Early American politics

Magazine Antiques, August, 2004 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

In the colonial period the wives of men in the public eye were far from shrinking violets. Take Martha Washington, for example. In October 1775, en route to Boston to join her husband and his troops, she stopped in Philadelphia where she was the guest of Washington's aide Joseph Reed. While there, she is said to have made a visit to the calico printer John Hewson, where she ordered a kerchief printed with an image of her husband on horseback. This is thought to be the forerunner of the American political kerchief, a form of boosterism that has been used to increase the public's awareness of political candidates since 1789.

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To coincide with the Republican National Convention taking place in New York City this month, the New-York Historical Society has organized an exhibition entitled If Elected: Campaigning for the Presidency, which is on view through November 3 and includes posters, broadsides, sheet music, lapel buttons, parade lanterns, ribbons, kerchiefs, banners, and flags. These last three comprise a group of seventy-five textiles that form a special component of the exhibition under the title "Campaigns on Cotton."

As John R. Monsky has written in the Winterthur Portfolio (Winter, 2002), "Handkerchiefs were not merely popular as items of clothing in colonial times. They were often printed with significant information, such as maps that could be folded into one's pocket or charts containing tabular information such as London cab fares for certain distances." They were also a relatively inexpensive but durable way to promote either a presidential candidate or one of the major issues of his campaign.

The presidential campaign of 1840 marked a turning point in electioneering and the paraphernalia for spreading the word. In that year the Whig candidate was William Henry Harrison, who had become well known after his defeat of the Shawnee at the Battle of Tippecanoe decades earlier. With the selection of John Tyler as his running mate, the now legendary campaign slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" was born. The democratic candidate, Martin Van Buren, and his advisers let it be known that Harrison was a drinker and a pensioner, who, they claimed, would prefer to get drunk in a remote log cabin rather than seek the office of president. The image on the Harrison campaign kerchief (illustrated at left) demonstrates how his staff took the negative statements about his character and twisted them to their advantage. It depicts Harrison generously offering hard cider to visitors, one of whom is a one-legged veteran. By the 1880s, bandanas printed with likenesses of the candidate had become the most effective way to get the word out. One report of a political rally held in Cleveland relates that more than twelve thousand Democrats, all wearing bandanas around their necks, were on hand to cheer the arrival of Grover Cleveland to their city.

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The kerchiefs, banners, and flags were seen at conventions, carried in parades, and displayed in store windows. Many make reference to the burning issues of the day such as abolition and social equality, reflecting not only the political and social worlds of a particular moment, but also how designers found creative and graphically pleasing ways to promote their message to a broad audience.

There is no catalogue of this exhibition.