The result was the most scurrilous campaign of vilification the country had known. A new school of politicians, forerunners of the astute and none too scrupulous managers of later days, sprang up to direct the fight for the grim old warrior of the Hermitage, and the fact that Clay took personal charge of the campaign for Adams was turned with telling force against his chief. Early in the campaign we find the satirical and caustic Isaac Hill, of the “New Hampshire Patriot,” of whom we shall hear much, writing that “Clay is managing Adams’s campaign, not like a statesman of the Cabinet, but like a shyster, pettifogging in a bastard suit before a country squire.” And lest the motive for Clay’s interest escape his readers, we find Hill writing again: “This is Mr. Clay’s fight. The country has him on trial for bribery, and having no defense, he accuses the prosecutor.” This reference to the accusation of the prosecutor was inspired by the outrageous calumny that was heaped upon the head of Jackson. He was pictured as a usurper, an adulterer, a gambler, a cockfighter, a brawler, a drunkard, and a murderer. The good name of Mrs. Jackson, one of the purest of women, was wantonly maligned; and in the drawing-rooms of the intellectually elect she was not spared by the ladies who were shocked at the “vulgarity” of her husband. The Adams organs stooped to the attack, and while the “National Intelligencer,” under the editorship of Joseph Gales, refused thus to pollute its columns, the “National Journal,” under the editorial management of Peter Force, and specially favored by the Adams Administration, specialized on the slander of an excellent woman. A little later an attempt was made to justify the infamy of this proceeding by charging that Mrs. Adams had been assailed, but the extent of the assault was the charge that she was an English woman with little sympathy for American institutions.