and Adams had started with the 1824 presidential election, which was a four-way race between Jackson, Adams, William H. Crawford, and Henry Clay. Jackson gained a plurality of both the popular vote and the electoral vote, but no candidate had an Electoral College majority. Adams eventually won the election in the House of Representatives by making a deal with Clay that Jackson supporters dubbed the "corrupt bargain." As a result, the 1828 rematch between Jackson and Adams was unusually acrimonious. Newspaper articles and political cartoons were the center of the attacks against each man. After Jackson's victory, the bitterness of the campaign resonated for years. When Jackson arrived in Washington DC, he was to pay the customary courtesy call on the outgoing president, but he refused to do so. John Quincy Adams responded by refusing to go to the inauguration of Andrew Jackson. Response After the “Coffin Handbill” first appeared, Jackson had his “Nashville Committee” of supporters answer the charge. They accused John Quincy Adams of serving as the Czar’s pimp while he was the American ambassador to Russia. It claimed that he had procured an American girl to sexually serve the Russian Czar. In fact Adams while Minister to Russia had employed a young girl as a maid to his wife; the girl had written a letter which had been intercepted by the Russian Postal services. Alexander I had been curious to meet the letter writer publicly at court and Adams had done so. John Quincy Adams was also attacked for allegedly having charged the government to have a billiard table put in the White House. Adams did spend a fair amount of time playing billiards, but he paid for the table with his own funds. However the bill for repairing the table had been accidentally included in the White House expense accounts. Legacy Twenty-seven different versions of the Coffin Handbills have been located to date. They all have different numbers of coffins and story configurations accusing Jackson of murder and violence. The result of allegations, the term "Coffin Handbill" became synonymous with a smear attack on political candidates. See also Andrew Jackson presidential campaign, 1828 Notes References Heidler, David Stephen and Heidler, Jeanne T. "Creek War," in Encyclopedia of the War of 1812, Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC-CLIO, 1997. Meacham, Jon. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House. New York: Random House Trade Paperback Edition, 2009. 1828