tbb113
10-11-2004, 02:49 PM
I just received this in an email and thought it was interesting
It was a dirty campaign. The incumbent President accused the challenger of being a traitor. The challenger accused the President of stealing and living in "kingly pomp and splendor" and that was only the beginning. Election 2004? Nope, the year was 1828 and the candidates were John Quincey Adams and Andrew Jackson.
Adams was attacked for traveling on Sunday (a major no-no in those days) and having premarital relations with his wife (oh, la la!). Jackson was attacked as being uneducated and reckless (actually, he was. Jackson had only a rough command of the written word). As the campaign went on the charges became more onerous. The opposition attacked Jackson as a murderer.
Adams men painted him as a grasping and bloodthirsty character, a budding tyrant in the model of Caesar or Napoleon, whose election would spell the death of the republic. Jacksonians branded Adams as a corruptionist, an aristocrat, and a libertine and of pimping children for the Russian czar, stealing and gambling. Adam supporters said:
"General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British solders! " The charges on both sides were shouted in the streets and printed in the papers. It didn't matter what was true, it made for great headlines.
By those standards, the rhetoric being thrown around now is pretty tame. The election of 1828 (Jackson won, by the way) is not the only example of dirty politics in our history. Forget Nixon, Bush, Clinton and Goldwater. Check this out...
In the election of 1796, Thomas Jefferson was attacked for not being religious and for his closeness to the French Revolution. John Adams was attacked for wanting a monarchy and being aloof. Jefferson was vilified as an atheist, pagan and traitor. Jefferson would be subject to another round of mud-slinging in the campaign of 1800 when a Federalist newspaper claimed that the election of Jefferson would cause the "teaching of "murder robbery, rape, adultery and incest". Can you imagine the New York Times making charges like that? The candidates back then didn't threaten to sue, they just made counter-charges that were just as wild.
In the election of 1840 Harrison was portrayed as a man from humble beginnings and with simple tastes, coming from a log cabin and drinking hard cider. This was in spite of the fact that Harrison was relatively wealthy for the times. (What is hard cider anyway and why would it be a plus to drink it?) The opponent, Van Buren, was called Van, Van, Van/Van a used-up man and Martin Van Ruin.
Presidential trivia: At sixty-eight, William Henry Harrison was the oldest inaugurated president until the l980 election of Ronald Reagan and died shortly after taking the oath of office.
In 1844 the newspapers of the day called Polk a coward and and the challenger Clay a drunkard.
Beloved President Lincoln was also not immune from vicious attacks. In 1858, cartoon images lampooned Lincoln's looks and warned of a Republican victory as tantamount to race mixing which was illegal in quite a few places. The newspapers of the time were all about inflamed rhetoric. Such as...
The Freeport Weekly Bulletin of 1858:
Should the choice of those brave men of Illinois, who fought by the banks of the Rio Grande, and on the bloody field of Buena Vista, fall upon the traitorous Lincoln, rather than Stephen A. Douglas, then will they have proven false to their own past feelings and convictions, and false to their own noble state and country, to protect whose honor they generously enlisted in days gone by.
This is from Weekly North-Western Gazette 1858:
If you vote for Lincoln you vote for a Statesman upon whose principles you can rely; if you vote for Douglas, you vote for a man who is accustomed to change his principles to gratify his own ambition.
Kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?
One of the wildest elections on record was not election 2000 but the election of 1877. The election of Hayes over the challenger Tilden, was decided in some pretty screwed up circumstances. There was a dispute over the results from the popular vote and the Electoral College and the Electoral Commission had to step in. The commission was asked to decide who had really won.
More people voted for Tilden than for Hayes, but Hayes came out the winner in the Electoral College by one vote, 185-184. It is generally agreed by historians that two of the three disputed states were really won by Tilden, but the Electoral Commission gave all the disputed states to Hayes
And...
Once the Commission had voted, Congress had to approve the decision. Members of both parties were threatening to use force to make their candidate president. A final decision was not made until March 2, 1877, just two days before inauguration day.
Southern Democrats in Congress were persuaded to vote for the Electoral Commission decision in exchange for a promise of an end to Reconstruction by the removal of all federal troops from the south. When the southern Democrats voted in favor of the Commission decision, that gave a majority in the House to the Republicans, and Hayes was declared elected.
Now here's one more interesting thing that happened during that election....
President Grant, in a most unusual action that has never been repeated, had Hayes sworn in secretly in the Red Room the night before the Inauguration, just in case of problems on inauguration day and Rutherford Birchard Hayes became the 19th president of the United States.
Can you imagine what would happen now if a sitting President had someone sworn in secretly?
So, just when you are ready to pull out your hair over all the back-biting and nastiness going on during this election, remember it could be worse. In fact, it has been worse.
Sources:
www.c-span.org
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/presidents_and_first_ladies/28316
http://sadparade.typepad.com/sad_parade/political_campaign_history/
http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/lincolndouglas/generalcom.html
http://www.journalofantiques.com/featureoct.htm
http://www.southcoasttoday.com
http://www.presidentsusa.net/ads.html
It was a dirty campaign. The incumbent President accused the challenger of being a traitor. The challenger accused the President of stealing and living in "kingly pomp and splendor" and that was only the beginning. Election 2004? Nope, the year was 1828 and the candidates were John Quincey Adams and Andrew Jackson.
Adams was attacked for traveling on Sunday (a major no-no in those days) and having premarital relations with his wife (oh, la la!). Jackson was attacked as being uneducated and reckless (actually, he was. Jackson had only a rough command of the written word). As the campaign went on the charges became more onerous. The opposition attacked Jackson as a murderer.
Adams men painted him as a grasping and bloodthirsty character, a budding tyrant in the model of Caesar or Napoleon, whose election would spell the death of the republic. Jacksonians branded Adams as a corruptionist, an aristocrat, and a libertine and of pimping children for the Russian czar, stealing and gambling. Adam supporters said:
"General Jackson's mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British solders! " The charges on both sides were shouted in the streets and printed in the papers. It didn't matter what was true, it made for great headlines.
By those standards, the rhetoric being thrown around now is pretty tame. The election of 1828 (Jackson won, by the way) is not the only example of dirty politics in our history. Forget Nixon, Bush, Clinton and Goldwater. Check this out...
In the election of 1796, Thomas Jefferson was attacked for not being religious and for his closeness to the French Revolution. John Adams was attacked for wanting a monarchy and being aloof. Jefferson was vilified as an atheist, pagan and traitor. Jefferson would be subject to another round of mud-slinging in the campaign of 1800 when a Federalist newspaper claimed that the election of Jefferson would cause the "teaching of "murder robbery, rape, adultery and incest". Can you imagine the New York Times making charges like that? The candidates back then didn't threaten to sue, they just made counter-charges that were just as wild.
In the election of 1840 Harrison was portrayed as a man from humble beginnings and with simple tastes, coming from a log cabin and drinking hard cider. This was in spite of the fact that Harrison was relatively wealthy for the times. (What is hard cider anyway and why would it be a plus to drink it?) The opponent, Van Buren, was called Van, Van, Van/Van a used-up man and Martin Van Ruin.
Presidential trivia: At sixty-eight, William Henry Harrison was the oldest inaugurated president until the l980 election of Ronald Reagan and died shortly after taking the oath of office.
In 1844 the newspapers of the day called Polk a coward and and the challenger Clay a drunkard.
Beloved President Lincoln was also not immune from vicious attacks. In 1858, cartoon images lampooned Lincoln's looks and warned of a Republican victory as tantamount to race mixing which was illegal in quite a few places. The newspapers of the time were all about inflamed rhetoric. Such as...
The Freeport Weekly Bulletin of 1858:
Should the choice of those brave men of Illinois, who fought by the banks of the Rio Grande, and on the bloody field of Buena Vista, fall upon the traitorous Lincoln, rather than Stephen A. Douglas, then will they have proven false to their own past feelings and convictions, and false to their own noble state and country, to protect whose honor they generously enlisted in days gone by.
This is from Weekly North-Western Gazette 1858:
If you vote for Lincoln you vote for a Statesman upon whose principles you can rely; if you vote for Douglas, you vote for a man who is accustomed to change his principles to gratify his own ambition.
Kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?
One of the wildest elections on record was not election 2000 but the election of 1877. The election of Hayes over the challenger Tilden, was decided in some pretty screwed up circumstances. There was a dispute over the results from the popular vote and the Electoral College and the Electoral Commission had to step in. The commission was asked to decide who had really won.
More people voted for Tilden than for Hayes, but Hayes came out the winner in the Electoral College by one vote, 185-184. It is generally agreed by historians that two of the three disputed states were really won by Tilden, but the Electoral Commission gave all the disputed states to Hayes
And...
Once the Commission had voted, Congress had to approve the decision. Members of both parties were threatening to use force to make their candidate president. A final decision was not made until March 2, 1877, just two days before inauguration day.
Southern Democrats in Congress were persuaded to vote for the Electoral Commission decision in exchange for a promise of an end to Reconstruction by the removal of all federal troops from the south. When the southern Democrats voted in favor of the Commission decision, that gave a majority in the House to the Republicans, and Hayes was declared elected.
Now here's one more interesting thing that happened during that election....
President Grant, in a most unusual action that has never been repeated, had Hayes sworn in secretly in the Red Room the night before the Inauguration, just in case of problems on inauguration day and Rutherford Birchard Hayes became the 19th president of the United States.
Can you imagine what would happen now if a sitting President had someone sworn in secretly?
So, just when you are ready to pull out your hair over all the back-biting and nastiness going on during this election, remember it could be worse. In fact, it has been worse.
Sources:
www.c-span.org
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/presidents_and_first_ladies/28316
http://sadparade.typepad.com/sad_parade/political_campaign_history/
http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/lincolndouglas/generalcom.html
http://www.journalofantiques.com/featureoct.htm
http://www.southcoasttoday.com
http://www.presidentsusa.net/ads.html