Most negative election ever ?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

As others have noted, the Adams-Jefferson campaigns of 1796 and 1800 were absolutely brutal. Jefferson was maligned as an "athiest," the "son of a half-breed Indian squaw and a Virginian mulatto farmer" under whose administration "rape and murder will be openly taught and practiced" and "children [ left ] writhing on pikes." His supporters countered that Adams was "a bald, blind, crippled, toothless man," a "hideous, hermaphroditical character with neither the strength and firmness of a man nor the gentle sensibility of a woman" who, as president, had sent his running mate to procure four European mistresses to split between the two of them (German-Americans were outraged to hear that Adams allegedly preferred his French mistress to her German colleague, a rumor that may have helped Jefferson to carry Pennsylvania). Even more damning, Jefferson was allegedly in favor of "democracy" (the horror!), whilst Adams, ever the monarchist, was rumored to have attempted to marry one of his daughters to Prince George.