Political Party Images (1832-1944)

Political parties have long used campaign posters and political cartoons to spread their messages, shape public opinion, and attack their opponents. These images were designed to be noticed quickly, remembered easily, and understood by a wide audience, often using slogans, symbols, humor, and exaggeration to make a point. By studying them, we can learn what parties wanted voters to believe, what issues they emphasized, and how they tried to define both themselves and their rivals. Together, these sources help us see not just what political parties stood for, but how they persuaded people to support them.

This cartoon is about Andrew Jackson's campaign against the Bank of the United States and the fear among his opponents that he was acting like a monarch. Jackson appears as "King Andrew," wearing a crown and robes, holding a veto paper and royal scepter, while standing on the Constitution and other symbols of lawful government. The cartoon argues that Jackson and the Democrats claimed to be fighting privilege, but in doing so Jackson had placed himself above the law and threatened constitutional limits on presidential power.

This cartoon is a commentary on the violence perpetrated against antislavery settlers in Kansas in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The artist blames the Democratic Party for the violence. Here, a bearded "freesoiler" has been bound to the "Democratic Platform" and is restrained by two Lilliputian figures, presidential nominee James Buchanan and Democratic senator Lewis Cass. Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and President Franklin Pierce, also shown as tiny figures, force a black man into the giant's gaping mouth. The freesoiler's head rests on a platform marked "Kansas," "Cuba," and "Central America," probably referring to Democratic ambitions for the extension of slavery. In the background, left is a scene of burning and pillage; on the right, a dead man hangs from a tree.

This campaign poster targets four prominent figures in the Democratic Party, three of them former Confederate officers. Former New York governor and Democratic presidential nominee Horatio Seymour is portrayed as a "rioter." Standing in a burning city, he waves his hat in the air while he steps on the back of a crawling figure. In the background, a corpse hangs from a lamppost. Between 1862 and 1864, Seymour had opposed Lincoln's war policies, and he was branded as the instigator of the 1863 New York draft riots. (See "The Meeting of the Friends, City Hall Park," no. 1863-12.) Below the portrait are inflammatory passages from his speeches. Tennessee general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, and infamous for his role in the massacre of surrendered Union troops at Fort Pillow, is called "The Butcher Forrest." He waves a flag labeled "No Quarter" and fires a pistol. Extracts from reports of the Pillow massacre are given below his picture. Confederate admiral Raphael Semmes is portrayed as a pirate, wielding a knife in one hand and holding a flaming torch in the other. Behind him flies a flag with a skull and crossbones. To the right, a family cowers in fright. Semmes was the scourge of Union shipping during the Civil War. Under his command, the "Alabama," a British-built ship, captured sixty-two merchant vessels, most of which were burned. An excerpt from Semmes's July 1868 speech at Mobile, Alabama, appears below this image. Confederate cavalry officer Wade Hampton appears as a hangman. He holds his plumed hat at his side and wears a uniform embossed with a skull and crossbones and a belt inscribed "C.S.A" (Confederate States of America). In the distance, three Yankee soldiers hang from a gallows.

This poster argues that the Republican Party would protect American homes through tariff protection. By contrasting "Protection" with "Free Trade," and surrounding McKinley and Hobart with patriotic and economic imagery, it claims that Republican policies would preserve jobs, industry, and national prosperity, while free trade would bring decline.

This poster is about Franklin Roosevelt's 1944 campaign for a fourth term during World War II. Using James Montgomery Flagg's famous pointing-figure style, it argues that Roosevelt should remain in office to complete the war effort and carry the country through victory and the transition to peace. The message is that changing leadership in the middle of a war would be risky, so the Democratic case was continuity and experienced national leadership.