Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art

By The Library Of Congress

Here are 100 ready-to-frame political campaign posters from the annals of American history! The candidates range from Andrew Jackson (“Defender of Beauty and Booty”) and William Henry Harrison (“Have Some Hard Cider!”) to Richard Nixon (“He’s the One!”), Barack Obama (“Hope”), and many, many more. The posters are backed with colorful historical commentary and additional artwork; best of all, they’re bound with clean microperforated edges so they can be removed, framed, and displayed. Presidential Campaign Posters is the perfect gift for political junkies of all ages!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quirk Books
• Release date: Jan 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781594749957

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PREFACE

We media consumers are far too jaded by national politics to be influenced by campaign posters, right ? We all know that posters are blatant manipulations, intended not to inform but to enlist. They emphasize faces and catchphrases. They condense complicated issues into jagged little pills. They are blunt instruments.

At the same time, the most effective campaign posters of every era leave as much as possible to the voter’s imagination. They are like Japanese manga: the less detailed the image, the more easily we can identify with the candidate, the more space for projecting our dreams. The more specific the image, the greater the risk of creating a feeling of otherness, which translates into death at the polls.

Consider the most celebrated example of campaign art in recent years: Shepard Fairey’s Warhol-esque poster for Barack Obama’s 2008 run for the White House. Uncluttered, with none of the little moles and stray hairs often depicted in nineteenth-century candidate etchings, it lacks even the presidential hopeful’s name. It contains a message of the purest kind, in the form of a single word: hope.

This poster presented far more than a focused portrait of youth, strength, and sobriety (though it communicated all of those things, too). It managed the stunning feat of portraying a black presidential candidate while visually overcoming the otherness of being black in America. Fairey’s inspired rendering of an evolved, postracial America turned otherness on its head. America saw this mythic image of itself and applauded. Like all great political art, the Hope poster did not merely brand a candidate; it branded America. It branded us.

And in fact, that is what campaign art really is selling. Fundamentally, it isn’t pitching politicians; it’s hawking images of America. The America we yearn for. Or, when the message is negative, the America we fear.

It’s a truism that Americans cast their votes for candidates not on policy but on character. We vote for the person whom we want to be our public face for the next four years, the face the nation sees when it looks in the mirror. Consider just a handful of examples among, well, every winning candidate. Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush were not elected on their experience or qualifications, but on who they seemed to be.

Give ’em Hell Truman and the language-mangling Bush were portrayed as rough and ready regular guys, as opposed to their effete and supercilious opponents, John Dewey and Al Gore (and, later, John Kerry). Kennedy—whose slogan was Leadership for the ’60s—was the heroic, handsome harbinger of an America bursting with vim and vigah running against Richard Nixon’s stooped and sweaty status quo. Reagan’s posters depicted optimism tempered by the wisdom of age. His campaign emphasized rebirth (Bringing America Back!) while his opponent, Jimmy Carter, seemed steeped in a self-diagnosed malaise. Who wants to live in an America like that?

What is perhaps most striking about this collection of posters from the Library of Congress—our oldest federal cultural institution, and one that serves as America’s memory—is what it reveals about the unchanging nature of American politicking. In the 1876 race between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden, Tilden was dubbed Slippery Sammy, barely a hairsbreadth from the Nixon epithet Tricky Dick. These echoes are uncanny, considering that early campaign posters predated modern advertising, marketing, and branding, not to mention the now never-ending research into the psychology of primary colors, the semiotics of sans serif, and the syntactics of the sound bite.

In these posters, we see the same posturing, the same accusations (of corruption, of moral turpitude) and insinuations (of suspicious religious beliefs, of hidden affiliations) hurled across party lines through the centuries. We see in black-and-white and color that the incivility that modern Americans decry as symptomatic of a sick political system has, in fact, been with us always.

Consider the earliest campaign featured here: Andrew Jackson’s 1828 race against incumbent president John Quincy Adams. Adams reached out to the electorate through the press, while the Jackson brain trust focused on the common man—who, in many cases, was illiterate—and handed out hickory brooms and canes denoting Old Hickory Jackson.

In response, Adams’s supporters lashed out, accusing Jackson of atrocities in the War of 1812, but their efforts were to no avail. The common man carried Jackson to the White House.

Virtually every campaign finds candidates aligning themselves with the common man to win votes. It’s the hardiest gambit of American politics, and sometimes the portrayal of a candidate as everyman even reflects reality. James Garfield, depicted on his 1880 poster as a farmer cutting a swath to the White House through falsehood, malice, and fraud, truly had pulled himself out of poverty. But reality is beside the point.

A few years earlier, Ulysses S. Grant’s 1872 campaign posters portrayed him, under the Working-man’s Banner, as a tanner and his running mate Henry Wilson as a shoemaker. Neither was either. In fact, Grant’s campaign was financed by such wealthy American businessmen as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Cooke, and John Astor. But hitching a ride on the back of the common man was the surest way for Grant to hold on to the White House, especially when running against the ultimate Eastern liberal elite, newspaper editor Horace Greeley.

Grant’s posturing as a member of the working class was as blatant—and effective—as George W. Bush’s cowboy bonhomie, pitched against the notion of John Kerry as a windsurfing liberal. Still, no single image or slogan wins an election. A candidate has to catch a wave and ride it to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The posters and catchphrases contained here are like little skiffs navigating the currents of America’s turbulent political waters.

The ultimate lesson of this collection is how choppy those waters are. Political art is nothing less than an illustration of the skirmishes and stalemates that created and continue to animate the American experiment. As you look at each poster and read about each campaign, it becomes increasingly clear that the tug of war over taxes and trade, the distribution of wealth and power, and the role of government itself, will never end.

Every generation renews the battle and fights it again. And every time, political candidates borrow from past campaigns the lexicon of perpetual political war. It reverberates in the slogans and the speeches, the urgent need: for tax relief or social protections, for an active government or a dormant one, for war or peace, to stay the course or to change direction.

Among the slogans missing from this volume (which could not possibly contain them all) is one adopted by Democrat John Kerry during his unsuccessful run against George W. Bush in 2004: Let America be America Again. It is the title of a 1938 poem by Langston Hughes, the celebrated poet of the Harlem Renaissance. Kerry focused on its first lines:

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

But Hughes was being bitterly ironic. He knew that the American dream, if it meant freedom and justice for all, had never been a reality. And he suspected that perhaps, for the majority, it had never even been a dream.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this homeland of the free.)

But however marginalized Hughes was, he nevertheless was fully engaged in the rhetoric of political battle. He took up the cudgels provided by the First Amendment and resolved to take no prisoners. That is how Americans are supposed to fight for their democracy. That no side can hold its ground forever is irrelevant.

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

We each carry a notion of an America that has never existed and can never exist. But we take our posters into the real streets anyway.

—BROOKE GLADSTONE

Gen¹. Andrew Jackson: Protector & Defender of Beauty & Booty, engraving by C. G. Childs, 1828 Credit 1

The President of the United States, lithograph by Auguste Hervieu, c. 1829. Without pomp, Jackson arrives alone at the White House. His wife had died of a heart attack due, he believed, to the assault on her character during the campaign. Credit 2

1828

Andrew Jackson (Democrat) v. John Quincy Adams (National Republican)

To the Polls! To the Polls!…Let no one stay home—Let every man go to the Polls.

—Duff Green, United States Telegraph, October 20, 1828

Jackson election ticket, woodcut, 1828. The hickory tree represents Andrew Jackson’s fabled toughness, as reflected in his nickname, Old Hickory. Credit 3

Andrew Jackson knew the only way he’d have a chance of beating incumbent president John Quincy Adams in the 1828 election would be to involve the common man. With many states eliminating laws that gave only property owners the right to vote, Jackson needed to motivate a larger mass of people to become politically involved. That meant his best constituency was the working class. To set the campaign in motion, a few years before the election Jackson and his supporters created the Nashville Central Committee, embarking on their national outreach by establishing a branch in every state, county, and township. Not only did the committee build grassroots support for Jackson, it also founded a second political party: the Jacksonian Democratic-Republican Party. First known as the Oppositions, they eventually were called Democrats for short. The Democrats, made up of southern farmers and northern Republicans, believed a second party would bolster political democracy and protect national liberty.

The Democrats found their symbol in Jackson’s tough-guy image as a hero of the War of 1812. While general, he had been hailed by his soldiers as being tough as hickory, and the campaign worked to make Old Hickory a household name. Jacksonians began handing out hickory brooms, hickory canes, and hickory sticks and fastened hickory poles to houses, wagons, and steamboats.

In the meantime, Adams waited passively for his chance at reelection. The only way his campaign sought support was through newspaper articles, as opposed to Jackson’s more grassroots strategy.

To compete with Jackson’s more advanced campaign organization, Adamsites took to attacking his family, actions, and decisions. Fed up with accusations that Jackson had murdered the innocent, newspaper editor Isaac Hill printed the following statement in the New Hampshire Patriot: On the 8th of January, 1815, [Jackson] murdered in the coldest kind of cold blood above fifteen hundred British soldiers for merely trying to get into New Orleans in search of Beauty and Booty! What began as a taunt became a campaign slogan that would lead Jackson to the presidency.

Some Account of Some of the Bloody Deeds of General Jackson, woodcut with letterpress published by John Binns, 1828 Credit 4

The Rats Leaving a Falling House, lithograph, 1831. Chaos surrounds Jackson as reform efforts give way. Credit 5

1828

Andrew Jackson (Democratic) v. John Quincy Adams (National Republican)

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

—Andrew Jackson

From common man to common murderer, Andrew Jackson’s new media image as a man of poor character cost him votes in the 1828 presidential election. Newspapers supporting incumbent John Quincy Adams portrayed his chief rival as an illiterate drunkard and cruel military commander. But none of these accusations compared to the so-called Coffin Handbill, an anti-Jackson broadside printed in 1828 by John Binns, editor of the Philadelphia Democratic Press . Binns’s piece of propaganda claimed that Jackson had executed several deserters during and after the War of 1812 and the Creek War. The handbill showed the six coffins of the men who, an eye witness alleged, had been wrongfully executed under the general’s orders. Jackson argued that the accused had tried to stir up mutiny among the soldiers, broke into [the] military storehouse, stole supplies, burned a bakehouse and then deserted. When taken to court, each received a fair trial and their constitutional rights [were] carefully safeguarded. Despite the court’s ruling, Adams supporters contended that Jackson was no less of a murderer.

Labeled a jackass, Jackson used the insult to his advantage. He turned the donkey into his new campaign symbol and incorporated it into posters promoting his candidacy. (The animal became the symbol of the Democratic Party only in 1837, when H. R. Robinson published it in a political cartoon.) The mudslinging symbolized by the donkey smeared over the political issues of the time. Supporters devoted little time to reviewing issues such as a protective tariff that would shield them from international industrial competition, foreign policy initiatives, and internal improvements in technology and education. Jackson did address these concerns but was deliberately ambiguous to avoid alienating potential voters.

Adams, meanwhile, opted against making dramatic speeches describing what he would do if reelected and instead focused on attracting voters by taking action, furthering America’s research in the arts and sciences and pushing to improve the construction of roads and canals. Unfortunately for him, not many people noticed, and the high cost of these projects only served to antagonize nationalist groups.

What kept voters loyal to Jackson and ultimately led to his election was a sense of protection. During the campaign, he discussed his plan to reform government by firing incompetents. His promise to punish debtors impressed owners of small businesses and middle-class workers. He also campaigned to use federal dollars to build local transportation in the states. With the Nashville Committee organizing barbecues, picnics, and mass meetings, voters felt involved, important, and cared for. Adams may have been a doer, but Jackson’s reform agenda won out in the end.

King Andrew the First, lithograph, 1833 Credit 6

Symptoms of a Locked Jaw—Plain Sewing Done Here, lithograph by David Claypool Johnston, 1834. The bitter battle between Clay and Jackson over the Bank of the United States resulted in less-than-friendly relations. Credit 7

1832

Andrew Jackson (Democrat) v. Henry Clay (National Republican)

The king upon the throne: The people in the dust!!!

—Anti-Jackson headline, 1932

Jackson, New Orleans, Jan. 8th, 1815, lithograph, c. 1832. This piece of campaign art celebrates Jackson’s heroic leadership at the Battle of New Orleans. Credit 8

One morning—or so the story goes—a Kentucky farmer at the Lexington marketplace woke to find that half of his only dressed pig was missing. Just the night before, he had knifed the hog down the middle, divided it in two, and hung it on two hefty hooks. Upon discovering half had been stolen, the farmer exclaimed, Nobody but a Clay man would have done it; ef he had been a Jackson man, he would have gone the whole hog! If there was one thing everyone knew about President Andrew Jackson, it was that he never did anything halfway. That’s why his challenger in the 1832 election, National Republican Party nominee Henry Clay, decided to turn the president’s reputation for tenacity against him.

In the early nineteenth century, many Americans still remembered firsthand the oppression of royal rule, and Clay set out to paint Jackson as a tyrant prone to letting his strong will run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution. He maneuvered Congress into hurrying to pass a bill during election season that he knew Jackson planned to veto despite its seemingly impeccable patriotic mandate: the bill extended the charter of the Bank of the United States. When the veto came as expected, Clay and his ally, Sen. Daniel Webster, paid newspapers to reproduce a print they’d had commissioned portraying Jackson as a would-be monarch. They were sure the image of a crowned, scepter-bearing Jackson standing in front of a throne, combined with the news that he’d killed a Supreme Court–backed national institution, would be like a bucket of cold water to voters who’d long embraced Jackson’s man of the people shtick.

Clay had forgotten one thing: for all Jackson’s down-home populism, he hadn’t ascended to the presidency by being anyone’s fool. Along with his veto, Jackson released a firmly written explanation debunking the idea that the Bank of the United States was any sort of noble bastion of the American people. Rather, the bank was profitable mainly to foreigners, monopolistic, hostile to states’ rights, and unconstitutional. It favored the rich and the elite, proclaimed the president, while undermining the interests of farmers, laborers, and common citizens. The message stuck, and the entire brouhaha ended up reinforcing, rather than repudiating, Jackson’s role as the people’s president. He defeated Clay in the election by a huge margin—and, subsequently, finished off the no-longer-federally-charted Bank of the United States once and for all