Here's one little article I noticed on point.
1800 Now we're rolling. Jefferson's party said that Adams had "a hideous hermaphroditical character." Adam's party said that the election of Thomas Jefferson would cause "the teaching of murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest" and on top of that Jefferson was the "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and sired by a Virginia mulatto father" and had robbed a widow of 10,000 pounds. Jefferson won, but only after maneuvering in the House of Representatives after a long tie among the electors.
1804 Jefferson ran against Charles Pinckney. Jefferson was called a slummer and a dilettante with his head in the sky from reading too much French philosophy. He was also accused of fathering children with his slave Sally Hemings (considered a lie for about 200 years, but proved in recent years by DNA tests). Also the guy who wrote "The Night Before Christmas", Clement C. Moore, published an anonymous screed saying Jefferson was an infidel, and dehumanized blacks while raising up apes (i.e., he was not a proper creationist). Jefferson still won, but he kept Pinckney on as Vice President. This is also the year Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. They were apparently still mad at each other about the 1800 election, and also about alleged smears against Burr when he was running for governor of New York.
1808 James Madison won, and his Vice President was either Charles Pinckney (wikipedia) or George Clinton (the James Madison Center). It's confusing because you could be a runner-up for President but a winner for Vice President. Madison took a lot of heat during the campaign about the Embargo Act, which was Jefferson's brilliant idea and did turn out to be not such a great policy (in 1807 American exports were $108 million, in 1808 $22 million. Oops.) but that's an actual issue, so we can move on.
....1824 John Quincy Adams eventually won, but four people contested it. William Crawford was accused of unlawful acts while Secretary of the Treasury. Henry Clay was called a drunkard and a gambler. Andrew Jackson was called a murderer. Adams was called a bad dresser with an "English" wife (she was an American born in England). The people wanted the murderer but the House of Representatives chose the bad dresser, the first of four times in our history that a candidate (Jackson) won the popular vote but lost the election. (Although the concept that Jackson was robbed is considered a myth by some, see the blog Publick Occurrences . I told you, it's a world.) Jackson called the House of Representatives deal a "corrupt bargain" and rallied his base about it for four years.
John Quincy Adams is the first president of whom we have a photograph. It was taken 14 years after he left office.
1828 A rematch between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. This was the first presidential election to include officially a national popular vote, the electors had been the sole deciders until then. And we the people got off to a roaring start. Adams, the "elitist", was accused of living in kingly pomp and splendor, having had premarital relations with his "English" wife, delivering an American servant girl over to the carnal desires of the czar of Russia, using public funds to buy gambling devices for the presidential residence (turned out to be a chess set and a pool table), and traveling on Sundays.
Andrew Jackson, the "populist" was accused of being uneducated, reckless, a
murderer, a massacre-er of Indians and the "paramour husband of a convicted adulteress." But really, what's that compared to traveling on
Sundays? Jackson won in a landslide.
