Skulduggery - The Nastiest Election for President Ever, Again

By Mike Wittmayer

Just when you thought things couldn't possibly get worse, the country more politically divided, along comes the next election and more new lows. Still, if you're looking for a time when we didn't have all the election for president chicanery and divisiveness we see these days, it will be a long look indeed.

When did it start? What can be done about it? The answers may surprise you. Step back in time to the days of our Founding Fathers for the most contentious, nastiest election ever. Step back in time for some close seconds; for those stories we never heard in school; stories sure to surprise you. Step back in time to those fairy tales we learned as kids. There are lessons there that may shed light on these elections, how we got into this mess to begin with and, just maybe, how we might get out of it. Proceed with caution. Skulduggery dead ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781794761490

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Skulduggery - The Nastiest Election for President Ever, Again

Skulduggery

The Nastiest Election for President Ever, Again

Mike Wittmayer

Copyright © 2019 by Mike Wittmayer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any electronic form without permission. The cover photo images are courtesy of pixabay.com. There are no known restrictions on their publication.

Graphic design work and answers to all print questions large and small are thanks to my daughter Kelly Wittmayer.

Special thanks to my wife, Ann, for all of her encouragement, proofreading and editing ultimatums. Without her help, this book would not have been possible.

November 20, 2019, First Printing

ISBN #: 978-1-79476-149-0

DEDICATION

For Joseph Patrick Judge, a husband, father, grandad and friend. And while his deep love of family, faith and country is a legacy that lives on, we can’t help but miss that laughter and his smile.

PREFACE

You undoubtedly caught her birthday. You just may not have realized it was her two hundred and forty-third. It was July 4, 2019, by the way. In some ways, this United States of ours doesn’t look a day over forty, now does she?

We should all age as well. It truly is a testament to her resiliency. Just think, aside from at least four wars fought on American soil alone—well, and several hundred battles with those who lived here before us—there have been so many dramatic changes: from quill and scroll to word processing, from snail mail to Instagram, from horseback to travel by spaceship.

Each incredible technological advancement dragging Grandpa and the rest of us right along with it, whether we like it or not. We adapt. We change. Even Grandpa. Okay, he did come along kicking and screaming, but he can open his email, and though he can’t find airplane mode on his cell phone, he does know how to block you.

We get it. We just don’t always like it. Try to ignore it and someone like Bob Dylan comes along and reminds us, as he did in that iconic 1963 call to action folksong, The Times They Are A-Changin.’

Well, there has been that one notable exception.

It just hasn’t worked that way in the world of campaigning for public office. There, with each election cycle, we seem to be caught up in some sort of bad remake of that 1993 comedy, Groundhog Day—weatherman Phil Connors, played by Bill Murray, sent to cover a story about a rat that is able to forecast the weather, discovers that he appears doomed to repeat the same day over and over again in the small town of Punxsutawney, to the end of time. Nothing ever changing.

When you think about it, our elections are a lot like that. Well, we have only ourselves to blame. We continue to fall for the same old rhetoric, same old election calendar party playbook: from the obligatory October surprise, to the expected campaign skulduggery, predictable voting day irregularities and after election conspiracy theory and resistance.

And through it all, we continue to be shocked and outraged that this side of the political spectrum or that could possibly have sunk so low, could possibly have made the misleading statements they made, told the half-truths and outright lies that they told: that the media could have been so partisan, so complicit. And we continue to tolerate it.

There has been a total of fifty-eight elections for president held to date: and yes, fifty-eight of those Groundhog Days of our own. As the writer and philosopher George Santayana once famously said, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Well, when it comes to elections and remembering the past, that’s us. Don’t look now, but we are Phil: well, Phil, at the beginning of that ninety’s decade movie.

Still, you should not despair. It doesn’t have to be that way. Besides, who wants to see a replay of that last contentious, outrageous, most appalling election for president ever conducted in the history of this country? I hear you. Me, either. And who wants to be condemned?

Still, it’s not too late to turn this thing around. We just need to heed those words of Santayana’s and look back a bit. Remember and learn. And no, the answers we are looking for won’t be found by looking back to that last election, or the one before it, for that matter. Instead, we are going back to when things were really nasty. And that’s a journey that’s going to take us to a time that may surprise you, to a time well over two hundred years ago, to our Founding Fathers.

It’s a trip back in time that we were never taken on in those history classes we sat through in school. We should have been. Maybe things would be different today. It’s a trip that will take us to that first and long forgotten dust-up and some early contenders for the most unforgettable, outrageous election for president ever.

Once there, we will find what we are looking for: why those elections for president haven’t changed with the times. Once there, you, too, will be convinced there really is a way out: a way to break the cycle. That fifty-ninth contest doesn’t need to be a repeat of those that came before it.

You’re skeptical, I can tell. You shouldn’t be. We were able to work through those old fairy tales and fables when we were kids, now weren’t we? You remember them: the ones Mom used to read to us at bedtime—the ones that kept us awake with one eye open, the nightlight on and wondering why kids under six were not allowed to pack heat.

Well, these quadrennial campaigns for president may just have more in common with those old fables than you might think. There might just be an answer there. We will see. What we find, could just change everything.

Remember, Phil was able to escape those endless Groundhog Days, happiness coming at last by placing the needs of others before his own selfish desires.

Well, if Phil can do it, so can we. See, cup half full.

Chapter 1

The Duke of Braintree & The Sage of Monticello

Little Red Cap

Albert Einstein once said, If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.

Now, with all due respect to Einstein, though he makes an interesting point, I think he missed the boat just a bit on this one. He just didn’t go far enough. Sure, fairy tales, like fables, folklore, myths and legends have long been recognized as offering valuable lifelong lessons about right and wrong, justice and injustice, good and evil.

Still, I can’t help but think all of those stories are wasted on the young. Clearly, by the time society’s latest crop of young whippersnappers have reached the age of eighteen and are eligible to vote, lessons learned from those misadventures of characters like Chicken Little, the Tortoise and the Hare and the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf have long since faded from memory.

What we really need to do is change things up a bit. Actually, make that, shake things up a lot. I think it is past time that every citizen eighteen and over intending to vote in any election for president be required to read and be tested on their understanding of the lessons behind a selection of fairy tales and fables. Call it the Einstein Voter Eligibility Act. To prepare for the voter’s exam, seniors in high school would have a new requirement for graduation. In addition to the usual required courses of study, students would take Fairy Tales and Fables 101.

Not to be left out, immigrants applying for citizenship would also take a special class in fairy tales and fables as part of the naturalization process and to help them prepare for their voter exam. Welcome to America. Pass the test and vote.

The test itself would be a relatively simple one. Read the fairy tale or fable selected at random from the works of the Brothers Grimm, Aesop or Joel Chandler Harris—more familiarly known as Uncle Remus. This would be followed by eleven questions. The first question would require a short essay answer. The remaining ten questions would be fill in the blank.

The essay portion of the test would evaluate one’s general comprehension, with particular emphasis on requiring the test taker to correctly identify the story’s theme or life lesson and the tale’s protagonist and antagonist: in other words, its good guy and its bad guy.

One hundred percent would be passing. Take as much time as you need to complete your answers. No correcting your own papers. No, you can’t take the test home and turn it in later. And no, it is not available to complete at home via the Internet. You’re doing your own work on this one.

Fail the test, no right to vote. Fail the test and you can’t have kids, either. If you are going through the naturalization process, fail the test and no citizenship, and you return to your country of origin. You can’t have kids there, either. Fail the test and you are prohibited from holding any type of job in the field of reporting or commenting on the news.

Pass the test, and you are in. Having demonstrated competency in critical thinking, the now eligible voter would be certified as ready to evaluate the positions of the various parties’ candidates for our nation’s highest office and make an informed decision.

I doubt that we’d have much difficulty gathering support from two-thirds of the states to bring the matter before Congress to make this the Twenty-eighth Amendment to the Constitution. After all, who doesn’t love a good fairy tale or fable?

We’ve bought into certified cars. We’ve bought into pigs in a poke. We can buy into certified voters. Slap a tax on it and even your local politician will cut in line to get behind it.

For Democrat, Republican, Libertarian and Green parties, parties to come and candidates alike, it would be a whole new ballgame. No more skulduggery. At least, there would be none that would fool anyone.

Now, just so we’re clear, when it comes to skulduggery, it really doesn’t matter that etymologists are not in agreement as to how this term ended up in the English language or whether it is spelled with two l’s or one. What does matter, and what linguists are in agreement on, however, is that when we are talking about skulduggery, we are referring to underhanded or unscrupulous behavior, devious devices or tricks. Just think in terms of what we see in campaigns today for political office. Now, you’ve got it: skulduggery!

Well, with that new class and testing requirement, eligible and savvy voters would see right through all that campaign rhetoric, dishonesty and deceitful behavior. Just think, the end of a gullible electorate apt to bite on anything, just begging to be reeled in.

Now, before you blame this proposed test taking on the behavior of candidates and their supporters over the last couple of election cycles and accuse them of spoiling things for everyone, you really should think again. Thank a Founding Father, instead.

After all, that campaign skulduggery started with that first contested election of 1796. From quills and scrolls, linotype machines and local newspapers with their political party ties, to modern day androids, Twitter, the Internet and today’s media outlets with their own special interests, that ball has been rolling downhill ever since.

And truth be told, some say that behavior can even be traced back to the Stone Age. You may recall the news regarding findings from that recent dig in Washington, D. C. Through petroglyphs and pictographs, archeologists are now, even as you read this, busy piecing together what may well have happened on that very site near our nation’s capital, somewhere around 3100 and 3300 B.C.

For it was here that the surprisingly well-preserved mummified remains of the caveman now known as Potomac Man, so called after the ancient river of the same name that flows through the area, were unearthed. Potomac Man, presumed to have led what were known at the time as the Potomacanians, was found with arrowhead wounds to his chest and left shoulder, neither believed to have been fatal.

What had been calamitous and a career ender for the prehistoric tribe’s leader is theorized to have come from a blow with a heavy stone object to the back of the man’s skull. Apparently, the idea of term limits has been around for ages.

Thanks to the wonders of photogrammetry and a surviving array of pristine cave drawings, we are beginning to learn more about these forgotten ancestors of ours. Petroglyphs and pictographs paint a picture of an election drawing near; the ancient tribe abuzz in anticipation with what appears to be a great deal of grunting and gesturing.

The election of a new leader of these early cave dwellers appears to have been a divisive and hotly contested one. The two front runners, we’ll just call them Fred and Barney, are portrayed in cave drawings as representing sharply divided factions within the tribe: those in favor of a leader who would do more for the group on the one side; those who believed less leadership is the best leadership of all, on the other.

Elaborate etchings about the walls of the little Stone Age villages’ labyrinth of caverns tell the story of the group’s fervent support for both men. Stick figures of Fred appear to show young cave girls, one under each of the grinning Paleolithic man’s arms, another in his mouth. The girls are being drug off to what looks to be an opening in the mountain, their little stick arms flailing, boulder sized tears streaming from their eyes and down the face of the rock wall.

Nearby, even more elaborate pictographs have been uncovered. These depict a wild-eyed Barney carrying off young boys; faded images appear to show cave women on their knees weeping and showering their heads with dust.

Etchings of Fred hoarding furs, nuts, berries and bacon have been unearthed, villagers appear to be begging at his feet. Lightning bolts in the background appear to depict just how angry the gods were. Surely, if Fred was selected as the little tribe’s leader, they would all be forced to fend for themselves.

Unfortunately, water seepage over the years has destroyed drawings that might have given us some idea of how this one ended. I do recall an etching that appears to portray what archeologists believe are Sentinelese marching over the mountains and descending on the little village. They have moved to join the little tribe. They are eating nuts, berries and bacon and are wrapped in gifts of fur that are being passed out by Fred as they wait in line to cast their vote.

I think that news item might have come from NPR or the History channel. I’m not sure. Maybe it was the Internet. In any case, I suppose we should always take these kinds of stories with a grain of salt.

And while that Stone Age origin of dirty tricks in elections past may be questioned by some, what isn’t in doubt was what happened in that first contested election for President of the United States in 1796: the double dealing, the half-truths, the dirty tricks, the vitriol. Yes, until we get that Stone Age beginning of all this campaign nonsense nailed down with a little more certainty, this is where it all begins here in this country: surprisingly, very near its beginning.

Now, if you are thinking our Founding Fathers would have been above all of that nonsense, well, wrong. Poke yourself in the eye just to help you remember in the future. Maybe they should have, at the very least, seen all this election funny business coming right out of the gate.

In fairness to our forefathers, political parties in this country were just getting started. George Washington, as the nation’s first president, had run for the office virtually unopposed, actually receiving the unanimous support of each of the participating electors in 1789 and again in 1792.

Still, political differences were brewing. Washington knew that. The Founding Fathers were not all on the same page. Some were not even in the same library, let alone the same book. The New England Federalist and Southern Democratic-Republican parties were in their infancy; the former organizing in 1791, the later, in 1792. And what the President was seeing in the machinations of both sides worried him, too.

He had already been given a respectable dose of what was coming, himself. The New York Journal had signaled the nation’s very first election honeymoon was over, attacking Washington for his aristocratical blood, accusing the horrid swearer and blasphemer of having spent his youth gambling, reveling, horseracing and horsewhipping.

The man who could not tell a lie? The Father of Our Country? Ouch!

No less than Thomas Paine, political activist and revolutionary whose writings influenced the American Revolution and helped pave the way to the Declaration of Independence, was now calling Washington a patron of fraud…treacherous in private friendship…a hypocrite in public life. He would go on to write in an open letter to Washington, published on July 30, 1796, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles or whether you ever had any.

Benjamin Franklin would pile on. If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington. If ever a nation has suffered from the improper influence of a man, the American nation has suffered from the influence of Washington. If ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington.

And no, I don’t remember reading any of that in any of those history classes I took in school, either.

Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache, publisher of the Philadelphia Aurora, would throw a little more kindling on the fire, explaining the paper’s mission was to diffuse the light within the sphere of its influence and dispel the shades of ignorance. A good start, as Bache saw it, would be to destroy undue impressions in favor of Mr. Washington.

Surely, it was comforting for readers to know that the Aurora would be around to help its readers know what was right thinking and what was not.

James Madison, later the nation’s fourth president, would write nineteen articles for the National Gazette, all under different pseudonyms and many at Thomas Jefferson’s urging, blasting Washington and his policies and encouraging support for the Virginian. It should be noted that Jefferson had served as Washington’s first Secretary of State, resigning on December 31, 1793, in large part to oppose the Federalist Party and the direction its members were leading the country.

The paper had already hammered Washington on the occasion of what it regarded as an overly lavish sixty-first birthday party celebration, posing the question to its readers, Who will deny that the celebrating of birthdays is not a striking feature of royalty? We hear of no such thing during the republic of Rome.

Following Washington’s April 1703 pledge of neutrality in France’s struggle to cast off its monarchy, the paper would even go so far as to publish, A Funeral Dirge for George Washington, depicting in verse the President being led to the guillotine: a reference, no doubt, to the beheading earlier in January of 1793 of King Louis XVI of France. Louis’ wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, was beheaded in June of 1793 by the revolutionary tribunal.

And you thought things were nasty now. There is no mention if Louis’ wife ever regretted that crack, Let them eat cake. And, apparently, ladies didn’t always go first.

Well, the broadsides from those jockeying for power and anxious to advance their own agendas would only continue among the nation’s Founding Fathers. And it wasn’t as if Washington wasn’t getting a little unsolicited letter to the editor help of his own.

Writing under the pseudonym Pacificus, Alexander Hamilton would pen at least seven letters between June 29 and July 27, 1793, defending the President and his policies. Hamilton was serving as the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury at the time, resigning from his position in early 1795 to return to practice law in New York.

Washington would underscore his concern for the developing partisanship in his farewell address to his grateful young country’s constituents. Announcing that he would not be seeking a third term in office—that two-term limit would not come about until the Twenty-second Amendment was passed in 1951—Washington would write of the dangers facing the newly formed nation and offer guiding principles for its continued survival.

The President’s long goodbye would be published in Philadelphia’s American Daily Advertiser on September 19, 1796. If ever there was required reading in school, next to those fairy tales and fables, of course, those poignant farewell words of the country’s first president would be it. Even the far left might consider getting behind this one. Just tell them Hamilton penned it. Well, so some would actually claim.

As a parting friend, Washington would remind his fellow citizens to never forget their common bond, cautioning that regionalism and partisanship, if left unchecked, threatened to erode the country’s hard-fought unity. With slight shades of differences, he would remind his countrymen, you have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and the liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings and successes.

The nation’s first president would warn, in the most solemn manner, against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. As Washington saw it, though such organizations may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be enabled to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

Washington believed that partisanship threatened to open the door to foreign influence and corruption. He warned that a voter’s ability to make reasoned and objective choices would be diminished by such preferences. Rather than choosing the best individual for an office, decisions would, instead, be made on bias, ill-founded jealousies and false alarms. Political factions, in Washington’s view, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, would only result in formal and permanent despotism.

Interestingly, Washington would advise his fellow citizens against foreign entanglements, warning the country to steer clear of permanent alliances. Foreign nations, he stressed, could not be trusted to do more than pursue their own interests when it came to international treaties.

He would leave a word about the values he regarded as essential to the country’s future survival and that should be of concern to all. "The dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

The mere politician, equally with the pious man, Washington would admonish, "ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Well, those partisanship warnings, among many other farewell cautions, would go unheeded. There was good news in that timing of Washington’s announcement that he would not be running for a third term of office. It meant there were just three months remaining before the scheduled fall election. Not a lot of time for a little election campaign funny business.

The bad news was there were still three months remaining before the election, scheduled to run between Friday, November 4, 1796, and Wednesday, December 7, 1796. Not as much time as candidates would have liked, but still enough for a little election campaign funny business. It would be 1845 before Congress would choose a single date for national elections in all states.

The suitors for president in this little spat were early front runners John Adams, serving as Vice President of the United States under Washington at the time and a Federalist; Thomas Jefferson, former United States Minister to France, past United States Secretary of State and a Democratic-Republican; Thomas Pinckney, former Governor of South Carolina and United States Minister to the United Kingdom, a Federalist; and Aaron Burr, United States Senator from New York, an avowed anti-Federalist.

Potential spoilers in the crowded field of twelve included Samuel Adams, Governor of Massachusetts, a Democratic-Republican; Samuel Johnson, United States Senator from North Carolina, a self-described Independent Federalist; John Jay, Governor of New York, an Independent; George Clinton, former Governor of New York and a Democratic-Republican; Oliver Ellsworth, a United States Senator from Connecticut and a Federalist; James Iredell, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in North Carolina and a Federalist; and John Henry, United States Senator from Maryland. Henry claimed allegiance to both parties.

And if everything went according to the two parties’ plans, Burr would slide in as Jefferson’s vice president for the Democratic-Republicans; and on the flip side, Pinckney would receive the votes necessary to serve as second banana to John Adams for the Federalists.

The mud flew. CNN, FOX and the major networks followed the fray every step of the way. Well, they would have, if they had been around. In the meantime, newspapers would primarily carry that ball. And there was no shortage of those willing to do so. No more than twenty-four weekly newspapers spread among the thirteen colonies just three decades earlier, by the time of that first contested election, there were somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred of these publications of profundity in what were now sixteen states.

And most of these newspapers, unabashedly, made no bones about their political leanings. John Fenno’s the Gazette of the United States led the scandal-mongering for the Federalists; Philip Freneau answered, salvo for salvo, for the Democratic-Republicans in his National Gazette. The rest lined up behind their favored candidate, took aim and followed suit. Handbills and pamphlets would help pass along the party talking points of the day.

In a nutshell, the Federalists believed in a strong central government, limiting the right to vote to men of property, the establishment of a national bank, assumption of the state’s Revolutionary War debts and generally, policies that favored manufacturing. The Federalists favored close ties with England.

The Democratic-Republicans advocated for limited central government, favored states’ rights and the expansion of voting rights and agricultural interests, both large and small. They also supported France’s revolutionists. Well, France had supported the colonists in their efforts to break from England. Turnabout was fair play. Jefferson, with James Madison, are generally credited as founding the Democratic-Republican Party.

Barely twenty years into its formation and the country already seemed hopelessly divided between the two opposing viewpoints.

Now, this might have been a good time to have had that voting exam requirement in place. Prospective voters, fresh from passing Fairy Tales and Fables 101 in their little one-room schoolhouses and recalling those lessons learned from reading Little Red Riding Hood, or Little Red Cap, as the tale was titled by the Brothers Grimm, would never have fallen for all those half-truths and outright lies candidates and their supporters were lobbing their way.

Thanks to demonstrating competency in understanding stories like Little Red Cap, savvy, eligible voters would have immediately spotted the prevarication, the deception. Picture the Wicked Wolf as a candidate for office—pick your party. Even with grandma’s clothes on, her cap pulled down low over his head and covered up in the old girl’s bed, the Wicked Wolf would get nowhere. Imagine voters as Little Red Cap. They would now see this one coming a mile away.

Those big ears, big eyes, big hands, big mouth and all that smooth talk would be seen instantly for just what they were. Not a single Little Red Cap, not a single grandmother would end up as an entree item on a menu in some house in the woods.

Now, a little Fairy Tales and Fables 101 would have been training that surely would have served voters well going into that 1796 election. For just as that four legged critter with the big teeth from that tenth century fable was willing to say and do anything to get the cake and wine Little Red Cap carried beneath her apron and destined for her grandmother, candidates Adams, Jefferson, Pinckney, Burr and the other contenders, too, were willing to say and do anything to get a taste of what they wanted: the presidency.

Or, their surrogates were; it was considered unseemly at the time for the candidate to do the actual public campaigning himself.

As usual, both sides would have plenty of ammunition to use against the other. And, as usual, where they didn’t, it really was no problem. Just make it up.

The two parties would waste little time in hurtling accusations at one another. The Federalist leaning Gazette of the United States would score early and often with twenty-five editorials written under the name, Phocion, and appearing between the middle of October and the end of November 1796. As for that byline, it was routine at the time, for newspapers to run articles signed only as A Subscriber, A Friend, A Federalist, A Democratic-Republican, A Patriot, An American or any other number of pseudonyms.

Did anyone write these things under their own name? Well, generally, no. The Federalist Papers, actually written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, would first appear under the authorship of Publius. Hamilton would also write under the monikers Caesar, Catullus, Horatius and Philo.

Ben Franklin was known to write under the names Mrs. Dogood, Celia Shortface, Martha Careful, Busy Body, Anthony Afterwit, Harry Meanwell, Alice Addertongue, Fanny Mournful, Polly Baker, Richard Saunders (of Poor Richard’s Almanac fame) and many other pen names. Well, Benjamin was at least creative.

Thomas Paine wrote under the pseudonym Justice and Humanity; George Clinton, the nation’s fourth vice president, penned his poison under the name Cato; Patrick Henry used Senex; John Adams slung his slurs as Populus, An American, Humphrey Ploughjogger, A Son of Liberty and Vindex the Avenger, among others. Samuel Adams is said to have written under at least twenty-five different aliases, including Candidus and A Son of Liberty. Daniel Leonard, a lawyer and Loyalist, wrote under the name Massachusettensis: three guesses as to where he was from.

The unknown writer using the name of the third century Athenian statesmen Phocion surely seemed to have the inside scoop on Jefferson. He would allege that the Democratic-Republican’s leading candidate for the nation’s highest office was having an affair with one of his slaves. And if that wasn’t scandalous enough, readers would be told Jefferson had made no secret of the fact that he would emancipate all of the young country’s slaves if elected president. Or, so the writer claimed.

Adams’ supporters would do their utmost to further scare the voting public by portraying Jefferson as someone deeply involved in secret societies and as an atheist whose belief system was far removed from the mainstream. Question with boldness even the existence of a god, Jefferson would write in 1787, because if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. And later, I am a sect by myself, as if the Adams’ camp didn’t already have enough to work with to get the voting public ready to hit the polls.

And just to drive that sex and race scandal home, Federalist caricaturists would depict Jefferson as a rooster courting a hen: a hen with the face of his fourteen-year-old slave, Sally Hemings, sketched on it. Oh, and Hemings also just happened to be the half-sister of Jefferson’s wife.

A later cartoon would show Virginia’s favorite son kneeling before a stone monument entitled the Altar to Gallic Despotism, about to drop the Constitution into the fire erupting from its top. A bald eagle is shown saving the day, snatching the document from Jefferson’s hand.

In Jefferson’s other hand is a paper with the words Philip Mazzei; a not so subtle reference to a letter Jefferson had written to a former neighbor: the Virginian’s words highly critical of American politics and Washington, referring to the nation’s first president as monarchical. The letter had been reprinted in a newspaper in Paris, much to Jefferson’s surprise and chagrin.

Noah Webster, the Federalist editor of New York’s, The American Minerva, would later reprint the letter as it appeared in the Paris paper. That was done just to ensure no one would miss the embarrassing news.

Another cartoon would depict Jefferson holding the ends of a strap wrapped around a column with the words Federal Government, G. Washington and J. Adams written on it. The former Secretary of State is leaning back, trying with all of his might to pull the symbolic government and Founding Fathers down. The devil is shown directly behind Jefferson, one hand around his waist and another on the strap, helping.

Pull away, pull away son. I’ll give you all my assistance, says the devil. Jefferson replies, Oh! I fear it is stronger rooted than I expected but with the assistance of my old friend and a little more brandy I will bring it down.

And just to help cement the idea that Jefferson was a coward and the nation headed for disaster should it elect him president, another cartoonist would depict him terrified, hands up and standing between King George III and Napoleon. The two men are taking money from a trembling Jefferson’s pockets. The King is threatening him with a club; Napoleon is reaching for his sword.

Jefferson would be mocked by his opponents as, Mad Tom, The Sage of Monticello, The Pen of the Revolution, The Apostle of the Constitution, Long Tom and The Coward of Carter’s Mountain. The attacks on Jefferson were relentless. The attacks were nasty.

In an October 15, 1796, Gazette of the United States editorial, Phocion would ridicule Jefferson’s pride and joy, the only full-length book the Founding Father would write, Notes on the State of Virginia, published in 1785. In the process of assailing Jefferson’s reputation, Phocion would make a particular point to mock the notion that Jefferson was revered by his supporters as a quiet, modest, retiring philosopher.

Phocion would advise the paper’s readers, We may safely venture to withhold from Thomas Jefferson the title of philosopher. But we would incur no danger in yielding to his claim in the fullest extent, because it must be obvious to men of the smallest experience in public life, that of all beings, a philosopher makes the worst politician, that if any one circumstance over another could disqualify Mr. Jefferson from the presidency, it would be the charge of his being a philosopher.

Close your eyes and you can almost see the people cowering. No…no…not a…a philosopher! Hold me, Ann.

Well, the scare tactics would get worse, not better. From the outset, Federalist Party backers would do their very best to alarm voters by tying Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans with the social and political violence erupting in France. Surely, if Jefferson was elected president, he would drag the country into the French Revolution and another war with England, who had allied itself with the monarchy.

A bloody struggle to establish a democracy on foreign soil certainly awaited anyone foolish enough to cast their vote for Jefferson. What’s more, given his radical views, the refuse of Europe would soon flood American shores.

There would be war, Democratic-Republicans countered, there was no denying it. And it would be brought on by John Adams and the Federalists who opposed the revolution in France, were outraged at the recent execution of the country’s King and Queen, and who would ally the United States with Britain to suppress the rebel uprising and ensure the French people remained under the yoke of a monarchy.

Even the French minister to the United States, Pierre August Adet, would get in on the act, letting it be known that relations with France would be improved only if Jefferson was elected president. The Jay Treaty, pushed by Washington and ratified in 1795, enraged France. So named for Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay, negotiator and signatory of the treaty between the United States and Great Britain, the agreement resolved issues remaining from the Revolutionary War and ensured a ten-year trade deal between the two countries.

France saw the treaty as a betrayal; they had backed Washington’s forces in the colonials’ own struggle for freedom. Support in return was expected. In the days leading up to the 1796 election, Adet would make his point, writing a series of letters to Washington’s Secretary of State, Timothy Pickering, at the same time copying the letters to the Aurora, a Philadelphia newspaper, pleading with the American people to reject the Jay Treaty and support France in its fight for freedom.

The French minister would announce that his country was suspending relations with the United States in light of the controversial agreement. According to Adet, only the election of Jefferson would prevent war between France and the United States.

Unbelievable. Here was a foreign power blatantly attempting to influence an American election. Who would have thunk it?

Beyond the policy issues of the day, Democratic-Republicans would paint Adams as a man with dreams of bringing a monarchy back with himself as king and his son John Quincy Adams, serving at that time as the United States Minister to the Netherlands, waiting in the wings to assume the throne. In fact, it was John Adams’ plan to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George III to establish a royal bloodline in the family.

Well, it was the kind of talk that would strike a nerve with a young country fresh from war; a war that had cost it somewhere between thirty-seven thousand and eighty-two thousand men who had given their lives fighting for freedom.

And voters hadn’t forgotten Adams’ part in the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, either. For those who had, the Democratic-Republicans would happily remind them. Adams, a thirty-five-year-old attorney at the time of the incident, had volunteered to defend the British soldiers and Loyalist citizens charged in the killing of five colonials and the wounding of six others in that memorable March 5, 1770, confrontation in Beantown.

What had begun as a small argument between British private Hugh White and a few colonists outside Boston’s Custom House—where officials collected import duties for the King—had grown to a crowd of fifty. It shortly grew to three or four hundred, depending on who was telling the story, as Boston locals and a small contingent of British soldiers squared off. It would end with British troops firing into the crowd killing three instantly; two others would die, later.

Adams would manage to get British Captain Thomas Preston acquitted on the basis of reasonable doubt—the first time a judge had ever used that term—the issue being,