A stranger spent a whole horseback ride viciously insulting President Jefferson to his face — then learned who his riding companion was, and fled at a gallop.
In the mid-nineteenth century, Americans everywhere had a slang phrase for making a sudden exit: 'My name is Haines!' One 1840 newspaper marveled that it was heard 'in Maine and Georgia, Maryland and in Arkansas,' in the mouths of old and young alike — more popular than rivals like 'I must mizzle' and 'I must make myself scarce.'
The phrase supposedly traced back to a chance encounter during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. A gentleman named Haines, a die-hard Federalist, fell in with a fellow traveler on horseback near Jefferson's Virginia home — and, not knowing his companion, launched into a tirade against the president.
Haines spared nothing: he called Jefferson 'all kinds of hard names,' mocked his gunboat navy as preposterous, condemned the embargo acts as ruinous, and dismissed the Louisiana Purchase as a wild scheme. His companion, the story goes, said very little the whole way.
When the pair arrived at a grand house, the stranger — despite having been abused 'like a pickpocket' for miles — invited Haines in for refreshments with true Virginia hospitality. Dismounting, Haines finally thought to ask his companion's name. 'Jefferson,' came the bland reply.
The horrified Federalist sputtered through his double-check: 'What, Thomas Jefferson?' 'Yes sir.' 'President Thomas Jefferson?' 'The same.' Haines shot back 'Well, my name is Haines!' — put spurs to his horse, and was out of hearing instantly.
The story first appeared in print in the New Orleans Weekly Picayune on February 17, 1840, and was reprinted by newspapers around the country that year and again in 1845. No record of any such encounter exists in Jefferson's papers.
The tale fits a whole genre of anecdotes about ordinary citizens unknowingly meeting Jefferson. Historian Lucia Stanton notes that Jefferson's habit of riding daily without a single attending servant 'shocked Washington society and spawned numerous stories of his encounters with citizens who abused their president without realizing they were conversing with him.'
The phrase earned a curious footnote in linguistics: language scholar Allen Walker Read discussed it in his famous 1963 study tracing the history of the expression 'O.K.' — placing Haines's hasty exit in the same family tree as America's most successful word.