Mad Tom v. the prigarchy: no holds barred in early politics

I suspect more than a few Kentuckians think we’ve never had a presidential election meaner than this one.

We have — more than once, and from the start.

Our first contested presidential tilt was in 1796. (George Washington won every electoral vote both times he ran.)

After Washington went home to Mount Vernon, the gloves came off in the body politic. Ever since, we’ve had bare-knuckle brawls every four years, some bloodier and more tooth-loosening than others

It all began with the 1796 election which pitted Vice President John Adams against ex-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson.

Adams was a Federalist. Jefferson was a Democratic-Republican. (I used to tell my students that Jefferson partisans called themselves “Democratic-Republicans” just to confuse us today.)

Anyway, the Federalists jabbed Jefferson as “an atheist, anarchist, demagogue, coward, mountebank, trickster, and Franco-Maniac,” according to Presidential Campaigns by Paul F. Boller Jr. They flayed his followers as “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin.”

If elected, the Adamsites direly warned, “Mad Tom” would import the French Revolution to America — complete with Guillotines for lopping off Federalist noggins.

Not to be outdone, the Jefferson faithful assailed Adams. He was a rich elitist who hated poor people. Worse, he was a British-lover.

Dubbed “His Rotundity,” the portly Adams was an “avowed friend of monarchy” who aimed to make his sons “Seigneurs or Lords of this country,” Boller wrote.

Adams won the election — by three electoral votes — and Jefferson became vice president. (In those days, the candidate who got the most electoral votes was president, and the runner up, vice president.)

Adams and Jefferson squared off again in 1800. Once more the mud flew, thicker and faster.

According to Boller, a Federalist man of the cloth slammed the deist Jefferson as a heathen “who writes against the truths of God’s word; who makes not even a profession of Christianity; who is without Sabbaths; without the sanctuary, without so much as a decent external respect for the faith and worship of Christians.”

The author also quoted a Federalist newspaper: “Look at your houses, your parents, your wives, and your children. Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames, hoary hairs bathed in blood, female chastity violated, or children writhing on the pike and the halbert?”

If not, Adams was your guy.

Today, Republicans trot out the “L-word”— liberal— to diss Democrats, especially in red states like Kentucky. In 1800, the Federalists pinned the “J-word”— Jacobin — on Jefferson. Jacobins were the French revolutionaries synonymous with the “Reign of Terror.”

Here’s more from the Federalist sheet: “Look at every leading Jacobin as at a ravening wolf, preparing to enter your peaceful fold, and glut his deadly appetite on the vitals of your country…. GREAT GOD OF COMPASSION AND JUSTICE, SHIELD MY COUNTRY FROM DESTRUCTION.”

Jefferson boosters gave as good as they got. “They called Adams a fool, hypocrite, criminal, and tyrant, and said that his Presidency was ‘one continued tempest of malignant passions.’” They dubbed his hoity-toity Federalist party the “prigarchy.”

Boller also wrote that Democratic-Republicans swore Adams aimed to marry off one of his sons to a daughter of King George III. The president and “the Royal Brute” were thus in cahoots to found “an American dynasty” that would reunite Mother Britain and her wayward American waifs.

The tales grew even taller, Boller pointed out. Some Jeffersonians claimed Adams sent C.C. Pinckney, his running mate, to England on a top secret mission on a U.S. Navy warship and came back with four mistresses — two for Adams and two for himself.

The dour Adams was not known for a sense of humor. But he got a kick out of the story. Boller quoted him: “I do declare upon my honor, if this be true General Pinckney has kept them all for himself and cheated me out of my two.”

Who could have predicted the outcome? Jefferson and his running mate, Aaron Burr, tied at 73 electoral votes apiece, something that is no longer possible.

The contest wound up in the Federalist-majority House of Representatives, which took its time before giving the nod to Jefferson.

Though Adams and Jefferson were rivals, they didn’t demean each other, Boller said. They left character assassinating to their surrogates, notably newspaper publishers and editors. (The Federalists were partial to siccing preachers on Jefferson.)

Boller also quoted a congressman who, in his golden years, looked back fondly at the 1800 election. “It was a pleasure to live in those good old days, when a Federalist could knock a Republican down in the streets and not be questioned about it,” he declared.

This story was originally published November 5, 2016 at 3:24 PM with the headline "Mad Tom v. the prigarchy: no holds barred in early politics."