The presidential campaign of 1800 pitted Adams against the man who was both the sitting vice president and leader of the opposition,Thomas Jefferson. It was almost certainly the most bitterly fought election in American history. The political culture of the young democracy was still evolving, and there was not yet an established boundary between acceptable rhetoric and outright slander. The campaign was one of personal vilification, rumormongering, and mudslinging not quite like anything the American people had ever seen before, or have since.
Arch Federalist and Yale College president Timothy Dwight warned his congregation that if Jefferson won the election, "The Bible would be cast into a bonfire, our holy worship changed into a dance of Jacobin frenzy, our wives and daughters dishonored, and our sons converted into the disciples of Voltaiire and the dragoons of Marat." A Federalist newspaper in New York predicted that a republican victory would bring a flood of French and Irish revolutionares, "the refuse of Europe," who would launch a Jacobin-style reign of terror against all who love order, peace, virtue and religion.: For the first time rumors surfaced that a slavewoman who lived at Monticello, Sally Hemings, had borne Jefferson's children.*
*Comparisons of Y-chromosome DNA samples taken from Jefferson's male relatives and Sally Heming's sons have established, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the rumors were true.
Six Frigates, the Epic History of the United State Navy, p.147
Ian W. Toll