Small tokens, bearing the image of a candidate or the emblems of one’s party, increased in popularity in the nineteenth century because of the same reason they appear in campaigns today – visual impact. Campaign paraphernalia reminds the wider public of the candidate’s presence and, if utilized effectively by a large number of supporters, his popularity as well. In the 1828 election, items from flasks and buttons, to sewing boxes and posters, to snuff boxes and medallions impressed upon the American population the support given to Andrew Jackson. These were in addition to the campaign badges and waistcoats that had already been introduced in the 1824 presidential election. And, as campaign scholars acknowledge, the donning of a nostalgic and humanizing nickname by Jackson – “Old Hickory” – served as a “masterstroke of popular politics”; the name gave the public the image of a candidate possessing strength and might, as well as a longstanding and respected military legacy.
1837-1847, silk, A.1982.010a-e
These campaign ribbons demonstrate the influx of wearable tokens of party and/or platform loyalty beyond just the presidential elections in the 1820s to local campaigns and initiatives.
This New York campaign ribbon for the Whig Party – the party that was founded in 1833 and led by Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and Zachary Taylor – was created to celebrate their winning the recent local election of Gulian C. Verplanck for the NYS Senate. In this political race, the Whig Party promoted their “just principles” as a continuation of the Revolutionary Spirit of 1776.
Washington was also used as an image of morality for the Temperance societies that sprang up in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, after the country had experienced the highest per capita rate of alcoholic consumption on record, following the War of 1812. The Washington Temperance Society was formed in Baltimore in 1840 and promoted George Washington as the face of goodness and morality in the form of temperance. The ribbon reproduces a portrait of the beloved Washington as “The Handmaid And Guardian Angel Of Virtue, Liberty And Independence,” together with the imagery of the Temperance fountain of safe and free water (as the alternative to beer).
Almost a year before the national Washington Monument we are all familiar with today was erected in D.C., a local initiative to commemorate the Revolutionary War hero laid the first and only stone of their proposed 425ft memorial at Hamilton Square (today, the site of Hunter College) at E. 67th & Lexington Ave. This site was the nearest public square/park to the Mount Vernon Hotel on E. 61st, and the intended monument is tied to the former owner of the Hotel, Joseph Coleman Hart. In 1833, when Hart was still residing at his family home just south of the Hotel, he joined other prominent local men (including Hamilton Fish) to form the “Washington Monument Association of the City of New York.” This ribbon commemorates this laying of the cornerstone by the Society on October 19th 1847, the 66th anniversary of Washington’s victory over the British at Yorktown; the event was preceded by a four-mile march uptown from City Hall, and attended at the site by 250,000 (according to the New-York Daily Tribune’s report).
This figured flask with a cylindrical neck in a pale aqua-colored nonlead glass bears the images of two U.S. political figures: George Washington and General Zachary Taylor (1784-1850). Over the profile of Washington are the words “The Father of His Country”; over the profile of Taylor are the words “Gen. Taylor Never Surrenders.” This flask was likely created as a propaganda piece supporting Taylor’s military and/or presidential efforts between 1830 and his untimely death in 1850. Taylor’s “never surrender” title comes from his victories in the War of 1812 and Mexican War (1846-48) as well as two wars against First Nations tribes – the Black Hawk War (1832) and the Seminole Wars (1835-42). He was the Whig Party candidate for President in the Election of 1848 and won over then-president Martin Van Buren, but served less than two years in the White House before his death.