for Jefferson, was the perfect solution.

And what about Sally? How did she feel about him? We know frustratingly little about her as a person. Her thoughts and feelings, her hopes and disappointments. And As an enslaved woman, she leaves us no portraits, no letters, no diaries... We have no idea when the affair began. Did he set out immediately to seduce the 14-year-old? ... Our only source of information is her son...”
― Eleanor Herman, Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House

“Abitha could see that these people believed, truly believed, that they were doing God’s work here this day. And there was something about these people that horrified Abitha even worse than those whose faces were lined with cruelty. As at least cruelty was a thing that could be pointed out, confronted. But this belief, this absolute conviction that this evil they were doing was good, was God’s work—how, she wondered, how could such a dark conviction ever be overcome?”
― Brom, Slewfoot: A Tale of Bewitchery

“Astonishingly, the founding strain of Puritanism brought to Massachusetts by a few dozen bleak souls in 1620 exited until quite recently in the American character . . . despite the American reputation for prudery, many of our leaders have had a colorful sexual past.”
― Eleanor Herman, Sex with Presidents: The Ins and Outs of Love and Lust in the White House