Slurs, Slanders and Epithets in U.S. History Quiz

Answer: Barry Goldwater

Nearly four decades after his disastrous run against LBJ, the historians are reassessing the supposed "Mad Bomber" in a slightly more favorable light.

Answer: Daniel Webster

Made John Marshall cry while arguing the Dartmouth case, effectively defended Jabez Stone against the Prince of Darkness (aka "Scratch"),
supported the 1850 compromise and was thereafter execrated by whiny poets. He did not, however -- contrary to what one Long Island newcaster recently said -- invent the dictionary.

Answer: Horace Greeley

Dems might've had a better chance running Mike Dukakis against Grant in 1872. Greeley looked like the guy on the Quaker Oats box, and had opened his big yap on every subject imaginable, often to comic effect, while editor of the "Tribune". He still polled nearly 3 million popular votes. Of Grant's two terms, of course, the less said, the better.

Answer: Edward Livingston

Other answers: Calhoun had many nasty things said about him (usually by Andrew Jackson), but not this. Edmund Ruffin fired the first shot on Fort Sumter. Walter Case, Jr. is not a Southerner at all, but a harness racing driver from Maine.

Answer: Thomas E. Dewey

This is attributed to TR's daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth, who tossed off many barbed quips in her time. Acheson had a mustache but was too upper-crust and 'Waspy'. Kennedy did not have a mustache (or, for that matter, a marriage). Hemingway had abundant facial hair, neuroses, imitators and cats.

Answer: John Quincy Adams

He wrote nasty diaries, he is a key character in the movie of Anthony Hopkins' life, he liked a good Bordeaux, he took naked swims in the Potomac, and he carried Palm Beach, Fla. in that shady 1824 election, but he did NOT pimp for the czar.

Answer: Alexander Hamilton

Snobby John Adams (senior) said this. (DaVinci was also born out of wedlock). Jackson would've hanged anyone who said this about him. Andrew Johnson would've crowed about it in his booze-addled VP inauguration speech if it had been true. Slide guitar virtuoso Robert Johnson, king of the delta blues, was unknown to Adams.

Answer: Nicholas P. Trist

An ungrateful James K. Polk said it. Trist, sent by Polk to cut a deal with the Mexicans after we provoked war with them, in effect bought California and much of the Southwest from Mexico for the equivalent of 18 million dollars, one of the great land steals in history. Polk fired him.

Answer: Woodrow Wilson

TR at the top of his game. (He also made merciless fun of Hughes). "Damned" seems to have been the adjective of the day; when McKinley was assassinated, political boss Mark Hanna said -- of Roosevelt -- "now that damned cowboy is President."

Answer: Rutherford B. Hayes

A dirty election, a questionable result, and a thwarting of the popular will by unabashed political and judicial partisanship, in the annus mirabilis of 1877. Boy, thank god that never happened again!