Good thing they had thick skins

Think things are bad in presidential campaigns these days?

According to this story by biographer Kerwin Swint on CNN.com, negative campaigning began with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Things got ugly fast. Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."

In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."

As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.

Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."

Human nature hasn't changed much, has it? Or perhaps it is, and was, just politics - Adams and Jefferson resumed their previous friendship (by letter) until both their deaths, which occurred on the same day - July 4, 1826.

Fortunately for Adams, he didn't live long enough to see his son go down in flames (in that we lost his bid for re-election as president) in 1828.

The slurs flew back and forth, with John Quincy Adams being labeled a pimp, and Andrew Jackson's wife getting called a slut.

One paper, the story continues, reported that Andrew Jackson's mother was a "common prostitute."