While history has accepted Adams’s indignant denial of the charge that he had personally sanctioned the attack on Mrs. Jackson, the National Central Committee, in charge of his campaign, was busily engaged in the dissemination of the putrid literature. This has been thoroughly established by the testimony of Thurlow Weed, editor of the “Albany Journal,” who refused to degrade himself by its circulation. When, early in August, before the election in November, he received “two large drygoods boxes” of the pamphlets, with a letter from the National Committee advising him that they contained “valuable campaign documents,” with the request that he attend to their circulation “throughout the western counties of the State,” he promptly “secured the boxes with additional nails and placed them under lock and key.” And when the National Committee learned that they were not being distributed, and sent a representative to protest against his inactivity, he frankly informed the emissary that “not a copy had been seen or would be seen by an elector until the polls had closed.” For this he was denounced in New York and Boston as “a traitor to the Administration,” but the sagacious politician of Albany stoutly maintained that he “would not permit a lady whose life had been blameless to be dragged forth into the arena of politics.”[114] The charge of murder lodged against Jackson, by editor, hack-writer, and cartoonist, had reference to his execution of Arbuthnot, two Indian chiefs, and seven of his soldiers, and to his duel with Dickinson. Pictures of the coffins of the soldiers were printed on circulars and distributed from farmhouse to farmhouse in New England.[115] This gave Hill an opportunity to tickle Jackson with a rejoinder which was copied from the “New Hampshire Patriot” into all the Jackson papers of the country: “Pshaw! Why don’t you tell the whole truth? On the 8th of January, 1815, he murdered in the coldest kind of cold blood 1500 British soldiers for merely trying to get into New Orleans in search of Booty and Beauty.” But all the scurrility of the campaign cannot be justly charged to the enemies of Jackson. His friends were almost as offensive. Adams had bribed Clay. He had bought the Presidency. While abroad he had pandered to the sensuality of the Russian Court. He was stingy, undemocratic, an enemy of American institutions, bent on the destruction of the people’s liberties. He was an aristocrat, and had squandered the people’s money in lavishly furnishing the East Room of the White House after the fashion of the homes of kings. He had even purchased a billiard table for the home of the President!