Election of 1828: Dirty Tactics

Since we have finished the course, I thought I'd go into a topic of interest from first semester: Jackson and the election of 1828.

Remember that in 1824, Henry Clay and and John Quincy Adams had a suspicious "corrupt bargain" where Clay gave JQA, who was competing against Jackson, his vote, and later he was appointed to Secretary of State. Jackson didn't forget this when campaigning against JQA this time around.

Here are some of the more basic (and funny) topics of attack on one another:

• Personalities
• Jackson, an orphan who found glory at the end of the War of 1812, was depicted as a vicious monster. He had a temper, had competed in multiple duels, and executed some of his militia men back in the war. One famous article which we saw depicted coffins around the text to show his murderous ways!
• Adams was seen as an elitist. His intelligence was turned against him and he was called a "Yankee," which meant he liked to scam people and rip them off.
• Personal lives
• When Jackson met his first wife, she mistakenly believed that her husband had divorced her (don't ask me how she didn't know this was false). So, when Jackson married her, she was still legally married. This became a huge political beating. Jackson was accused of adultery, and his wife Rachel was accused of bigamy, even though the marriage issue was resolved in 1794.
• Early in his career, Adams was the ambassador for Russia. Jackson supporters baselessly accused him of bringing an American woman and pimping her out to the Russians.
• Adams also had billiard tables in the white house. Jacksonians claimed he used tax dollars to pay for it, which is also simply untrue.
• Reactions
• Jackson was incredibly offended at the attacks on himself and therefore attacked even more viciously; meanwhile Adams recoiled and even refused to write in his diary until after the election.
• Jackson won by being more aggressive in the end, but he never paid the traditional respects to the previous president on inauguration day. In fact, Adams refused to attend.

Sources:
"A White Man's Democracy" class doc

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-election-of-1828-1773861

Princeton Review AP book