Nastiest of all Campaigns
In our scandal series, we’ve discusses some interesting political scandals, but where did modern politics start?
The election of 1824 was pretty ugly. John Quincy Adams attacked Andrew Jackson for being a cuckold, which wasn’t quite true. Jackson had married his wife, Rachel Robards, thinking she finalized her divorce from her ex-husband, but the paperwork hadn’t been totally done yet. (Before computers, those things took even longer.) Jackson retaliated with claims that Adams had sold an American girl into sex slavery to get Imperial Russia to make diplomatic concessions. It turns out that the people thought Adams’ alleged offense was worse, and Jackson won the election.
Which political match-up do you find the nastiest?