Althouse: "The two candidates conveyed the customary air of indifference, neither saying anything publicly or appearing to lift a finger in his own behalf."

August 3, 2024

"The two candidates conveyed the customary air of indifference, neither saying anything publicly or appearing to lift a finger in his own behalf."

"Jefferson remained at Monticello, Adams at his farm, which he had lately taken to calling Stoneyfield, instead of Peacefield, perhaps feeling the new name was more in keeping with New England candor, or that it better defined the look of the political landscape at the moment."

From "John Adams" (p. 672) by David McCullough, describing the candidates' participation in the election campaign of 1800. (Commission earned.)

20 comments:

ThreeSheets said...: They may have stayed at home but it was a nasty campaign with accusations of loyalty to France, being a hermaphrodite, and being dead.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/12487/adams-vs-jefferson-birth-negative-campaigning-us; 8/3/24, 8:46 AM
Ann Althouse said...: The point of this post is that neither man campaigned at all and this was in fact the custom.

Compare that to today. Was it better?; 8/3/24, 8:55 AM
Yancey Ward said...: Men so well-known and respected didn't have to campaign. A completely different world.; 8/3/24, 8:56 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: The problem was neither Jefferson nor Adams were especially telegenic.; 8/3/24, 9:03 AM
ThreeSheets said...: My original comment was moderated so let me try again to answer the question. It was no different than today. While Adams and Jefferson may have stayed home (maybe in their basements?) their hatchet men did the dirty work. It was a particularly nasty campaign with accusations of being the tool of a foreign country, sexual issues (being a hermaphrodite), having low character, and assorted other smears. Pretty much the same accusations that are being leveled in 2020 and 2024. (maybe not the hermaphrodite thing but certainly Trump as a predator)

Whether the candidate says it or their hired guns, same thing.; 8/3/24, 9:05 AM
Ampersand said...: Transportation and communication systems were so rudimentary that the multiplier effect of public appearances was negligible.
In a few decades, Andrew Jackson innovated a roadshow on horseback in which he put together a network of allies who hosted big (for the time) drinking/eating events that must have been fun.
Today, the carefully constructed nature of candidate identities can only be disassembled by putting the pseudo person in a situation in which we actually see how the candidate's mind works.; 8/3/24, 9:21 AM
Dave Begley said...: Okay. That method of campaigning was terrible. People need to see and judge the content of character and intelligence of the candidates. Today we have televised debate. Head to head comparison.; 8/3/24, 10:03 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Its better today, because we have a media that is 95 percent liberal Democrat. If the Republican candidate just sat on his porch, saying nothing, he'd be destroyed. The only ones who can stay mum and say nothing are the democrats, who can just let the media do their campaigning for them.

I think Willam J. Bryan in 1896 was the first POTUS candidate who barnstormed accross the country giving speeches and trying to get elected. BTW, I was suprised how little FDR campaigned in 1940 and 1944, he just gave half a dozen speeches after the conventions.; 8/3/24, 10:54 AM
RCOCEAN II said...: Gerald Ford was such a bozo, that in 76, he pursued a "Rose Garden" strategy during the primary. He stayed in the WH, and let his Republican surrogates campaign for him. Supposedly, FOrd wanted to hit the primary campaign trail until Stu Spencer told him he was an awful speaker and campaigner and would lose votes.; 8/3/24, 10:56 AM
Ralph L said...: In 1800, "candor" would have meant sticking with Peacefield and ignoring the New England rocks. Adams was President, so why wasn't he on the job?

Washington went on tour as President, but I can't remember if it was before or after his reelection. As an old man, it couldn't have been comfortable given the roads, but he used a carriage between towns and then switched to a white horse before arriving.; 8/3/24, 11:07 AM
mccullough said...: Basement Campaigns; 8/3/24, 11:11 AM
JK Brown said...: Well, in 1800, both men likely were at least social acquaintances to those who would select the electors. The average person had no say, excepting they considered the matter when voting for their state officials.; 8/3/24, 11:31 AM
Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: There was plenty of printed campaigning. Adams, for example, called Jefferson "the unfortunate spawn of a mulatto father and a half-breed mother." I can't verify the claim about his Jefferson's father, but his mother most certainly was a Mattaponi "half-breed", and I know because she was my 7th-great grandfather's sister. That whole family was called the 'Red Randolphs', which was not a compliment.

McCullough's biography BTW is superb. If you don't have it, **get** it. Two years ago my then-11-yo daughter read it cover to cover, and she's rarely touched a "kids' book" since.; 8/3/24, 11:38 AM
traditionalguy said...: The good old days of 1800 had no internet service signal and was 30 years before those new telegraph thingees. But they sure as hell had disinformation including horrible stories printed in newspapers and pamphlets.

I like it better now. What’s the use in being intelligent if the access to information is near zero. And most of what the EDU crowd was peddling was in Latin.; 8/3/24, 11:39 AM
Just an old country lawyer said...: I think that there's hope of American political redemption in the fact that Adams and Jefferson became friends and correspondents in their final years and died within hours of each other on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, July 4, 1826.; 8/3/24, 12:09 PM
Lazarus said...: Livable basements are a relatively recent development. My impression is that for most of history basements were as uncomfortable as attics. William McKinley countered William Jennings Bryan's barnstorming with his own "Front Porch Campaign." Delegations came to McKinley, rather than McKinley going cross country to meet them.

Newspapers played an important role in politics until comparatively recently. True, Jefferson and Adams didn't debate, but if you read the Federalist and Republican newspapers you had a pretty good idea of what they stood for. You couldn't see how they'd react to each other on stage, but you might have an idea of their records if the newspaper was good enough (they got better, or at least bigger, as time went on). True, there'd be a lot of scandalous rumormongering in the papers, but the manipulation of public opinion was in its infancy. It's gotten more sophisticated, and that hasn't necessarily been good.; 8/3/24, 1:45 PM
Josephbleau said...: In the old days politics was local and you got all the skinny from your local bosses, and had personal access to your reps and sens.

Now it’s all media, we watch the web and tv and we don’t talk to anyone locally except say in big blue ward systems.

Dirty tricks existed then as now, no difference except in the velocity of communication.; 8/3/24, 3:10 PM
Rusty said...: With half the nation illiterate America was a nation of broadsheets. Deliverd over very bad post roads or by boat these sheets were read in town squares and in taverns. Often out loud. It's how Amiricans outside of the big cities got their news about the candidates.; 8/4/24, 6:49 AM
Narayanan said...: mulatto father and a half-breed mother
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are mulatto and half-breed synonyms?

is it a form of parallelism to use synonyms in construction; 8/4/24, 7:09 AM
Narayanan said...: With half the nation illiterate ...
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is this true?; 8/4/24, 7:12 AM