Remember, as we return to our attempt to find a “conspiracy theory” about each of the Presidents of the United States, that we have two basic rules: the conspiracies must have been debunked by a majority of Mainstream Historians, and they can’t be something I or some other Interwebs rumor-monger made up recently. We want bogus stories contemporary with the Presidents, or at least stories which rose within a few years of their deaths.
As we progress through our conspiracy theories, the phrase we will refer to most is “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” When considering Presidents of the United States accused of being part of vast conspiracies, it turns out we have a limited number of themes for such things.
Now, JAMES MADISON is absolutely the kind of man you’d expect conspiracy theories about (and the last person likely to be nominated if he ran for the top office nowadays.) He was a small chap, and thoroughly introverted (how he married one of the brightest extroverts in Washington is still argued over today.) When he wasn’t writing things in cipher (always a bad sign), he liked to stay in the background, writing things other people could quote, or outright ghost-writing things for more flamboyant souls. Among his works published anonymously were his parts of the Federalist Papers, in which he argued for a stronger central government than the Articles of Confederation allowed for. After he ghostwrote most of the Constitution, he then joined the Jefferson side of things, in a party suspected of plotting against the country and the Constitution. When the Adams administration passed some unpopular laws involving tariffs and immigrants, Madison wrote a landmark resolution asserting the rights of individual states, and was accused of conspiring, with Jefferson, to overthrow the very Constitution he had helped write, and, in fact, everything the United States of America stood for. Does this sound at ALL familiar? (He was not suspected of that for long, though; he was dismissed as a compulsive hypocrite. Is that better?)
JAMES MONROE was a frenemy of James Madison and the last President of the United States to run unopposed. His presidency was known as the Era of Good Feelings. This was because the Federalist Party, after a busy period churning out conspiracy theories, had evaporated during the War of 1812, and no real competition had developed for the Republican (also known as the Republican-Democrat, Democrat-Republican, and Democratic) Party. HE was suspected of planning to undermine the divinely-decreed economy of the Slave States because he had expressed misgivings, back in 1800, about the execution of the leaders of a revolt who had been saying what Monroe and his friends had been saying back in the 1770s. In the end, the leaders WERE hanged, and Monroe did not disturb the Slave States unduly during his administration.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS has already appeared once, in his father’s great conspiracy theory, but his election to the Presidency provoked plenty of conspiracy theories, because he had NOT received the majority of the popular vote. The election was close enough that Congress had to step in to make a decision, and Andrew Jackson’s supporters felt there was no coincidence when Speaker of the House, Henry Clay, was named Secretary of State. Clay and Adams denied this to their dying days (which doesn’t necessarily make it untrue), and a hearty hatred was set up between the Whigs, who favored Clay, and Jackson’s Democratic (Democratic-Republican, Repub…etc.) followers.
As a result, in the NEXT election, ANDREW JACKSON, a military man, was suspected of planning a coup if he got shortchanged this time around. Bayonets, not ballots, it was said, would put him into office. Jackson enjoyed a good fight in plain political battlefields, and there seems to have been nothing behind the coup conspiracy.
Blogsy Babbles 