Thursday, March 17, 2016

It's 1828 All Over Again

Here are some of the claims made during the presidential campaign of 1828:

[Andrew] Jackson and his supporters furiously complained of a "corrupt bargain" between the two [Henry Clay and Adams] to win the White House.

[John Quincy] Adams suffered a miserable presidency, and conditions were ripe for a Jackson victory in round two. However, Adams, Clay and their supporters fought tooth and nail to keep Old Hickory from winning.

They thought of Jackson, the victor of New Orleans and conqueror of Florida, as a military tyrant, gambler and drunkard morally unfit for high office. Adams supporters called Jackson – a dueler and Indian fighter – a murderer in a pamphlet showing a row of coffins.

The Jacksonians fought back, attacking Adams as an elitist aristocrat who broke the Sabboth and gambled with a billiard table he bought for the White House. Anti-Adams propaganda even charged he provided a young virgin for the czar of Russia during his tenure as a diplomat.

Both candidates’ wives were attacked, too. The Adams camp discovered Jackson had courted his wife, Rachel, before her divorce in a previous marriage was finalized; such an act usually constituted sin in the morals of the day. Adams’ wife, Louisa, was born in England and was scorned as "foreign" and apathetic about Americans and American politics.

In the words of one historian, the election of 1828 boiled down to: do you want to vote for someone whose wife is a whore or do you want to vote for someone who pimped for the czar of Russia?

You can read the rest @
http://www.heraldcourier.com/news/the-presidential-election-had-plenty-of-mudslinging/article_309eebb2-efc5-5e70-a9e7-5225158b8101.html

Sound familiar?

In spite of all the rhetoric, Jackson turned out to be an OK president. I suspect Trump will, too.

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