And you thought our modern political chicanery was bad! Some of the charges and counter-charges are cited in this hilarious YouTube video: Election of 1800 Attack Ads. The name-calling in the 1800 presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, however, takes the prize for no-holds-barred mudslinging. Adams’ supporters responded by circulating a pamphlet claiming that Jackson's mother had been a prostitute brought to this country by British soldiers, and that Jackson was the offspring of her marriage to a mulatto! In 1828, when John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson vied for president, Jackson’s campaign nicknamed Adams The Pimp, based on a rumor that as the American ambassador to Russia he had forced a young woman into an affair with a Russian nobleman. Nothing like the direct approach to changing your government!įrom America's earliest days as a democracy, name-calling and character assassination has been a highly popular tactic, such as when Davy Crockett accused Martin Van Buren of secretly wearing women’s corsets. Fearing for his and his family’s safety, that night the governor fled with his wife and young child to the fort in Portsmouth harbor, ending decades of British rule in that colony. When Fenton understandably refused to comply, the crowd wheeled a cannon in front of the mansion and beat on the walls with clubs until the hapless offender finally gave himself up. In June 1775, one placed the home of New Hampshire’s last royal governor, John Wentworth, under siege, demanding he turn over his guest, John Fenton, who had urged acceptance of the latest British proposals to avert the crisis. But mobs were a force to be reckoned with throughout the colonies. Joseph Warren helped to refine mob rule into an art form. Mobs played a big part in colonial politics, particularly in Boston, where Dr. At times someone of the wrong political persuasion was even tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Where Loyalists held power, Patriots suffered similar treatment. Loyalists might be jailed, have their property confiscated, their citizenship revoked, and even be exiled. Where Patriots held sway, mobs often forced Loyalists out of their homes, denying them legal counsel and trial. Anyone who didn’t support one side was automatically consigned to the opposition. There was no such thing as neutrality between the two points of view. At that point, the division between those who supported the British and those who opposed them spawned the Loyalists, or Tories, and the Patriots, or Whigs. Political parties didn’t exist in this country until we were well on the way to revolution. So let’s take a quick tour of some of the more egregious examples from our nation’s history. But you don’t have to do much digging to discover that political chicanery is a time-honored American tradition that has been exercised with glee since America was still a collection of British colonies on the course toward revolution. We hear a lot of complaints about personal attack ads and dirty tricks, including from the politicians who are guilty of using them. Every presidential campaign season I ruminate on the history of American politics, and since we’re coming down to the wire in the current race, I thought this would be a timely-and lively-topic for discussion.
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