Vicious and Ugly

We hear it on the radio. We see it on TV. We get the fliers in the mail. We see the billboards. And you know, through time the mudslinging and questionable actions have always been a tad bit ugly and often quite malicious at times. If you think it is bad now, try taking a look at the viciousness of the past.

Alexander Hamilton, the man whose image graces our ten-dollar bill, was born out of wedlock in 1755. A number of his political opponents made sure to remind the world of the circumstances of his birth. Perhaps foremost among these opponents was John Adams, who appeared to harbor a special dislike for Hamilton. Adams had a special expression that he came up with for Hamilton: “bastard brat of a Scotch pedler.”

“Yet I loose all Patience, when I think of a bastard brat of a Scotch Pedler, daring to threaten to undeceive the World in their Judgment of Washington, by writing a history of his battles and Campaigns. —Letter to Benjamin Rush(by Adams), 25 January 1806. Shall I replace on the Shoulders of Washington the burthens that a bastard Bratt of a Scotch Pedlar, placed on his Shoulders, and he Shifted on mine? —Letter to Thomas Jefferson (by Adams), 12 July 1813

In the technical sense of the word, Hamilton was indeed a bastard. Whether he was a brat or not, is probably subject to the debate of history.

In the election of 1800, the Federalist incumbent John Adams ran against the rising Republican Thomas Jefferson. The extremely partisan and outright nasty campaign failed to provide a clear winner because of a constitutional quirk.

The stage was set for the first critical constitutional crisis of the new American federal republic. This election was very important because the Federalists had controlled the Government up to that point and this time the Democratic-Republicans had control of Congress.

Leaders of the Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican parties knew that the key to the presidential election of 1800 was controlling the manner of selecting the electors. In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson outlines plans for manipulating the selection of presidential electors in the key states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737–1832) accused Thomas Jefferson’s supporters, whom he called “Jacobins,” of “arts and lies” in trying to obtain Maryland’s electoral votes by legislative manipulations, even though a majority of the residents favored the Federalist Party.

As the campaign for the presidential election of 1800 was about to begin, Thomas Jefferson wrote a long “profession of my political faith” to Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814) of Massachusetts. Although Jefferson formally insisted it be kept private, it is clear that he expected Gerry to circulate this letter among friends to assure them of Jefferson’s steadfast belief in republicanism and the federal Constitution.

At that time, Presidential electors were required to vote for two people for the offices of president and vice-president. The individual receiving the highest number of votes would become president and the second highest number would be vice-president. Unfortunately, Jefferson and his vice-presidential running mate Aaron Burr both received the identical number of electoral votes. Therefore, the House of Representatives had to vote to break the tie.

The election of 1800 led to the creation of the 12th amendment because of the way the constitution regarding the electoral college was originally written. Originally, there was no clear way of who won the electoral college.

Instead of everyone casting 2 votes, and the first winner would be president, it was revised to say that there would be a separate casting for the presidential ballot and the vice-presidential ballot. The Twelfth Amendment stipulates that each elector must cast distinct votes for president and vice president, instead of two votes for president.

One might possibly assume that the 19th century might have been a more polite political climate than today. So, calling a candidate’s mother a prostitute would probably be considered out of bounds. One would therefore be definitely wrong. The Cincinnati Gazette reportedly published in 1828 an article which alleged this very thing.

“General Jackson’s mother was a common prostitute, brought to this country by the British soldiers! She afterwards married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which number General Jackson is one!”

Additionally supporters of John Quincy Adams, Jackson’s opponent, drew attention to the fact that when Jackson married his wife Rachel, she had not technically been divorced from her previous husband, and called her an adulteress.

There were some views back in the 1860’s that Ulysses S. Grant was overly fond of imbibing. Less examined is how colorful some of the charges were. The Cincinnati Enquirer, in 1866, gave an account of a citizen at a meeting who alleged that Grant was nothing more than “a drunken trowser-maker.”

Late in 1868 the Detroit Free Press published comments about Grant that they attributed to “leading Radicals”: “Grant is a Drunkard”; “Grant is a man of vile habits, and of no ideas”; “I am going to Europe to get out of advocating this bungler”; “Never ask me to support a twaddler and trimmer for office”; “The nation owes it to its self-respect to tolerate imbecility in politics no longer”; “Grant is as brainless as his saddle.”

Lewis Cass, who ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for president in 1848 (losing to Zachary Taylor), did not receive a lot criticism to make him a particularly notable candidate. However, he did manage to earn the dislike of Horace Greeley. Unfortunately for Cass, Greeley happened to own a newspaper ‘The New York Tribune’. And Greeley was not shy about using it for political ends.

The Tribune referred to Cass as a man “whose life has been spent in grasping greedily after vast tracts of land, buying up large estates round Detroit, &c. and selling them out in small town lots, huckster fashion, at immense profits to tradesman and immigrants.”

Greeley appeared to save his truly memorable insults for his personal correspondence. In a letter to Schuyler Colfax in 1848, he wrote of the candidate as “that pot-bellied, mutton-headed, cucumber-soled Cass.” Potbellied is fairly self-explanatory; mutton-headed refers to an oafish or dimwitted state; cucumber-soled has not been used by many or anyone save Greeley, and its meaning remains a bit shrouded in mystery for anyone other than Greeley.

Pimp is not a new word. It has been used in the English language since at least 1600 to refer to a criminal who facilitates liaisons with a prostitute. Never been considered a polite word though. So, there was a certain degree of astonishment when, in 1855, Kenneth Rayner (a former Congressman from North Carolina) gave a speech in which he referred to President Franklin Pierce as such a creature: “The minions of power are watching you, to be turned out by the pimp of the White House if you refuse to sustain him. A man sunk so low we can hardly hate. We have nothing but disgust, pity, and contempt.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Maybe they should be thankful there wasn’t any social media way back when.

And another stays the same! - Wedsworth Hall will be the site of a rare and delightful experience on Saturday October 12th from 9:00-4:00 and Sunday October 13th from 10:00-2:00. Everyone stopping by will have the opportunity to become acquainted with famous authors and actors from around the world. Treasure hunters can experience all the fantastic adventures offered by these eminent individuals.

Come enjoy homemade soup, cookies and refreshments Best of all you can take home your favorite adult or children’s book, audio book, VHS tape or how to do it manual. See you there.