The John Adams-Thomas Jefferson presidential campaigns of 1796 and 1800 heralded the birth of negative campaigning. Adams supporters called Jefferson an atheist, demagogue, coward, mountebank, trickster and Franco-maniac. Jefferson's supporters, on the other hand, spread rumors that Adams planned to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George III, start an American dynasty and reunite with Britain. Nor was Adams himself above dirtying his hands: "If he is elected," he declared of Jefferson in 1799, "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced."