A Treasury of Great American Scandals (20 page)

Adams, in the tradition of George Washington, maintained an aloof posture toward campaigning, which he deemed undignified. His followers, however, engaged in an all-out assault on Jackson, helping to make the campaign of 1828 one of the most vicious in U.S. history. “You know that he is no jurist, no statesman, no politician,” an Adams pamphlet warned; “that he is unacquainted with orthography, concord, and government of his language; you know that he is a man of no labor, no patience, no investigation; in short his whole recommendation is animal fierceness and organic energy. He is wholly unqualified by education, habit and temper for the station of President.” And this was just a tiny BB in the anti-Jackson arsenal.

Old Hickory was lampooned as a homicidal maniac with an insatiable lust for blood. In one memorable broadside, a Philadelphia editor printed a “Coffin Handbill” which excoriated Jackson for the execution of six militiamen charged with desertion during the Creek War in 1813. The widely circulated handbill, with “Some Account of the Bloody Deeds of General Jackson” screaming across the top, was bordered in black and pictured six coffins, one for each of the men executed under Jackson's orders. It went on to detail how the soldiers had served their tour of duty and only wanted to go home. One of them, John Harris, was a “Preacher of the Gospel,” the handbill proclaimed, and had patriotically volunteered for service only to be “shot dead” at Jackson's behest. Though the Jackson camp tried to counter the inflammatory circular with their own version of the event—that Harris and the others had tried to incite a mutiny, stole supplies, and burned down a backhouse before deserting, and were fairly tried and convicted—the damage was done. Even if the “Coffin Handbill” exaggerated, Adams partisans argued, there were plenty of other examples of Jackson's blood lust. (In this, they did have a point: See Part II, Chapter 4.)

Far crueler were the attacks on Jackson's family. He was reduced to tears when he saw newspaper accounts branding his mother a “common prostitute,” and was enraged when old charges of bigamy were revived against his wife, Rachael.
¹⁸
“Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?” railed one newspaper. Jackson's ultimate victory over Adams was bittersweet. His beloved Rachael died just after his election, and Jackson was convinced the slanders against her were the cause. “May God Almighty forgive her murderers,” he exclaimed at her grave site, “as I know she forgave them. I never can.” And he never did.

“A Horrid Looking Wretch He Is”

 

 

 

Abraham Lincoln had the double misfortune of running for president during two periods of grave national crisis: just as the nation disintegrated in 1860, and then, four years later, in the midst of the bloody Civil War. Needless to say, nerves were raw and political niceties—what few had existed—vanished. Lincoln was abused and reviled as few candidates had been before. Even his looks were the subject of savage commentary.

“A horrid looking wretch he is,” opined the Charleston
Mercury,
“sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man, a creature ‘fit evidently for petty treason, small stratagems and all sorts of spoils.' He is a lank-sides Yankee of the uncomeliest visage, and of the dirtiest complexion. Faugh! after him what decent white man would be President?”

The
Southern Confederacy
of Atlanta well reflected the tenor of the times in 1860 when it weighed in on Lincoln's possible presidency. “The South,” it proclaimed, “will never permit Abraham Lincoln to be inaugurated President of the United States; this is a settled and sealed fact. It is the determination of all parties in the South. Let the consequences be what they may, whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American continent, the South, the loyal South, the constitutional South, will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham.” Sure enough, right after Lincoln won the election, the South split from the Union.

Four years later, as the Civil War raged, Lincoln was up for reelection. It didn't look good for the president. As Union setbacks continued and the body count climbed, his party turned on him. “Mr. Lincoln is already beaten,” moaned journalist Horace Greeley. “He cannot be elected. And we must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow.” The Republican Party split, and the radical Republicans nominated General John C. Frémont for president. Even this was not enough for some. The Cincinnati
Gazette
suggested that both Lincoln and Frémont withdraw and that the Republicans find someone who “would inspire confidence and infuse a life into our ranks.”

The Democrats opted for George B. McClellan, the general Lincoln had fired for his “slows,”
¹⁹
as their nominee. “Old Abe removed McClellan,” the Democrats crowed. “We'll now remove Old Abe.” The vitriol directed at Lincoln during the 1864 campaign was startling. Of the Lincoln-Andrew Johnson ticket, the New York
World
sneered: “The age of statesmen is gone; the age of rail splitters and tailors, of buffoons, boors and fanatics has succeeded. . . . In a crisis of the most appalling magnitude requiring statesmanship of the highest order, the country is asked to consider the claims of two ignorant, boorish, third-rate backwoods lawyers for the highest standings in the Government. Such nominations, in such a conjuncture, are an insult to the common sense of the people. God save the Republic!”

Declared the New York
Herald:

 

The relentless attacks took their toll on the president, who said sadly, “It is a little singular that I, who am not a vindictive man, should have always been before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness.” Lincoln was becoming resigned to the very real possibility of defeat. “It seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be re-elected,” he wrote in a note to his cabinet. “Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such a ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.”

Yet the president's gloomy forecast was altered by a drastic improvement in Union fortunes. His generals were making great gains. Sherman took Atlanta and began his march across Georgia. Grant was making progress in Petersburg. Sheridan routed Confederate forces in the valleys of Virginia, and Farragut captured Mobile Bay. As a result, the political climate improved as well. Frémont withdrew from the race, and the Republican Party was reunited behind Lincoln. McClellan was defeated. The victorious president marveled at “the extraordinary calmness and good order with which the millions of voters met and mingled at the polls,” and he praised the voting public for showing that “a people's government can sustain a national election in the midst of great civil war.”

“Ma! Ma! Where's My Pa?”

 

 

 

The Republicans' major campaign allegation against Grover Cleveland—that he fathered a child out of wedlock—seems almost quaint in today's tawdry climate. But in 1884 it was a serious smear, and Cleveland's political opponents trumpeted it with glee. “Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?” became the unofficial Republican slogan.

The
Buffalo Evening Telegraph
broke the news of Cleveland's premarital adventures with this blaring headline: “A Terrible Tale: A Dark Shadow in a Public Man's History.” The accompanying story revealed that Cleveland, as a young man, had taken up with a widow in Buffalo named Maria Halpin, had a son by her, and was still providing financial support for the two of them. Cleveland, the Democratic governor of New York, opted to come clean and admit the story was true. His supporters argued that their candidate's noted public integrity far outweighed a youthful indiscretion, but backers of Republican candidate James G. Blaine not so respectfully disagreed. “We do not believe that the American people will knowingly elect to the Presidency a coarse debauchee who would bring his harlots with him to Washington, and hire lodgings for them convenient to the White House,” opined Charles A. Dana of the New York
Sun.

The cruel epithets used against Cleveland by the press opposed to him were relentless: “rake,” “libertine,” “father of a bastard,” “a gross and licentious man,” “moral leper,” “a man stained with disgusting infamy,” “worse in moral quality than a pickpocket, a sneak thief or a Cherry Street debauchee, a wretch unworthy of respect or confidence.” The religious right was even more indignant. The Reverend Mr. Ball of Buffalo, claiming to speak for a ministerial investigation committee, made Cleveland sound like the mayor of Sodom. “Investigations disclose still more proof of debaucheries too horrible to relate and too vile to be readily believed,” Reverend Ball pronounced. “For many years, days devoted to business have been followed by nights of sin. He has lived as a bachelor . . . lodged in rooms on the third floor in a business block, and made those rooms a harem, foraged outside, also, in the city and surrounding villages; champion libertine, an artful seducer, a foe to virtue, an enemy of the family, a snare to youth and hostile to true womanhood. The Halpin case was not solitary. Women now married and anxious to cover the sins of their youth have been his victims, and are now alarmed lest their relations with him shall be exposed. Some disgraced and broken-hearted victims of his lust now slumber in the grave. Since he has become governor of this great state, he has not abated his lecheries.”

To some, including Mark Twain, this kind of Puritanical reaction to Cleveland's youthful affair was simply absurd. “To see grown men, apparently in their right mind, seriously arguing against a bachelor's fitness for president because he had private intercourse with a consenting widow!” Twain snorted. “Those grown men know what the bachelor's other alternative was—& tacitly they seem to prefer that to the widow.
Isn't
human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented?”

Cleveland himself found the smear tactics distasteful, and refused to allow the discovery that his opponent had had—
gasp!—
premarital relations with his wife to become an issue. “The other side can have a monopoly of all the dirt in this campaign,” he declared. Nevertheless, the Indianapolis
Sentinel
printed the news of Blaine's wantonness anyway. “There is hardly an intelligent man in the country,” the paper noted, “who has not heard that James G. Blaine betrayed the girl who he married, and then only married her at the muzzle of a shotgun . . . if, after despoiling her, he was too craven to refuse her legal redress, giving legitimacy to her child, until a loaded shotgun stimulated his conscience—then there is a blot on his character more foul, if possible, than any of the countless stains on his political record.”

Out of this contest of debauchers, Cleveland emerged the victor. His supporters now answered the Republican chant, “Ma! Ma! Where's my pa?” with a celebratory retort: “Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The American Hall of Shame

 

If an American Hall of Shame were ever to be established, certain standards would have to be met. Spectacular villainy would not be a prerequisite for admission, although it certainly wouldn't hurt. Other qualities would be considered as well—such as stupidity, incompetence, and epic hubris, to name a few. Under these guidelines, nice guys could get in, too. All they would really need is a badly bruised legacy, representing to the world the worst America has to offer. The nine people in the chapters that follow surely would be among the first inductees.