And You Think TODAY'S Politics are Nasty?

By: Lowell
Published On: 7/3/2007 3:39:37 PM

How about this, about Benjamin Franklin back in 1764?

The campaign for elections to the Pennsylvania Assembly in October 1764 was one of the most scurrilous in American colonial history, and both Franklin and [his young political lieutenant Joseph] Galloway lost their seats. Franklin was accused of a host of sins--of lechery, of having humble origins, of abandoning the mother of his bastard son, of stealing his ideas of electricity from another electrician, of embezzling colony funds, and of buying his honorary degrees. But what ultimately cost Franklin his seat was the number of Germans who voted against him, angry at an earlier ethnic slur [he had made] about 'Palatine Boors.'

Franklin was stunned by his defeat. He had completely misjudged the sentiments of his fellow colonists, something he would continue to do over the succeeding decade...


Moral of the story?  Don't assume that today's politics is any nastier than it was 250 years ago. And don't ever call anyone a "Palatine Boor!" :)

Comments



John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (Andrea Chamblee - 7/3/2007 5:31:57 PM)
It turns out, T.J. was the Rupert Murdock of his time.  He secretly paid Philip Freneau enough to keep his paper running, and the National Gazette returned the favor to write nasty things about George Washington and John Adams.  According to the book, His Excellency George Washington, because Washington was a national hero, all the Gazette could really say was he was too old to seek another term as President and should give it up to the new young guys (Jefferson). When Adams ran against Jefferson, Freneau let loose the vitriol.  According to one biographer (David McCullough, I think) someone at the time described the politics between Adams and Hamilton on one side and Madison and Jeffersion (hiding behind Freneau) on the other like this: "A prostitute sucking all day would not be able to cut through the slime."

Ouch!  They were very colorful back then.



Oops. Your blog rating is now R (Andrea Chamblee - 7/3/2007 5:37:38 PM)
Sorry if that's my fault.

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Then there was what they said (Teddy - 7/3/2007 6:57:10 PM)
about Jackson and his wife, Rachel. And when it came to Lincoln. well... the language was colorful in the days before women got the vote and all this namby-pamby political correctness inserted itself.  By the way, isn't it true that German (as spoken by those Palatine boors) rather than English almost became the language of the new United States?


Street names were changed from German in WWI (Andrea Chamblee - 7/4/2007 11:38:41 PM)
In Baltimore, in the anti-German backlash, all the street names were changed from German names in the run up to the World War (the first WW, I am pretty sure).  Germantown and Jermantown Road seemed to have kept their names.  Many towns in the Chesapeake area have German "sister cities."

In the region, all legal documents from many counties and in the state of MD (maybe VA, too?) had to be printed in two languages: German and English.  That, too changed with the anti-German backlash.  Herr Erlich and Herr Willie Don Schaeffer should remember that when they complain about a Hispanic worker who has only been here a few years. It took Germans generations to get to the point of only speaking one language (that was English).



Among the ugliest campaings were (mkfox - 7/4/2007 2:52:04 AM)
1800, Adams v. Jefferson: Democrats called Adams an elitist monarchist, and Federalists called Jefferson a pointy-headed atheist who still thought woolly-mammoths roamed the frontier

1828, J.Q. Adams v. Jackson: Jacksonians accused Adams of supplying a young virgin for the czar of Russia, and Adams' camp accused Mrs. Jackson of being a whore

1864, Lincoln v. McClellan: Republicans (Unionists) accused Democrats of treason, and Democrats charged Republicans with missegination (mingling the races)

1876, Tilden v. Hayes: this was the original recount, lawsuit, litigation, accusation, conspiracy theory election! It took an act of Congress to resolve it.

1968, Nixon v. Humphrey v. Wallace, when you had three people running for sheriff of the United States, and RFK was lost

I think the most flamboyant may have been the 1840 one between van Buren and WH Harrison. "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too!"