"Blood and Carnage Ticket" (Collection of Allen Frey)

Presidential campaign of 1828 marked by dirty tactics

The election of 1828 brought to the White House the first champion of the common man, Andrew Jackson, and with him an exchange of intense personal attacks circulated by supporters of both candidates. The incumbent, John Quincy Adams, was accused in wild stories with lurid charges. Jackson’s checkered past, however, offered much more grist for the mill.

Here, Jackson's campaign is labeled the "BLOOD AND CARNAGE Ticket" because in the long list of transgressions attributed to him in this flyer—including murder—is his statement years earlier that James Madison was unfit to be president because he was too much of a philosopher "to look upon blood and carnage with composure."