the good ol' days...
because it was SOOOO much better back then, wasn't it?:Election of 1800: Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican) vs. John Adams (Federalist)
- Federalist papers claimed that electing Thomas Jefferson would lead to the “teaching of murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest.”
- Adams attackedJackson’s marriage, accusing him of living in sin with his wife Rachel, because Rachel’s divorce from her prior marriage had not been finalized when Andrew Jackson married her. Jackson’s wife was referred to as an “American Jezebel” and was branded as a convicted adulteress. Adams sent out pamphlets that asked, “Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and christian land?” Rachel Jackson was also called a “strumpet” and a “whore” in some papers covering the election.
- Jackson was accused of being a murderer among other unpleasant things.
- Adams was accused of providing the Russian Czar with American virgins to serve as his servants while Adams was Minister to Russia.
- Democrats attacked Taylor for being uneducated, mean and greedy.
- Whigs attacked Cass for being a liar.
- Taking a swipe at the supporters of Cleveland, Blaine’s campaign spokesman said: “We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion.”
- Cleveland was accused of having a child out of wedlock, abandoning that child at an orphanage and then placing the mother of that child into an asylum.
- Harding was erronously accused of having African-American ancestry.
- Johnson accused Goldwater of having ties to the Ku Klux Klan.