Billiards is a sinful game. An indulgence of lowlifes and reckless gamblers. Everybody knew that in 1826, or they did if they read that year’s June 2 issue of the Richmond Enquirer. It was here that editor Thomas Ritchie informed his readers of how Congressman Samuel Carson took to the floor during a debate over appropriating $14,000 for furnishing the White House to denounce the president’s use of public funds to create a gambling den within its hallowed walls!
To quote the gentleman from North Carolina:
Is it possible, Mr. Chairman, to believe, that it ever was intended by congress, that the public money should be applied to the purchase of gambling tables and gambling furniture? And if it is right to purchase billiard tables and chessmen, why not purchase, also, pharo banks, playing cards, race horses, and every other necessary article to complete a system of gambling at the president’s palace, and let it at once be understood by the people that this is a most splendid gambling administration?
Mr. Chairman, such conduct in the chief magistrate of this nation, is enough to shock and alarm the religious, the moral, and the reflecting part of the community.
Brave words. They’d be braver if they weren’t a contortion of reality.
Here’s what was true: John Quincy Adams did enjoy billiards and chess. After starting his presidential day between 5 and 6 a.m., the industrious New Englander liked to unwind in the evenings by playing these games with friends or family before often working again until 11 p.m. or midnight. So, shortly after moving into the White House, JQA dropped $50 on a billiards table, $43.44 to fix it up (“cloth and work”), $5 on cues, $6 on balls, and $23.50 on chessmen. His son and personal secretary, John Adams II, included these expenditures in an itemized list of furnishings, but the president had in fact used his own money, and he corrected that accounting error the moment he learned of it in April 1826. For anyone with a shred of integrity, then, there was no story here.
But when it came to early republic newspapers — and frankly, as we can readily see in our lives — neither the truth nor integrity are integral to publishing a story when hyperbole and fake-news fabrications can fan the partisan flames in the “right” direction to burn one’s enemies. As the old saying goes, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
Andrew Jackson-supporting newspaper editors — chief among them Martin Van Buren’s buddy Thomas Ritchie of the Richmond Enquirer and John C. Calhoun’s friend Duff Green of the United States Telegraph — saw an opportunity. Given billiards’ association with gambling houses, they could present the president as a wagering degenerate who irresponsibly and lavishly spent the nation’s sacred tax dollars on himself. So, they did just that. Even Senator Thomas Hart Benton got in on the action. He wrote a damning editorial after visiting the White House’s East Room, complaining that its furnishings, like the billiard table, were “a gorgeous sight to behold, but had too much the look of regal magnificence to be perfectly agreeable to my old republican feelings … truly we support him [JQA] like a Prince.”
Pro-JQA editors like Robert Walsh and Henry Clay’s buddy Charles Hammond tried to counter, but since the president didn’t bother to clue them in on his use of private funds, they mostly floundered. Was it possible that James Monroe bought the billiards table? Duff Green countered by combing through the previous president’s records to prove he didn’t. Was the amount spent on these games trifling? Sure, but to this, the Argus of Western America’s pro-Andy editor, Amos Kendall, moralistically questioned: “If the people tolerate the trifling expense of a billiard table, balls and chessmen, out of the public funds, what may they next expect?” Was a billiard table a sign less of gambling and more of wealth? Well, of course JQA had one then; he was a rich elitist removed from the common people. In contrast to Jackson’s frontier masculinity, The Charleston Mercury called John Quincy an “effete aristocrat.” Every defense, it seemed, only fanned the flames and kept the story alive.
But the story of a gambling, public-funds-spendthrift president wasn’t the half of it. From his voting record as a young U.S. senator to his role as a diplomat negotiating the War of 1812-ending Treaty of Ghent, Jackson-loving newspapers depicted everything John Quincy ever did as an egregious error. While JQA’s supporters saw a son of the revolution, a lifelong public servant, a brilliant legal mind and diplomat, Team AJ editors portrayed the president as the uppity son of a Founding Father, an overeducated Harvard elite, Europeanized by years as a diplomat in their courts and out of touch with the common people, as well as a sinful, alcoholic, sabbath-breaker.
Then there were the more salacious lies. Duff Green reported that he did not wish “to trace the love adventures of the Chief Magistrate [JQA],” but then proceeded — wholly without basis — to imply to his predominantly Christian readers of the United States Telegraph that John Quincy and Louisa Adams had engaged in premarital sex.
Andrew Jackson was not impressed. Though a grudge holder capable of great violence on the battlefield or dueling ground, Andy respected the moral code of his era’s honor culture and that excluded attacking women. In other words, unlike his supportive newspaper editors, he did have integrity, and the Hero registered his disapproval in a letter to Duff shortly thereafter on August 13, 1827: “Female character should never be introduced or touched by my friends … I never war against females and it is only the base and cowardly that do.”
Message received. Duff understood that Louisa Adams was off limits and backed off. The New Hampshire Patriot’s editor, Isaac Hill, however, did not.
We the People decide how tightly to contain that partisan flame. It was true when James Madison wrote it, and remains true today, in the 21st century.
A few months later, Isaac wrote a campaign biography of Andy: Brief Sketch of the Life, Character and Services of Major General Andrew Jackson. Yet, despite his alleged topic, Isaac veered into his fellow New Englander’s years as the U.S. ambassador to Russia to claim that President Adams “attempted to make use of a beautiful girl to seduce the passions of the Emperor Alexander and sway him to political purposes.”
The “girl” to whom Isaac referred was a Bostonian named Martha Godfrey, then employed by John Quincy and Louisa Adams to tend to their young son Charles Francis. On one occasion, Martha wrote a letter home mentioning the rumors she had heard about the Russian czar’s sex life — false stories that amused the czar and his wife when they heard them and had a good laugh about it with the Adams family and Martha. From that, it seems, Isaac fabricated the tale that the quiet, boring, sober-minded JQA was not only a seedy gambler, but an international sex-trafficking pimp.
The story needed no truth to catch on. It was quickly repeated among the pro-Jackson newspapers, which were happy to chalk up John Quincy’s success as a diplomat to him providing sexual favors abroad. They dubbed him — the seated president of the United States! — “The Pimp of the Coalition.” Even Andy, it seems, couldn’t rein in the worst excesses of his supporters. Surely, there’s an ethical 21st-century politician who has felt Andy’s same disappointment and frustration while watching a super PAC deliver low blows to an opponent.
But if Andy was disappointed in his supporters’ willingness to use their words to strike below the belt, he wasn’t alone. Anti-partisan as the president was, his team could sling mud with the best (or, rather, worst) of them.
To throw it back to James Madison’s claim in Federalist no. 10, what greater proof do we need that “liberty is to faction what air is to fire” than John Quincy Adams’s and Andrew Jackson’s back-to-back battles for the White House? Once again, you nailed it, Little Jemmy.
Partisanship can be ugly. It can be awful. But it’s also the very heartbeat proving that our constitutional republic’s liberty is still alive. What remains, then, is to strive after that which, as we know, is far easier said than done. To quote our boy Jemmy once more, our only “relief ” is in “controlling its effects.”
I believe it’s fair to argue that, in a liberal democracy, this control rests solely with the people themselves. The people brought down Philip Freneau. The people took the Democratic-Republicans down a notch after the Baltimore Riots. As small and singular as the individual might feel, no branch of government, agency, or system replaces the whole. We the People decide how tightly to contain that partisan flame. It was true when James Madison wrote it, and remains true today, in the 21st century.
This article The smear campaign that transformed presidential politics began with a billiards table is featured on Big Think.