The snow fell steadily on the morning of February 26, 1972, softening the edges of the streets in Manchester, New Hampshire, and blanketing the buildings of the small city in a muffled quiet. It was the kind of quiet that conceals something much louder beneath the surface. A crowd had gathered in front of the Manchester Union Leader’s offices, their breath forming clouds in the cold air. They were waiting for a speech from the man many believed would be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, tall and stern in appearance, stepped onto the flatbed truck parked outside the building. He was not there to deliver a routine campaign speech. He was there to defend his wife's name and integrity against an attack that had come, not from a rival candidate, but from a letter published in a small local newspaper.
Two days earlier, the Union Leader had printed a letter from a man who claimed to be Paul Morrison, a resident of Florida. The letter claimed that when questioned about Maine's lack of racial diversity, a Muskie aide responded, "No blacks, but we have Canucks," to which Muskie allegedly laughed and said, "Come to New England and see." The term "Canuck," while sometimes used affectionately in Canada, was considered a slur when applied to French-Canadians in New England. The word had been used to belittle and marginalize working-class communities who had migrated from Quebec and settled in places like Manchester and Lewiston. These places still bore the cultural and linguistic imprint of that heritage. The idea that Muskie, whose own state of Maine was home to many such communities, would treat such a remark lightly was shocking and offensive to many New Hampshire voters.
The letter itself was clumsy in its construction. Written in awkward English and riddled with misspellings, it seemed more the product of a poorly educated bigot than a credible political source. However, under the direction of its fiercely conservative editor, William Loeb, the Union Leader published it without hesitation. It landed like a brick through a glass window in the final days before the state’s crucial primary. That same weekend, the newspaper ran an editorial attacking Muskie’s wife, Jane, suggesting she had a sharp tongue and lacked the grace expected of a potential First Lady. The timing and the tone were no accident. They were designed to provoke.
Muskie was furious. He confronted the attacks directly, stepping outside the usual decorum of national politics and speaking from the heart to the people gathered that morning. His speech was impassioned. He condemned Loeb’s tactics, defended his wife with a husband’s indignation, and insisted that he had never disrespected the French-Canadian community. His voice trembled at times. Snowflakes clung to his face and shoulders. Reporters in the crowd watched closely and began to murmur that Muskie, known for his reserve, was crying. Whether it was snow, tears, or both, remains a dispute. Muskie himself insisted afterward that it was only snow. However, the image of a presidential candidate breaking down in public stuck, and it quickly became the dominant story in the national press.
The timing could not have been worse. With the New Hampshire primary only days away, Muskie had been expected to win decisively. Instead, he won by a narrow margin. What should have been a triumphant night turned into a loss of momentum. The emotional episode before the Union Leader building planted a seed of doubt in the public’s mind. It suggested instability, vulnerability, and a lack of the steely resolve the presidency required in a time of war and national upheaval. The media coverage began to turn. The other candidates, particularly George McGovern, seized the opportunity to gain ground. Within weeks, Muskie’s campaign was faltering. He withdrew from the race in late April.
For most observers, the incident was chalked up to bad luck and political miscalculation. But behind the scenes, something darker had been at work. Months later, as the Watergate scandal began to unravel the Nixon presidency, investigators discovered that the Canuck Letter, as it came to be known, had not come from a concerned voter in Florida. It had been planted. The author was not Paul Morrison, if such a person even existed. The letter was part of a systematic campaign of political sabotage orchestrated by Nixon’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President. Among those implicated in its creation was Ken Clawson, a White House communications aide who reportedly bragged about writing it. Although Clawson denied direct authorship, the evidence pointed unmistakably to the dirty tricks apparatus that had been quietly targeting Democratic candidates across the country.
The goal was simple and devastating. Muskie was perceived as Nixon’s most serious challenger. By planting a single letter in a small newspaper and ensuring it was published at a critical moment, Nixon’s operatives created a controversy out of thin air. They knew that perception could often override truth, that a whisper could become a headline in the frenzy of an election, and that the strategy worked.
Muskie was damaged beyond repair, and Nixon would go on to win re-election in one of the most lopsided victories in American history.
Today, the Canuck Letter is often overlooked in the long catalog of Watergate-era misdeeds. It was not as dramatic as the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. It did not involve burglars, tape recordings, or hush money. But it was, in many ways, more insidious. It showed how fragile the democratic process could be when truth became just another tool in the arsenal of political warfare. It was an early warning of how easily lies could shape public opinion, and how vulnerable even the strongest candidates could be to a well-timed deception.
In an age before social media and twenty-four-hour news cycles, a single forged letter could destroy a campaign. It is difficult to imagine today, when the volume of information is so overwhelming, that such a small piece of disinformation could have such a broad impact. But that is precisely why the story still matters. It reveals how the architecture of democracy depends not only on the integrity of elections, but on the honesty of those who shape the narratives around them. When those in power choose manipulation over truth, the damage done may not be visible right away. It may take years, even decades, to understand the full cost.
For Muskie, the cost was immediate and personal. He never ran for president again. His political career continued in other forms, including a later appointment as Secretary of State, but the image of that snowy morning in New Hampshire never entirely left him. For the country, the lesson was subtler and more enduring. The Canuck Letter was a turning point, not just in a single election, but in the evolution of American political warfare. It marked the moment when deception became institutionalized, sabotage was carried out not with blunt force but with quiet precision, and when the truth could be bent so far that it broke.
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