The forerunner of the modern-day Hartford (Conn.) Currant said a Thomas Jefferson election would mean "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced," research on the art of flinging innuendo and downright lies by The Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) indicated.

For its part, the paper did apologize -- in 1993.

Then there was John Adams, called a "hideous hermaphroditical character" by James Callendar, a journalist in league with Jefferson.

"Everybody always assumes there was a golden age of presidential campaigning that occurred 20 years ago," says Gil Troy, an American history scholar at McGill University. "Almost from the start, American

politics had its two sides. It had its Sunday morning high church sermon side, and it had its Saturday night rough-and-tumble ugly side."

And it really got ugly for Abraham Lincoln, a man both Democratic candidate Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain cite in their campaigns.

An 1864 edition of Harper's Weekly disparaged Lincoln as a "filthy story-teller," a "buffoon," a "usurper," a "monster" and a "land-pirate."