Every presidential campaign season I ruminate on the history
of American politics, and since we’re coming down to the wire in the current race,
I thought this would be a timely—and lively—topic for discussion. We hear a lot
of complaints about personal attack ads and dirty tricks, including from the
politicians who are guilty of using them. But you don’t have to do much digging
to discover that political chicanery is a time-honored American tradition that
has been exercised with glee since America was still a collection of British
colonies on the course toward revolution. So let’s take a quick tour of some of
the more egregious examples from our nation’s history.
Political parties didn’t exist in this country until we were
well on the way to revolution. At that point, the division between those who
supported the British and those who opposed them spawned the Loyalists, or
Tories, and the Patriots, or Whigs. There was no such thing as neutrality
between the two points of view. Anyone who didn’t support one side was
automatically consigned to the opposition. Where Patriots held sway, mobs often
forced Loyalists out of their homes, denying them legal counsel and trial. Loyalists
might be jailed, have their property confiscated, their citizenship revoked,
and even be exiled. Where Loyalists held power, Patriots suffered similar treatment.
At times someone of the wrong political persuasion was even tarred and
feathered and run out of town on a rail.
Mobs played a big part in colonial politics, particularly in
Boston, where Dr. Joseph Warren helped to refine mob rule into an art form. But
mobs were a force to be reckoned with throughout the colonies. In June 1775, one
placed the home of New Hampshire’s last royal governor, John Wentworth, under
siege, demanding he turn over his guest, John Fenton, who had urged acceptance
of the latest British proposals to avert the crisis. When Fenton understandably
refused to comply, the crowd wheeled a cannon in front of the mansion and beat
on the walls with clubs until the hapless offender finally gave himself up. Fearing
for his and his family’s safety, that night the governor fled with his wife and
young child to the fort in Portsmouth harbor, ending decades of British rule in
that colony. Nothing like the direct approach to changing your government!
From America's earliest days as a democracy, name-calling
and character assassination has been a highly popular tactic, such as when DavyCrockett accused Martin Van Buren of secretly wearing women’s corsets. In 1828,
when John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson vied for president, Jackson’s
campaign nicknamed Adams The Pimp, based on a rumor that as the American ambassador
to Russia he had forced a young woman into an affair with a Russian nobleman. Adams’
supporters responded by circulating a pamphlet claiming that Jackson's mother had
been a prostitute brought to this country by British soldiers, and that Jackson
was the offspring of her marriage to a mulatto!
The name-calling in the 1800 presidential election between
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, however, takes the prize for no-holds-barred
mudslinging. Some of the charges and counter-charges are cited in this hilarious
YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Drl8fpWTKo&feature=related.
And you thought our modern politics is outrageous!
In 1840, American politician Thomas Elder wrote to a friend
that “Passion and prejudice properly aroused and directed do about as well as
principle and reason in any party contest.” Every campaign season we see the
proof of that claim!
Cross posted from the Colonial Quills blog.