Jefferson/Adams was the Clinton/Trump of It's Day

Politics are such a torment that I would advise everyone I love not to mix with them.

Wait, that’s not me talking in 2016. That was Thomas Jefferson, writing to his daughter in 1800.

In other words — if it makes us feel any better, if perspective can perchance calm our nerves — the 1800 presidential campaign was just as vicious as what what we’re seeing now.

Incumbent President John Adams and his surrogates slimed Jefferson as a God-hater who, if elected, would close the churches and import French revolutionaries to wreak violent havoc upon the land and foment “the insurrection of the Negroes...