(And you thought “Swift Boating” was a new phenomenon.) Essentially, the Adams supporters were trying to defeat Jackson by taking his strength (national war hero) and making it a weakness. One of Adams’s supporters, a Philadelphia printer named John Binns, produced a variety of handbills, known as the Coffin Handbills, which showed six black coffins and accused Jackson of ordering the execution of six of his soldiers for desertion in the War of 1812. This time it was John Quincy running for president against Andrew Jackson. Things would get even more heated in 1828, and once again an Adams (and Philadelphia) would be in the middle of it. Adams was known in anti-Federalist papers as “His Rotundity.”* The Aurora, a pro-Jefferson Philadelphia paper run by Ben Franklin’s outspoken young grandson, called him “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” Jefferson fans returned the favor in kind.
As for his supporters, they were “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amid filth and vermin.” In other words, Adams’s supporters thought that Jefferson partisans were part of the 47 percent. In that same election, Adams supporters also claimed that Jefferson’s election would result in a civil war, that he would free the slaves, and that he was an atheist.
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