The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant
Not content with committing this shocking and unnatural outrage on humanity
Rachel Jackson died 19 days after her husband was elected. The victory was a decisive one — the culmination of perhaps the hardest-fought and ugliest presidential race in American history. It was a heart attack at age 61 that felled her, though the campaign had found the Virginia native spiraling into frequent bouts of depression. "I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than live in that palace in Washington,” she was believed to have confided to a friend.
Her heart issues had been well-documented for several years, but Andrew Jackson placed the blame for his wife’s death squarely at the feet of his political opponents. “May God Almighty forgive her murderers," the president-elect said at her funeral. "I never can.”
The election of 1828 found Jackson again facing off against John Quincy Adams. Four years prior, Adams had defeated his opponent, a populist political outsider, in a contested decision. Jackson bested Adams in the four-way race by nearly 40,000 votes. With neither candidate having won a majority, however, the 12th Amendment placed the decision in the hands of the House of Representatives. Adams won 13 of 24 states.
Speaker of the House (and fourth-place candidate) Henry Clay would become Adams’ Secretary State, in what Jackson’s followers would come refer to as the “Corrupt Bargain.” With that, campaigning for next election began in earnest. Adams’ first term also saw a two-party system begin to solidify in the wake of the four-man race. Jackson led a burgeoning popular movement as the head of the Democratic ticket. His campaign promises were often abstract, with plans to “reform the government” and “purify the department.”
Adams, the son of America’s second president, was painted a political elitist, who was out of touch with the common man. Opponents of Jackson, meanwhile, had no shortage of fodder. A product of humble beginnings, he’d amassed a cotton-growing plantation with some 44 slaves by the time of his first presidential bid. When one managed to escape, he posted an ad in the Tennessee Gazette, offering, “ten dollars extra, for every hundred lashes any person will give him, to the amount of three hundred.”
He rarely met a man he didn’t want to duel, challenging more than 100 over the course of his life. In 1806, he shot Charles Dickinson in the chest, over a racehorse bet. But it was Jackson’s wholesale slaughter of Native Americans that was almost certainly his most horrific legacy, earning him the nickname “Indian killer” decades before he signed the Indian Removal Act that gave rise to the Trail of Tears.
Published at the height of the 1828 campaign, The Coffin Handbills turned Jackson’s checkered (but celebrated) military history against him. True accounts of native slaughter were heightened. Suddenly, it wasn’t enough to simply murder hundreds, the General had decided to cap things off by, quite literally, eating unarmed innocents for breakfast.
“Not content with committing this shocking and unnatural outrage on humanity,” the broadsheet read, “he attempted to compel all the officers and soldiers under his command, to make a breakfast of the same kind, alleging that it was better than camp beef; but finding that this act of tyranny would produce a general revolt, he was compelled, from necessity, to abandon the project.”
Rachel Jackson was targeted, as well. When they married in 1791, they were unaware that her divorce from a prior husband had not been finalize. The publisher seized on this discovery, leveling charges of adultery and bigamy.
While the accusations were made on Adams’ behalf, ultimately the President refused to participate. Jackson, on the other hand, played along happily, outlining how papers should attack his opponent. In one particularly memorable bit of mudslinging, Adams was accused of pimping out an American girl to the Russian Czar. Such sexual services were said to be behind his success as an ambassador to the country.
This time, Jackson won in a landslide.
After an historically ugly campaign, Adams sat out the March 4th inauguration. The public, however, did not. Between 10,000 and 20,000 people showed up to the Capitol to see Jackson sworn in. Attendees rushed the White House for a party Rep. James Hamilton Jr. later called a “Saturnalia.” The public mixed with the Washington elite. Large tubs of whiskey-spiked orange punch and ice cream were served, and ultimately passed through White House windows in hopes of shepherding the unruly mob outside.
Hoping to shake the President’s hand, a crowd backed Jackson up agains the wall. Tired and overwhelmed, security finally came to his aid and ushered him back to his hotel for dinner. Aghast by the scene that had unfolded, then-Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story noted, "The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.”
Sources:
When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’ https://www.history.com/news/native-americans-genocide-united-states
Supplemental account of some of the bloody deeds of General Jackson, being a supplement to the "Coffin handbill.” https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbpe.18601400/?st=text