BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith

VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of History and Culture (VMHC) -- Exhibit: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith:

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Description of Pictures: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith
From May 14, 2022 - December 31, 2022
Examining our government’s founding and the continuing story of America’s bold experiment in a government “of, by, and for the people," American Democracy comes to life through Smithsonian collection artifacts, contemporary objects, and touchable artifacts.
Square feet: 4,800
Number of artifacts: 50 historic Smithsonian and VMHC artifacts; 125 contemporary/reproduction objects
About the Exhibition: In addition to in-exhibition artifacts, audio/video presentations from the Smithsonian and The History Channel and immersive technologies such as touch-screen adventures take visitors beyond the exhibition. Explore five major themes through this exhibition:
* the first bold leap to democracy as “A Great Leap of Faith”
* a nation for and by the people in "A Vote, A Voice"
* political campaigning with “The Machinery of Democracy”
* the power of the American people to go "Beyond the Ballot"
* sustaining our nation with “Creating Citizens”
Highlights: George Washington's 1774 letter to Bryan Fairfax about how taxation without representation caused the American colonists to revolt; Edmund Pendleton‘s 1788 record of the Virginia ratification of the U.S. Constitution; an 1833 portrait of Black Hawk (Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak) by Robert Mathew Sully, 1833; a 1915 Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage banner; and more.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. VHSDEM_220515_0001.JPG: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith More than just waging a war of independence, American revolutionaries took a great leap of faith and established a new government based on the sovereignty of the people. It was truly a radical idea that entrusted the power of the nation not in a monarchy but in its citizens. Each generation since continues to question how to form “a more perfect union” around this radical idea.
2. VHSDEM_220515_0005.JPG: American Democracy: A Great Leap of Faith Organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in collaboration with the National Museum of American History.
3. VHSDEM_220515_0009.JPG: The World They Inherited Britons on both sides of the Atlantic believed that governing was the role of aristocrats and wealthy gentlemen. Political power came with economic power, with birth into the right social circles, and with influential connections. Common people also had a limited role. Most common men who owned property could vote for a member of the lower house of their legislature. Voters could also serve on juries that enforced the law. Most did not qualify to participate in those ways, but free British subjects could petition their rulers with grievances in writing or with mass demonstrations or riots. They could seek justice in courts of common law, with juries of their peers.
4. VHSDEM_220515_0015.JPG: Queen Charlotte
5. VHSDEM_220515_0018.JPG: King George III George III became king of Great Britain and its colonies in 1760. American colonists saw themselves as his loyal subjects. They celebrated his birthday, drank toasts to his health, and fought in his American wars.
6. VHSDEM_220515_0022.JPG: The Authority of Bishops Men appointed as bishops of the established church sat in the British House of Lords alongside the great aristocrats of the realm, joining the authority of church and state. Portrait of William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, by John Faber Sr., early 18th century
7. VHSDEM_220515_0026.JPG: The Authority of Parliament The House of Commons, lower house of Parliament, depicted by Karl Anton Hickel, 1793 Parliament passed laws regulating trade within the empire, while routine taxes and legislation were left to the legislature of each colony.
8. VHSDEM_220515_0029.JPG: The Authority of Gentlemen Gentleman's wig Only wealthy gentlemen sat in the House of Commons, which represented “the people” of England. In the colonies, representatives elected to colonial legislatures were less wealthy, but most came from the upper ranks. “Men should dress suitable to their various ranks in life, whether as a magistrate, statesman, warrior, man of pleasure, &c. for the hair, either natural or artificial, may be dressed to produce in us different ideas in the qualities of men.” (D. Ritchie, A Treatise on the Hair, London, 1770)
9. VHSDEM_220515_0037.JPG: The Great Leap The world the British colonists inherited was ruled by kings, hereditary aristocrats, and wealthy gentlemen. Then, in the year 1776, Americans decided to change that world. They would do without a king or aristocrats. They would create a new government based solely on “the people." But who would really count as “the people,” and how would it all work? Should wealthy and educated gentlemen still dominate the government? Could a new, representative form of government truly represent the interests and views of common men and women? How should those people participate to make their voices heard? Ever since the Revolution, Americans have debated these questions.
10. VHSDEM_220515_0040.JPG: The Authority of Governors Portrait of Thomas Hutchinson by an unknown artist, after Edward Truman portrait, 1741 Thomas Hutchinson, portrayed here as a young man, served as governor of Massachusetts from 1771 to 1774. Appointed by the King, royal governors pursued policies favored by the British ministry. They enjoyed power to appoint officials to execute the law, as seen in this appointment of a justice of the peace. Yet many governors saw colonial governments as dangerously out of balance, with no hereditary aristocracy to support executive authority and too much power concentrated in the hands of the elected assembly. Hutchinson worried that popular power, or “the rule of the multitude,” would bring anarchy and dictatorship to the colonies.
11. VHSDEM_220515_0046.JPG: The Authority of the People The House of Commons represented “the people” of England. By 1750, however, only about 17 percent of adult males in England were eligible to vote. In the colonies, more men owned enough property to qualify as voters than in England—an estimated 50 to 70 percent of adult free males in different colonies. Thanks to the availability of land, and more by circumstance than planning, colonial politics allowed broader participation. Land grant from Penn family, 1733 This land grant signed by Governor Thomas Penn deeded a large farm in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to Alexander McCammont. Landowners and successful artisans made up the “middling sort” in colonial societies. There were also “the better sort” and “the poorer sort,” but the colonies had a higher percentage of “middling men” than Britain did. Since property owning bestowed political rights, those men became accustomed to a voice in colonial politics.
12. VHSDEM_220515_0048.JPG: Engraving of Sir William Penn, by Alexander Lawson, 1797
13. VHSDEM_220515_0050.JPG: Cartoon, around 1764 This detail from “The Election, a Medley,” by Henry Dawkins, around 1764, shows qualified voters lined up to the right of the Philadelphia courthouse.
14. VHSDEM_220515_0052.JPG: Portrait of Francis Howard, fifth Baron Howard of Effingham, about 1689
15. VHSDEM_220515_0056.JPG: The Authority of Governors
16. VHSDEM_220515_0058.JPG: Revolution “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. . .” -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776 In 1765 colonists said they were loyal to King George III and proud to be Britons. How did that change? What began as disagreement over particular British policies quickly became a deeper dispute over government. Neither king nor Parliament listened to colonial grievances. Many Americans believed that English authorities were influenced by wealthy private interests and personal ambitions. Even the British people seemed to think that colonists should have fewer rights than Britons at home. In 1776 many Americans made a great leap to a new idea: maybe they could do without monarchy and aristocracy. If they could unite with one another, the people of the colonies might form their own, more equal society and government. Maybe the people were enough. George III “The horse America, throwing his master,” 1779
17. VHSDEM_220515_0061.JPG: “The Bostonians Paying the Excise-Man, or Tarring and Feathering,” London, 1774 Tar and Feather This British image criticized American patriots’ practice of inflicting pain and humiliation on those who supported Parliamentary authority. It shows the tar-and-feathering of appointed customs commissioner John Malcolm in Boston in 1774. Similar acts by crowds punished a relative few but intimidated many more into compliance with patriot programs that resisted Parliamentary laws. No property-owning requirements limited participation in street crowds
18. VHSDEM_220515_0065.JPG: Grievances “The only Representatives of the People of these Colonies, are Persons chosen therein by themselves, and . . . no Taxes ever have been, or can be Constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective Legislature.” -- The Stamp Act Congress, 1765 When Parliament directly taxed the colonists, it bypassed the legislative assemblies elected by voters in each colony. Americans objected that Parliament lacked legislative authority over them. They insisted that those who enacted colonial laws and taxes needed to be chosen by colonial voters and to share basic interests with their constituents and neighbors. Government was legitimate only when it actually represented the people being governed.
19. VHSDEM_220515_0067.JPG: Thomas Jefferson’s Desk On this desk Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence in June 1776. Jefferson himself had designed the desk, including a hinged writing board and a locking drawer for papers, pens, and inkwell. The desk was Jefferson’s companion as a Revolutionary patriot, American diplomat, and president of the United States. Late in his life, Jefferson attached a note to the bottom, saying that the desk would likely become a treasured relic, “for its great association with the birth of the Great Charter of our Independence.”
20. VHSDEM_220515_0076.JPG: Facing Down a Great Corporation The East India Company was the wealthiest private corporation of the day. Parliament gave its stockholders a bailout by giving the company a monopoly on the colonial tea trade in 1773. They also kept a tax on the tea. Patriots in nearly every colony blocked sale of the tea, either reshipping it back to England or forcibly storing it in locked warehouses. Boston was the first city to destroy East India Company tea, in December 1773. This creamer reminded tea drinkers not to indulge. Its inscription reads “Britons take back your baneful tea/You N’er shall make a slave of me.” “The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor,” New York, around 1846
21. VHSDEM_220515_0079.JPG: Massacre in King Street Events in Boston in 1770 confirmed many patriots’ worst fears about the dangers of putting policing power in the hands of an armed military. British troops in Boston were supposed to see Parliament’s laws peacefully enforced. But military occupation of the city created bitter disputes between soldiers and civilians. Five colonists died when soldiers fired on a crowd. Silversmith Paul Revere, a fervent patriot activist, created prints of the event to fan the flames of public outrage. This copy from Revere’s plate was made in 1832. Print, Print, "The Bloody Massacre," 1832
22. VHSDEM_220515_0093.JPG: The Power of the Press Widespread literacy made possible the effective circulation of ideas through published pamphlets, newspapers, and other print products. These publications circulated news and opinion to a growing number of subscribers and to patrons of taverns, which often provided papers for common reading. Even illiterate people could listen and debate current events when someone read aloud to the group. “Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes,” by Daniel Dulany, 1766
23. VHSDEM_220515_0096.JPG: “The only Representatives of the People of these Colonies, are Persons chosen therein by themselves, and . . . no Taxes ever have been, or can be Constitutionally imposed on them, but by their respective Legislature.” -- The Stamp Act Congress, 1765
24. VHSDEM_220515_0099.JPG: "Without my consent..." Letter from George Washington to Rev. Bryan Fairfax, 1774 "[T]he Parliament of Great Britain hath no more Right to put their hands into my Pocket, without my consent, than I have to put my hands in your's, for money." Thus wrote George Washington (1732-1799) on the far-right page of this letter. Here he passionately explains his opposition to Parliament's anti-American policies -- including taxation and its response to the Boston Tea Party (1773). Three days earlier, he and George Mason (1825-1792) drafted the Fairfax Resolves -- a petition demanding colonial representation in Parliament and control over taxation, judicial powers, and commerce.
25. VHSDEM_220515_0109.JPG: Organizing as Patriots When colonial legislatures opposed British policies, many governors simply dissolved those assemblies. Unofficial groups such as local committees, county-wide conventions, and congresses quickly became central to patriot organizing. They relied on economic networks that included "middling" farmers, traders, artisans, working men, and free women to create a new political movement. The inclusive nature of the movement seemed to show that ordinary free people were capable of having a stronger voice in politics.
26. VHSDEM_220515_0112.JPG: Black Hawk
27. VHSDEM_220515_0115.JPG: Black Hawk War
28. VHSDEM_220515_0117.JPG: Detail from “The Alternative of Williamsburg,” by Philip Dawe, 1775 Merchants signing a boycott agreement
29. VHSDEM_220515_0123.JPG: Economic Boycotts Spindle with homespun fiber (reproduction)
30. VHSDEM_220515_0125.JPG: The Great Leap The colonists’ grievances against British authority led them to organize together across the colonies. In turn, that organization gradually built a sense of connection to others who shared common ideas and demonstrated common commitments. As the dispute intensified, patriots slowly disconnected from British authorities and their own Loyalist neighbors. In 1776 their experience of shared resistance led them to embrace a new political identity.
31. VHSDEM_220515_0127.JPG: Common Sense Thomas Paine’s argument against monarchy and hereditary privilege—and for American independence—first appeared anonymously in Philadelphia in January 1776. It was so popular that twenty-five print editions appeared within a year. Thomas Paine Engraving by William Sharp, 1794
32. VHSDEM_220515_0133.JPG: Who should participate? Men without property
33. VHSDEM_220515_0135.JPG: Democratic-Republican Societies Detail from “A Peep into the Antifederal Club,” unknown artist, New York, 1793 Newly elected President Thomas Jefferson sought to heal the bitter feelings resulting from divisions of the past decade in his inaugural address of 1801. This pitcher paraphrased his effort to bring the two parties together: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” A lampoon of one Democratic-Republican Society illustrates the era’s partisan hostility. It showed some recognizable figures and types of the day: Jefferson orating, David Rittenhouse looking through a telescope, an African American addressed as “Citizen Mungo,” and the Devil enjoying the scene.
34. VHSDEM_220515_0140.JPG: Political Parties? The Revolutionary generation opposed organized political parties that promoted the interests of only one part of “the people.” True patriots, they believed, should put aside self-interest and narrow views to promote the good of the whole society. But Federalists and Republicans found themselves bitterly divided in the 1790s. When working men, small and middling farmers, slaveholders, and petty dealers formed Democratic-Republican Societies, Federalists attacked them as dangerously radical. President George Washington denounced them as unrepresentative groups.
35. VHSDEM_220515_0142.JPG: The Place of Women How would American women participate in public life? Active in both the American and French Revolutions, many women saw themselves capable of a vital political role. During the 1790s, women attended speeches and parades, took sides in partisan disputes, and sometimes published opinions in the press. In New Jersey, women with property could even vote. Revolutionary ideals of universal rights led to challenges against women’s subordinate status within marriage. Female Education Ink drawing, “Image of the World,” by M. A. S. Fornead Women persisted in seeking access to education as a route toward richer lives and fuller participation as citizens of their society. They founded schools throughout the country, but especially in New England and the Mid-Atlantic states, to teach girls many of the same disciplines taught to boys.
36. VHSDEM_220515_0146.JPG: Revolution “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. . .” -- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776 In 1765 colonists said they were loyal to King George III and proud to be Britons. How did that change? “Join, or Die,” by Benjamin Franklin, 1754 What began as disagreement over particular British policies quickly became a deeper dispute over government. Neither king nor Parliament listened to colonial grievances. Many Americans believed that English authorities were influenced by wealthy private interests and personal ambitions. Even the British people seemed to think that colonists should have fewer rights than Britons at home. In 1776 many Americans made a great leap to a new idea: maybe they could do without monarchy and aristocracy. If they could unite with one another, the people of the colonies might form their own, more equal society and government. Maybe the people were enough.
37. VHSDEM_220515_0152.JPG: A Great Leap “I am not a Virginian, but an American.” -- Patrick Henry, delegate to the First Continental Congress, 1774 The colonists’ grievances against British authority led them to organize together across the colonies. In turn, that organization gradually built a sense of connection to others who shared common ideas and demonstrated common commitments. As the dispute intensified, patriots slowly disconnected from British authorities and their own Loyalist neighbors. In 1776 their experience of shared resistance led them to embrace a new political identity. “Premiere Assembl�e du Congr�s” (First Meeting of the Continental Congress), 1782
38. VHSDEM_220515_0159.JPG: The Declaration of Independence Congressmen voted for independence on July 2, 1776, then spent two days editing Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the text. They officially declared independence on July 4. In August they signed a carefully lettered parchment copy that today is housed in the National Archives. Years later, worried that the original signed Declaration of Independence was fading, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams commissioned engraver William Stone to create a copper plate to produce facsimiles of the text. This facsimile was printed from Stone’s 1823 plate. Print, Declaration of Independence, 1823
39. VHSDEM_220515_0164.JPG: Adopting the Constitution, 1787–1788 “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country . . . to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” -- Alexander Hamilton, “The Federalist No. 1,” 1787 “View of the Federal Edifice in New York,” 1789 Adopting a new frame of government also required Americans to make a leap of faith. After a long war and many disputes, supporters of the U.S. Constitution declared the need for a stable, central government to “secure the blessings of liberty” to Americans. But could the growing nation pull together? The states had not always cooperated with one another. Congress had been too weak to counter European and Native American powers or to settle conflicts within or between states. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed to shift power to the central government. At the same time, they provided that federal government officials be elected, either directly or indirectly, so as to represent the people as a whole.
40. VHSDEM_220515_0166.JPG: Virginia Ratifies the Constitution Judge Edmund Pendleton's copy of Virginia's ratification of the US Constitution, 1788
41. VHSDEM_220515_0173.JPG: Electoral ticket, 1789 Electing a President This ballot names four men to serve as members of Maryland’s delegation to the Electoral College in the first presidential election under the U.S. Constitution, in 1789. The Constitution allowed state legislatures to choose their own preferred method of selecting members for the Electoral College that would in turn select the president. Five state legislatures directly appointed members, while others established various systems that allowed voters to have a voice. In Maryland the voters at large, nearly eight thousand men, voted for presidential electors in 1789. Every state’s electors voted for George Washington to be president.
42. VHSDEM_220515_0183.JPG: Great Debates
43. VHSDEM_220515_0189.JPG: Proposal for a Constitution In September 1787 Americans had their first chance to see the new constitution proposed by a convention in Philadelphia. Over the summer, the convention had met in private, allowing no press coverage of their debates or decisions. The Providence Gazette and Country Journal was among the newspapers that first published the plan. What followed was a broad debate that Alexander Hamilton called a “Great National Discussion.” Should the states ratify, reject, or amend the document that became the U.S. Constitution? Copy of U.S. Constitution
44. VHSDEM_220515_0193.JPG: Constitutional Compromises Members of the convention that formed the U.S. Constitution generally shared a goal of shifting power to a central government and away from state legislatures. They also agreed that the new government should directly represent American voters. The Federal Pillars The Massachusetts Centinel newspaper published a series of images showing each state that ratified the proposed constitution as a pillar that, standing with the others, would create a new edifice. This image from January 1788 depicts the first five states to ratify, in order from left to right. Massachusetts would ratify on February 7, 1788.
45. VHSDEM_220515_0198.JPG: A Free Press? Could the same free press that unsettled American loyalty to George III now undermine loyalty to the new constitutional government? Newspapers free from government control seemed essential for citizens to be well informed about public affairs. But newspapers changed dramatically in the 1790s, when America became deeply divided over both foreign and domestic issues. Colonial papers had declared themselves to be above party politics. Now many newspapers became frankly partisan, presenting only one side of every issue, denouncing anyone who disagreed, sometimes printing rumors about the personal lives of the political opposition. What if privately controlled media misinformed the public about issues that voters needed to understand? "Nothing but a newspaper can put the same thought at the same time before a thousand readers." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1848
46. VHSDEM_220515_0200.JPG: A Free Press? Could the same free press that unsettled American loyalty to George III now undermine loyalty to the new constitutional government? Newspapers free from government control seemed essential for citizens to be well informed about public affairs. But newspapers changed dramatically in the 1790s, when America became deeply divided over both foreign and domestic issues. Colonial papers had declared themselves to be above party politics. Now many newspapers became frankly partisan, presenting only one side of every issue, denouncing anyone who disagreed, sometimes printing rumors about the personal lives of the political opposition. What if privately controlled media misinformed the public about issues that voters needed to understand? "Nothing but a newspaper can put the same thought at the same time before a thousand readers." -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1848
47. VHSDEM_220515_0207.JPG: Slavery or Freedom? Forced labor of Africans had long been an accepted part of European colonizing. The Revolutionary ideals of equality and rights threw such received practices into doubt, and some people on both sides of the Atlantic organized to combat slavery and the slave trade. The actions of enslaved Americans also had a deep impact. Many African Americans claimed liberty by enlisting in the British or Continental Armies during the war, running away, petitioning and negotiating for freedom, or rebelling. Their actions challenged the idea that enslavement was natural or acceptable to them. A growing community of free Africans demonstrated their capacities as citizens. Quakers, evangelical Christians, and Enlightenment thinkers criticized the slave trade and slaveholding. Two dozen men founded an anti-slavery society in Philadelphia in 1775. The group grew and adopted this constitution in 1787. They worried that the U.S. Constitution’s fugitive slave clause already endangered free people of color.
48. VHSDEM_220515_0209.JPG: Portrait of Richard Allen
49. VHSDEM_220515_0213.JPG: Pamphlet, "The Constitution of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery," 1787
50. VHSDEM_220515_0221.JPG: A Revolutionary World
51. VHSDEM_220515_0223.JPG: I, Too, Am Free “Moi Libre Aussi” by Louis-Simon Boizot and J. Louis Darcis, Paris, around 1790
52. VHSDEM_220515_0231.JPG: Native American Nations How would the U.S. deal with other free nations on the continent? The new government assumed much the same position as European empires in the Americas. It viewed Indian nations as potential allies and buffers against Spanish, French, and British powers on the continent, but it also presumed the right to displace Native peoples when possible. America’s reliance on extensive land use for economic growth and social stability created powerful pressure on the Native peoples who populated most of North America. Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts, Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained, 1836 Some Native groups continued to live within the bounds of the United States, but they did not enjoy equal political rights. In this pamphlet William Apess, a Pequot and Methodist preacher, championed the cause of the Mashpee Indians of Massachusetts, who petitioned for self-government. Apess argued that state laws were “unconstitutional” when applied to the Mashpee, since they were not represented in the legislature.
53. VHSDEM_220515_0235.JPG: Emancipation document for "Sarah," 1782
54. VHSDEM_220515_0238.JPG: "The Natural Right of all Mankind"
55. VHSDEM_220515_0244.JPG: King George?
56. VHSDEM_220515_0246.JPG: Revolution and the National Story
57. VHSDEM_220515_0249.JPG: Remembering George Washington
58. VHSDEM_220515_0253.JPG: Remembering Liberty
59. VHSDEM_220515_0259.JPG: A Vote, A Voice When it was established, the United States of America boasted more eligible voters than ever before. But it was still just a fraction of the new country’s population. The nation’s founders never envisioned the numbers, classes, sexes, and races of Americans that cast ballots each Election Day. They envisioned a world in which propertied men rose above self-interest and voted on behalf of the rest of “the people.” Many of “the people,” however, showed a stubborn desire to vote directly to choose their leaders and laws. The result has been reluctant adjustments, contentious struggles, and ongoing negotiations as groups tried to persuade lawmakers, the courts, and their fellow citizens to let them share the power of the polls.
60. VHSDEM_220515_0265.JPG: You Want to Vote? Voters’ motivations are as varied as their circumstances and experiences. Some vote to support or change their laws and leaders. Others are motivated by a sense of duty. Many see their first vote as a rite of passage or the final mark of adulthood and American citizenship. Whatever their reasons, Americans who stand in line at the polls make a personal decision to participate in hopes of bettering their lives and their country.
61. VHSDEM_220515_0268.JPG: Voting Machine, 1898 Automatic voting machine, 1898 We stand in line with friends, neighbors, allies, and rivals. Sometimes silent, sometimes chatting, maybe even discussing the candidates we’re waiting to decide between. But our final vote, whether it’s behind a curtain or a cardboard screen, is a private moment. By the 1890s voting had moved from a public declaration to a secret ballot. This machine’s gear mechanism and curtain were designed to ensure accuracy, security, and privacy.
62. VHSDEM_220515_0270.JPG: Getting the Vote Voting rights expanded, contracted, and expanded again as Americans dealt with shifting issues of politics, race, class, and wealth. Each addition to the electorate brought a change to the balance of power and led to collisions between practical politics and America’s democratic ideal of government “by the people.” While some established voters believed that extending the vote to more Americans would strengthen the nation, others questioned including people who might not share their concerns, or who could threaten their control of the country’s political, social, and economic structures. Voting Rights The Constitution leaves the states to determine which of their residents can vote and how elections will take place. It gives the federal government authority to make laws concerning federal elections and an obligation to guarantee to every state a republican form of government. Constitutional amendments and some federal laws have attempted to protect voting rights from discrimination based on race, color, or sex, and to make voting easier. 1870: The Fifteenth Amendment stipulates that the rights of citizens, including the right to vote, cannot be denied because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 1875: The Supreme Court rules in Minor v. Happersett that the Constitution does not guarantee all citizens the right to vote. 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment stipulates that the rights of citizens to vote cannot be denied because of sex. 1942: The Soldier Voting Act guarantees the right of soldiers to vote in presidential and congressional elections during wartime. 1944: The Supreme Court rules in Smith v. Allwright that all-white primary elections are unconstitutional. 1961: The Twenty-Third Amendment gives residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote in presidential elections. 1964: The Twenty-Fourth Amendment prohibits the use of poll taxes for federal elections. 1965: The Voting Rights Act requires preclearance before changing election procedures in designated areas where racial discrimination had prevented African Americans from voting and sends federal examiners to the South to register voters. The Act would be amended in 1970, 1975, 1982, and 2006. 1966: The Supreme Court rules in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections that conditioning the right to vote in state elections on payment of poll taxes is unconstitutional. 1971: The Twenty-Sixth Amendment lowers the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. 1974: The Supreme Court rules in Richardson v. Ramirez that states may deny the vote to convicted felons. 1975: The Voting Rights Act is amended to include protections for four “language minorities”—American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Spanish-heritage citizens. 1990: The Americans with Disabilities Act requires reasonable modifications to make polling places accessible to persons with disabilities. 1993: The National Voter Registration Act allows voters to register by mail, while renewing or applying for a driver’s license, or at other public agencies. 2002: The Help America Vote Act provides federal funds for states to replace voting machines, improve access for the disabled, and improve voter registration and education.
63. VHSDEM_220515_0274.JPG: Sometimes It Takes an Amendment Alice Paul, leader of the National Woman’s Party, unfurls a banner, stitched with a star for each state that ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. By the time the U.S. Constitution was written, states had established their own qualifications for voting and office holding. Rather than attempt to force a compromise among the differing standards, the framers of the Constitution left the states to determine who among their residents was eligible to vote. This created a country of citizens with unequal representation, rights, and responsibilities. Four times Congress has approved and states have ratified constitutional amendments addressing this imbalance and giving voting rights to specific groups of Americans throughout the United States.
64. VHSDEM_220515_0278.JPG: Picketing the White House To pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support a constitutional amendment giving women the vote, suffragists from the National Woman’s Party became the first people to picket the White House. When they began in the winter of 1917, the public tolerated, even admired, the pickets for their dignity and tenacity. When America entered World War I, the picketing seemed unpatriotic and embarrassing to the government. The suffragists were arrested and jailed for obstructing traffic. Reports of abuse and force-feeding and the courage of the imprisoned women generated public sympathy and the pickets were released. Picketing the White House, 1917
65. VHSDEM_220515_0286.JPG: "This right to vote is the basic right without which all others are meaningless." -- Lyndon Baines Johnson, August 6, 1965
66. VHSDEM_220515_0290.JPG: Demanding the Vote In the 19th and 20th centuries Americans of different races, sexes, ancestries, religions, educations, and levels of prosperity demanded the ballot and full participation in America’s political life. They worked to convince their fellow citizens that justice and true democracy required the votes of all Americans. In the face of sometimes violent opposition, they rallied, lobbied, and marched their way to the voting booth. Along the way they found allies and opponents in the government and in their communities.
67. VHSDEM_220515_0292.JPG: "The Hyphenated Americans," Puck, August 9, 1899
68. VHSDEM_220515_0295.JPG: Hyphenated Americans Americans are proud to be part of a nation of immigrants, but some were reluctant to share the ballot box with more recent arrivals. Worried that they might compete with them for political power, they questioned the loyalty, political philosophies, religions, and self-interest of each new group. Tying voting to citizenship, combined with stringent voter eligibility requirements, lessened the gains and electoral impact of late 19th- and early 20th-century immigrant groups. New waves of immigrants furthered concern over identity politics based on race, ethnicity, and class long after individuals became American citizens.
69. VHSDEM_220515_0300.JPG: The Nineteenth Amendment, 1920 The woman suffrage amendment was first introduced in 1878 and languished for decades in a congress that felt no need for women’s votes. Forty years later suffragists had won full or partial voting rights in eighteen states and were sending sympathetic legislators to the capital. Their work for the World War I war effort, combined with persistent lobbying and demonstrations, finally won President Woodrow Wilson’s endorsement. After a year's delay, congressmen, mainly Republican, worked quickly to pass the woman suffrage amendment hoping it would be ratified in time for new voters to show their gratitude in the 1920 election.
70. VHSDEM_220515_0316.JPG: Move On
71. VHSDEM_220515_0318.JPG: The Fifteenth Amendment Celebrated May 19th, 1870
72. VHSDEM_220515_0321.JPG: The Fifteenth Amendment, 1870 Five years after the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, former abolitionists who believed in equality for freedmen and practical politicians who saw their votes as a way to retain Republican control of the conquered Confederate states worked together to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, giving African American men the right to vote. African Americans celebrated the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment as another step toward equality, but the celebration was short-lived. Within ten years former Confederates had regained control of southern state governments and began to use intimidation, violence, and restrictive voter qualifications to keep African Americans from the polls.
73. VHSDEM_220515_0325.JPG: No Negro Equality As this ballot from Ohio’s 1867 governor’s race attests, not all Americans wholeheartedly embraced equality for African Americans.
74. VHSDEM_220515_0333.JPG: Sometimes It Takes an Amendment By the time the U.S. Constitution was written, states had established their own qualifications for voting and office holding. Rather than attempt to force a compromise among the differing standards, the framers of the Constitution left the states to determine who among their residents was eligible to vote. This created a country of citizens with unequal representation, rights, and responsibilities. Four times Congress has approved and states have ratified constitutional amendments addressing this imbalance and giving voting rights to specific groups of Americans throughout the United States.
75. VHSDEM_220515_0340.JPG: American Democracy? World Wars I and II focused American attention on the gap between the nation’s assertions of democracy and the discrimination faced by women, African Americans, and other minorities. Voting rights became civil rights. Woman suffrage picket, 1917 In 1917 suffragists compared President Woodrow Wilson to the German Kaiser and point out the hypocrisy of his pro-democracy rhetoric when American women could not vote.
76. VHSDEM_220515_0346.JPG: One Man/One Vote Almost one hundred years after the Fifteenth Amendment gave them the right to vote, African Americans were still blocked from the polls in many states. In the South poll taxes, literacy tests, complicated voter registration rules, intimidation, and violence made it impossible for blacks to vote. Voting rights demonstrations were viewed as a threat to the entrenched white power structure and culture of racial segregation. In 1962 the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began conducting voter education and registration drives in Mississippi using the slogan, “One Man, One Vote.” Bumper sticker, One Man One Vote
77. VHSDEM_220515_0363.JPG: The Twenty-Third Amendment, 1961 The U.S. Constitution did not grant the District of Columbia representation in Congress or the Electoral College, because it is not a state, and placed its governance in the hands of Congress. Since the 19th century, residents of the city have petitioned for voting rights. In 1961 the Twenty-Third amendment gave residents of Washington a vote in presidential elections but a 1978 attempt to ratify a constitutional amendment giving them voting representation in Congress failed. Although it is the nation’s capital, the issue of D.C. voting rights has remained a mostly local issue.
78. VHSDEM_220515_0371.JPG: Taxation without Representation Bumper sticker supporting full voting rights for Washington, D.C Washington, D.C., since 1973, has been governed by an elected mayor and city council, but residents still cannot elect voting members of the House of Representatives or Senate. First Presidential Election Washington, D.C., residents voted for the first time in the 1964 presidential election. Lyndon Johnson received the capital’s three electoral votes.
79. VHSDEM_220515_0376.JPG: Out in the Cold Although women were eventually enfranchised in 1920, Chinese immigrants were still barred from citizenship, and the vote, until 1943. Their American-born children had been accepted as citizens and eligible voters since 1898. “Out in the Cold,” The Judge, March 22, 1884
80. VHSDEM_220515_0384.JPG: Bloody Sunday Millions of Americans were horrified by images of the peaceful marchers led by the Reverend Hosea Williams and John Lewis being beaten by police while white onlookers cheered. From across the nation volunteers came to join the march. Others sent letters and telegrams to Washington demanding reform.
81. VHSDEM_220515_0391.JPG: Voting Rights Act
82. VHSDEM_220515_0400.JPG: Voting Rights Act Four months after the public outcry over the brutality in Selma, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act
83. VHSDEM_220515_0406.JPG: "Selma: Beatings Start the Savage Season," Life magazine, March 19, 1965
84. VHSDEM_220515_0436.JPG: Getting Out the Vote
85. VHSDEM_220515_0438.JPG: The Twenty-Sixth Amendment, 1971 “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” was the rallying cry for lowering the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. A first attempt during World War II, when the draft age was lowered to eighteen, was unsuccessful but during the war in Vietnam the issue gained momentum again, led by young people themselves. In 1970 congressional supporters changed the voting age in an amendment to the extension of the Voting Rights Act. When the Supreme Court ruled it applied only to federal elections, a constitutional amendment became the inevitable next step as states confronted the alternative of administering two sets of rules for state and federal elections. The Twenty-Sixth Amendment establishing eighteen as the legal voting age was ratified in 1971.
86. VHSDEM_220515_0447.JPG: How Will Youth Vote? Political parties and independent groups organized campaigns designed to encourage registration and capture the votes of the newly enfranchised “youths.” Newsweek magazine, October 25, 1971
87. VHSDEM_220515_0452.JPG: Getting Out the Vote
88. VHSDEM_220515_0455.JPG: Vote as You Please, but Please Vote Earnest pleas, lighthearted jokes, and the occasional touch of guilt all play a part in encouraging Americans to vote. Behind the seemingly innocuous reminders is a serious concern. More Americans than ever before are eligible to vote but many do not go to the polls. Some who do question whether their vote really matters. Get out the vote campaigns declare that a vote not cast can never be counted. They remind citizens of their responsibility to exercise the often hard-won right to vote and encourage all who can to be enthusiastic participants in the communal experience of voting.
89. VHSDEM_220515_0457.JPG: Keeping the Vote Lining Up to Vote, 2012 Lining Up to Vote, 2012 Lines for the last day of early voting in Olathe, Kansas, 2012 As new and diverse groups of Americans won the right to vote, local and national concerns shifted from whether or not they could vote to whether or not they would vote. Some advocates and officials encouraged voters to come out to the polls and looked for ways to make voting easier. Others changed voter registration requirements and Election Day rules in attempts to minimize the political power of newly enfranchised groups. Whether it is about voter qualifications, ballot language, or physical access to the polls, Americans continue to debate whose votes and voices should be counted in our representative democracy
90. VHSDEM_220515_0473.JPG: Poster, Register today so you can vote for a better tomorrow, around 1948
91. VHSDEM_220515_0478.JPG: Poster, Listen Up!!!, 1996
92. VHSDEM_220515_0484.JPG: Poster, Register and Vote (Native American)
93. VHSDEM_220515_0487.JPG: English/Spanish/Chinese poll sign, 2014 Since 1975, voting districts with significant populations of Native Americans, Native Alaskans, Asian Americans, and Latinos have been required to provide ballots and instructions in applicable languages. Signs like these were used in San Francisco polling places.
94. VHSDEM_220515_0491.JPG: Voter Registration
95. VHSDEM_220515_0501.JPG: "Freedom, Justice, and True Democracy"
96. VHSDEM_220515_0513.JPG: Protect Our Voting Rights Participants commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington carried posters that voiced concern over the possible erosion of gains made by the civil rights movement after the Supreme Court’s decision that rolled back part of the Voting Rights Act.
97. VHSDEM_220515_0515.JPG: The Soldier Vote The Civil War became the first conflict in which arrangements were made for deployed soldiers to vote. Who the Union soldiers would support—President Abraham Lincoln or their former commander, George McClellan—was critical in determining the outcome of the 1864 presidential election. Poll book, Company C of the 150th Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers
98. VHSDEM_220515_0523.JPG: Poll Taxes Begun in the 1890s as a legal way to keep African Americans from voting in southern states, poll taxes were essentially a voting fee. Eligible voters were required to pay their poll tax before they could cast a ballot. A “grandfather clause” excused some poor whites from payment if they had an ancestor who voted before the Civil War, but there were no exemptions for African Americans. In 1964 the Twenty-Fourth amendment prohibited the use of poll taxes for federal elections. Five states enforced payment of poll taxes for state elections until 1966, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared them unconstitutional. Poll tax notice from Amarillo, Texas, 1960s
99. VHSDEM_220515_0532.JPG: Voter Bill of Rights The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires states to display a Voter’s Bill of Rights in all polling places. California posted copies in English, Spanish, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese. Poster, Voter Bill of Rights
100. VHSDEM_220515_0543.JPG: Voter Accessibility Activists have brought public attention to the needs of voters with physical, cognitive, and emotional disabilities. Their efforts have resulted in legislation to make polling places and ballots accessible to all Americans and recommendations to end centuries of disenfranchisement.
101. VHSDEM_220515_0549.JPG: Restoring Rights Before the Civil War the majority of states barred men convicted of serious crimes from voting. By 1920 only three states had no form of felon disenfranchisement. Depending on the state, applicable crimes included murder, voter fraud, burglary, vagrancy, or any crime resulting in imprisonment. In theory, disenfranchisement guaranteed a moral voter pool. In practice, it legally reduced the voting population of minorities and immigrants. Today millions of otherwise eligible voters, many of them minorities, cannot vote because of felony convictions. Restore Felon Voting Rights, 2014 Supporters rallied at the Florida state capitol in Tallahassee to urge changes in state laws that would restore voting rights to convicted felons.
102. VHSDEM_220515_0588.JPG: The Machinery of Democracy Informal institutions and activities not actually spelled out in the Constitution help make America’s participatory political system possible. State and national parties, nomination and ratification conventions, and intense and elaborate campaigns are examples of the informal processes Americans have adopted that give life and form to the ideas in the Constitution.
103. VHSDEM_220515_0591.JPG: Voting and Electioneering, 1789–1899 Because the Constitution gives states the job of running elections, ways of voting in the United States vary. Americans have developed a patchwork of manual, mechanical, and electronic balloting. Many methods once common in the past are still used in some places today.
104. VHSDEM_220515_0599.JPG: Magazine, The New Yorker, November 3, 1956
105. VHSDEM_220515_0603.JPG: Paper Ballots Voting in the 19th century usually involved casting a printed paper ballot. State election laws typically specified the dimensions and thickness of the paper, and the size of type to be used. The rest was left to the issuing parties, local party operatives, and candidates, resulting in various ballot forms and styles—and a potential for voter confusion and fraud. More so than the distinguishing marks of party symbols or candidate portraits, color helped observers identify party ballots as they were cast—and who cast them. Voting was still not entirely secret. The parties printed and distributed paper ballots cut from sheets. Virginia’s Union Party issued a pink paper ticket in 1860. The introduction of a complex color scheme distinguished the official ballot of the 1878 Regular Republican ticket in Massachusetts.
106. VHSDEM_220515_0628.JPG: The Election of 1860
107. VHSDEM_220515_0631.JPG: American Invention The earliest elections were conducted by voice vote or with paper ballots put into ballot boxes. These paper ballots, called “party tickets,” listed names from just one party, and they were counted under the watchful eye of local party and election officials. As the United States grew and the electorate expanded in the decades following the Civil War, improvements appeared in the form of the Australian or blanket ballots that listed the names of all candidates, ballot boxes with mechanical security features, and mechanical ballot counters. “American Invention for Blowing Up Bosses,” Puck, November 16, 1881
108. VHSDEM_220515_0637.JPG: Gear-and-Lever This facsimile gear-and-lever voting machine was last used in the 1944 presidential election between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas E. Dewey. Small models like this acquainted voters with the workings of the actual machine; the row-and-column ballot of parties and candidates was based upon the graphic design of the blanket or Australian ballot these machines began to displace after the turn of the 20th century. From 1900 through the early 1960s, the gear-and-lever voting machine was promoted as an ideal technology.
109. VHSDEM_220515_0643.JPG: Citizen ballot counters and observers examining Votomatic punch cards, Emergency Operations Center, West Palm Beach, Florida, November 2000
110. VHSDEM_220515_0646.JPG: The Butterfly Ballot The close presidential contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush came down to a struggle over the Florida vote. In Florida Bush led Gore by 930 votes out of six million votes cast. Gore asked for a recount by hand of ballots from four counties in which his support was believed to be strong. To conduct the recount in Palm Beach County, citizens organized into teams of two Republican and two Democratic Party counters and observers. A magenta-colored card is used to help identify the holes in the ballots.
111. VHSDEM_220515_0650.JPG: Hanging Chad In the 2000 presidential election, incompletely punched ballots that could not be counted by machine were considered voter errors. Judge Robert Rosenberg used this magnifying glass to examine ballots in an effort to determine voter intent during the hand recount in Broward County, Florida, in November 2000. Judge Robert Rosenberg examining ballot with magnifying glass, Broward County, Florida, November 2000
112. VHSDEM_220515_0655.JPG: Democratic Outfitting Political campaigns of the 19th century reflected popular traditions of commemoration and celebration—such as Fourth of July parades—that became familiar to many Americans in the early Republic. The mechanisms of popular politics not specifically called for in the Constitution—parties, nominating conventions, and electoral campaigns—drew freely on the evocative imagery of such festivities in promoting candidates and building the momentum of the campaign. Mass campaign spectacles arose as a way of demonstrating partisan strength and of mobilizing indifferent and easily distracted voters. The Torchlight Parade Torchlight parade for Abraham Lincoln, New York City, October 3, 1860, published in Harper’s Weekly The successful presidential campaign of Republican Abraham Lincoln perfected the nighttime torchlight parade as an entertainment of unprecedented scale that attracted the attention of men, women, and children. The concept originated in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1858, and was revived for Lincoln’s campaign by the city’s young Republicans. Tailored oil-resistant enameled cloth capes distinguished the marchers, some of whom were too young to vote. Their example spread from Hartford to cities in the northeastern United States, which contributed traveling companies totaling some ten thousand uniformed men with torches to a Grand Procession in New York City on October 3, 1860. The martial spectacle—including fireworks, Lincoln “Wide Awake” transparencies, and floats—created envy among the city’s Democrats, and panic among southern sympathizers who regarded the torch-lit parade as a provocation.
113. VHSDEM_220515_0661.JPG: Campaign torch, 1888
114. VHSDEM_220515_0666.JPG: Campaigning, 1789-Present
115. VHSDEM_220515_0673.JPG: Frontier Democracy The Log Cabin Detail from the Whig Party newspaper, July 18, 1840 The expansion of white male suffrage in the 1830s led to an expansive strategy of political imagery that co-opted hatchets, axes, and log cabins as empathetic symbols that could be understood by anyone. The exclusive use of such symbols masked the difficult and contentious positions of rival candidates and partisans who, with a wink and a nod, universally embraced the rough-hewn values of the American frontier.
116. VHSDEM_220515_0677.JPG: The Log Cabin Campaign The Whig campaign of 1840 against incumbent President Martin Van Buren established a pattern of predetermined imagery, from which later campaigns have seldom deviated. The Whigs adopted the symbols of the log cabin and hard cider to promote the candidacy of General William Henry Harrison. An outpouring of everyday ceramics with designs of log cabins and canes with miniature hard cider barrels for heads soon followed. Whig glassware, spoons, covered dishes, and children’s tea sets all declared for log cabins.
117. VHSDEM_220515_0684.JPG: Thomas Nast Born in Germany, Thomas Nast (1840–1902) immigrated to New York in 1846. Nast’s gifts for illustration and social observation found ready use in national mass-circulation news magazines that did not yet have the means to publish photographs. Nast published more than three thousand drawings, primarily in Harper’s Weekly between 1862 and 1885. Editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast continued the tradition of using animals as symbols in party politics and sharpened it as an art form. In this satirical cartoon, Nast depicts New York City’s corrupt Tammany Society as a fierce tiger, being whitewashed by Democratic presidential candidate Horace Greeley. Nast favored Union-affirming policies and enjoyed the relative autonomy to express his political views. Nast's early cartoons skewered the corrupt regime of New York City’s William Marcy “Boss” Tweed. Nast went on to popularize the elephant and donkey as symbols of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. Nast may have painted this self-portrait around 1884, when he lost his fortune in a Wall Street Ponzi scheme. It is perhaps a self-caricature. Nast renders himself with a furrowed brow, collapsed into a chair. An open drape reveals New York’s Trinity Church, at the foot of Wall Street. Out of favor with his editor, Nast left Harper’s Weekly in 1887. He later joined the Democratic National Committee as a contract cartoonist but never recovered a national audience or financial position.
118. VHSDEM_220515_0689.JPG: Pin-Back Democracy The colorful pin-back buttons that we think of today appeared for the first time in the campaign of 1896. Coated with “celluloid,” a new plastic material, the pin-back button was a stylish departure from the metal clothing buttons that celebrated George Washington’s first inauguration, the metal tokens that lampooned Andrew Jackson’s attack on the Bank of the United States, and even the stickpins that acquainted voters with the likeness of Abraham Lincoln. The celluloid button—made with a patented process that sealed a paper disc under a shiny layer of clear plastic on a metal shell—presented colorful graphic possibilities. The celluloid button became a collectible in its own right on the way to commercial success as a wildly popular advertising medium. The Whitehead & Hoag Company of Newark, New Jersey, acquired the rights to produce celluloid pin-backs after purchasing a series of patents in the 1890s. The firm produced buttons under the trade name of Whitehead & Hoag until it was sold in 1953. Whitehead & Hoag sold to consumers through “jobbers” throughout the United States, who solicited orders for custom-made ribbon badges from lodges, societies, conventions, parades, and political organizations. Each ribbon came packaged with a piece of card stock in a reusable envelope. Whitehead & Hoag published testimonials of its timely service, including praise from the badge committee for the inauguration of President Grover Cleveland, which ordered over $1,600 in badges like this one for the ceremony. The celluloid process held up well into the 20th century, but it was undercut by the relatively inexpensive process of metal lithography developed by rival firms such as the Green Duck Company, which created this sample card around 1956. The process of printing a metal lithograph button started with stamping dies. Each die is displayed below next to an example of its finished button, ready to wear. Well into the late 1950s, political parties, candidates, and campaign managers believed in the pin-back button and other novelties as vital and vibrant advertising media. Given away for free to be displayed as emblems of political activism and engagement, such novelties stimulated partisanship, sustained constituencies, and won elections.
119. VHSDEM_220515_0699.JPG: Promoting the Candidates The Constitution made the presidency and the positions of senator and representative elective offices. By the early 19th century, rivalries among political factions in the new government led to the creation of a competitive party system. The promotion of candidates among an expanding electorate placed increasing importance on the success of popular political campaigns.
120. VHSDEM_220515_0726.JPG: Campaigning: 19th Century to Today
121. VHSDEM_220515_0746.JPG: The Gerry-Mander This “Gerry-Mander” cartoon first appeared in the Boston Gazette, March 26, 1812, and was quickly reprinted in Federalist newspapers in Salem and Boston. The cartoon expressed opposition to state election districts newly redrawn by Massachusetts’ Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican Party, led by Governor Elbridge Gerry. Fearing that the Federalist Party would gain power in the 1812 election, Gerry consolidated Federalist voting strength in a salamander-shaped voting district. The practice—though not invented by Gerry—became known as a “gerrymandering.” “Essex South District Formed into a Monster!” Salem Gazette, April 2, 1813
122. VHSDEM_220515_0755.JPG: Enduring Popular Images and Party Symbols The most enduring images in American political life are those drawn from the natural world—rivers and springs reflect the ever-changing course of politics, monsters suggest the carefully apportioned boundaries of congressional districts, and animals have come to represent the major political parties.
123. VHSDEM_220515_0758.JPG: The Elephant and Donkey Harper’s Weekly featured Thomas Nast’s Democratic donkey for the first time in 1870. Nast had often used the symbol to represent ignorance. Nast featured an elephant for the first time in 1874 to represent the Republican vote. He rendered the animal, unsure of its own weight, plodding through planks representing its own party platform. Nast’s elephant and donkey appeared together in a cartoon for the first time in 1879. Party Animals Democratic and Republican Party leaders would never have chosen the animals that Thomas Nast did to popularize their policies and ideas. The parties typically adopted national symbols, such as the eagle and the flag. After 1840 the Democratic Party often represented itself as a rooster. Such symbols contended, unsuccessfully, with the popularity of donkeys and elephants into the 20th century.
124. VHSDEM_220515_0781.JPG: The Rise and Fall of American Political Parties “Diagram of the Rise and Fall of American Political Parties, from 1789 to 1880, inclusive,” from Conspectus of the History of Political Parties and the Federal Government, by Walter R. Houghton, 1880 This ambitious chart presents U.S. political history on a single page. Moving from left to right, a timeline of parties, policies, persons, and events courses like a river through graphic space marked in four-year intervals. The analogy between politics and springs and rivulets (that jump and rejoin their banks) is the most conspicuous feature of the timeline. The parties appear in different colors. The ascendance of a party is gauged as its stream rises above the centerline, and above the streams of other parties. The thickness of a stream indicates the party’s strength. The diagram is meant to dramatize U.S. political history in a more accessible shape for educators and to offer a ready reference for scholars, statisticians, and statesmen.
125. VHSDEM_220515_0821.JPG: Your Home, the Seat of Personal Meeting
126. VHSDEM_220515_0825.JPG: On Television By the early 1950s political parties acquainted candidates with the importance of their television appearances and how to conduct themselves on the new medium. Many viewers believed that they could judge an individual from a television appearance. Fallacious or not, this conviction had political significance. In 1952 Republican vice-presidential candidate Richard Nixon went on the airwaves to defend his character and record in public life. An avalanche of supportive mail followed and, in turn, a grateful campaign mass-mailed a personal thank-you note in the form of a postcard to each respondent. Campaign objects helped to ease television’s entry into the home and into the heart of American political culture. During the 1960 presidential campaign the Democratic National Committee distributed paper cups encouraging voters to watch the new morning television program, Coffee with Senator and Mrs. Kennedy. Face-to-face debates between the presidential candidates of the two major political parties are a recent development in American political campaigning. The first series of televised debates took place in 1960 with Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon. This device—the “black box” of the television ratings system—gathered information from households about media listening and viewing habits from 1949 until the early 1970s. Connected to a radio or television, it registered set use and station tuning by exposing 16-mm film to a pinpoint of light. When changed by the homeowner weekly, the film cartridge ejected a quarter to ensure timely mailings to the Nielsen Company for analysis. The data gleaned from sample homes enabled campaign pollsters to track viewing patterns during candidates’ television appearances and to refine schedules of paid political advertising. Gearing up for the 2004 New Hampshire primary, campaign volunteers for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry made this sign for the Manchester, New Hampshire, headquarters. The sign’s arrows give the distances in miles to eight New Hampshire cities the campaign would regularly visit, as well as the distance to the White House. Kerry’s sign was modeled after the “swamp sign” seen in the M*A*S*H television series set during the Korean War, and it evoked signs posted by American forces in Vietnam—where Kerry had seen combat. Kerry won the Democratic primary in New Hampshire and went on to become the party’s presidential nominee. Kerry lost the general election to incumbent President George W. Bush.
127. VHSDEM_220515_0841.JPG: A Candidate Larger than Life
128. VHSDEM_220515_0847.JPG: "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too"
129. VHSDEM_220515_0856.JPG: Whiskey bottle with images of Gen. Zachary Taylor and Gen. George Washington, 1848
130. VHSDEM_220515_0860.JPG: Medal promoting the presidency of John Tyler, 1841
131. VHSDEM_220515_0863.JPG: Copper button celebrating George Washington's inaugural, 1789
132. VHSDEM_220515_0869.JPG: Fan promoting Woodrow Wilson as the Democrat nominee, 1912
133. VHSDEM_220515_0874.JPG: Sugar bowl promoting William Henry Harrison, 1840
134. VHSDEM_220515_0877.JPG: Mother of Presidents
135. VHSDEM_220515_0881.JPG: Beyond the Ballot The First Amendment of the Constitution established that Congress shall make no law restricting “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Not limiting their participation to electoral politics, individuals and groups with very different resources—on the streets, in back rooms, and through the media of their times—have brought their interests and concerns before the nation. Through early 18th-century petitioning and mass demonstrations, formal and informal lobbying of government officials, and electronic letter writing campaigns, Americans have exercised this very basic democratic right to shape their country beyond the ballot box.
136. VHSDEM_220515_0886.JPG: Petitioning The simple act of adding your name, along with others, to an official appeal asserts your political identity and rights. While petitioning has been open for everyone, it was especially important for those barred from voting. In the early Republic, mass petitioning provided poor white men, women, free blacks, and other minorities a means to voice grievances and to claim a role in determining the direction of the country. Petitioning has maintained a role in the democratic process. Whether they are traditional paper forms or electronic mailings, petitions continue to offer a means for individuals to shape political discourse. Petitions to Congress The first nationally organized petitioning drive was a protest against the federal government removing Cherokee Indians from their eastern native lands. Since then petition drives have focused on topics as diverse as can be imagined.
137. VHSDEM_220515_0891.JPG: Petitions to Congress
138. VHSDEM_220515_0893.JPG: Environmental organizations delivering written petitions to Congress opposing the Keystone Pipeline, February 14, 2012
139. VHSDEM_220515_0904.JPG: Petitioning with Your Feet From local protests to massive marches in Washington, demonstrators have forced officials to confront issues that they have often wished to avoid. By any imaginable means, people have come before the government and demanded to be heard. Carrying signs, singing songs, and shouting from a podium, whether beautiful and moving or disrespectful and offensive, these demonstrations are an exercise in the American democratic process.
140. VHSDEM_220515_0964.JPG: A Trade of Great Inhumanity Petition to King George III to ban the importation of slaves to the colonies, 1772
141. VHSDEM_220515_0975.JPG: Petitioning with Your Feet? Where is Democracy?
142. VHSDEM_220515_0977.JPG: Lobbying Like other forms of petitioning, lobbying involves direct actions intended to influence governmental policy. From the days in which politicians were regularly confronted in Washington, D.C., hotel lobbies, it has been a significant way that some people have affected and participated in their government. Lobbying has been carried out by individuals and informal groups advocating their causes and by well-funded professionals who represent large corporations and established organizations with significant sums of money at their disposal. And where money and power meet, there is always the possibility that in this representative democracy not everyone is listened to equally.
143. VHSDEM_220515_0979.JPG: The Deadly Upas Tree of Wall Street The face of Jay Gould, financier and railroad developer, is formed by the limbs and branches at the center of this poisonous tree blooming with bribes, Puck, August 30, 1882.
144. VHSDEM_220515_1001.JPG: Petitioning through Persuasion Female Lobbyists at Washington Lobbying for Women’s Rights In the 1890s it was said that you would know that spring had arrived in Washington when Susan B. Anthony in her red shawl was seen in the Capitol advocating for women’s rights. “The Marble Room in the Senate wing of the Capitol at Washington is peculiarly the haunt of the professional female lobbyist. … These female lobbyists are for the most part accomplished, versatile and fair to look upon, and the raw and inexperienced Senator falls an easy prey to their blandishments.”
145. VHSDEM_220515_1004.JPG: Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 4, 1888
146. VHSDEM_220515_1008.JPG: House of Representatives lobbying registration form Any individuals or organizations that meet the formal definition of lobbyist under the Lobbying Disclosure Act are required to register and file regular reports on their activities.
147. VHSDEM_220515_1010.JPG: Keep Out The role of professional lobbyists has always been controversial. Congressman Alfred N. Phillips in 1937 posted a sign on his office door welcoming everyone, “except professional lobbyists.”
148. VHSDEM_220515_1017.JPG: “The Bosses of the Senate,” Puck, January 23, 1889
149. VHSDEM_220515_1019.JPG: Deceit and Corruption At times money, scandals, and politics just seem to go together. While many people hope dishonesty is the exception, the more cynical believe it is just the norm.
150. VHSDEM_220515_1026.JPG: Jack Abramoff Scandal In one of the most publicized political scandals in modern times, lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion. The case, which centered on an Indian casino, uncovered a world of bribes, money laundering, and double-dealing that even surprised the capital’s establishment. Time magazine, January 16, 2006
151. VHSDEM_220515_1029.JPG: Washington Confidential The cover says it all in this expos� of the capital’s underside, published in 1951.
152. VHSDEM_220515_1031.JPG: Jack Abramoff Scandal
153. VHSDEM_220515_1033.JPG: Lobby: A Capital Game In this 1949 Milton Bradley board game, players assume the roles of senators and representatives navigating their bills through Congress with the help and hindrance of special interests.
154. VHSDEM_220515_1052.JPG: Campaign Contributions Newspaper cartoonist Clifford Berryman lampooned presidential candidate William Taft for using the issue of tariff reform to fill his wallet in this 1908 drawing.
155. VHSDEM_220515_1058.JPG: Creating Citizens Fulfilling the ideals of American democracy required defining “the people” and determining the meaning of citizenship. Not clearly articulated in the founding documents, these unsettled issues were left for future generations. Some basic questions have long been debated by Americans. How diverse should the citizenry be? Do we need to share a common national story? What are the rights and responsibilities of citizens?
156. VHSDEM_220515_1063.JPG: Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving Dinner Thomas Nast cartoon published in Harper’s Weekly, November 20, 1869
157. VHSDEM_220515_1070.JPG: How Diverse Should the Citizenry Be? In a nation created by immigrants, nothing has been more debated than what should be the ideal character of its citizenry. One view is that “multiculturalism,” the preservation of diverse cultural heritage, enriches the country. Some have called for a common citizenry—a “melting pot” where immigrants are assimilated and their traditions are transformed into a homogeneous American culture. Still others challenged diversity by seeking to restrict immigration and exclude certain racial and ethnic groups. These very different positions have greatly impacted the nation’s political debates on economic, foreign, and immigration policy, and education and social welfare programs.
158. VHSDEM_220515_1074.JPG: Citizenship 1776: Declaration of Independence protests England’s limiting naturalization of foreigners in the colonies. 1789: U.S. Constitution, under Article I, Congress is “to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” eventually giving the federal government the sole authority over immigration. 1789: Bill of Rights outlines basic rights under the new government. 1790: Naturalization Act of 1790 provides the first rules to be followed by the United States in granting national citizenship to “free white people.” 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo extends citizenship to all inhabitants living in the territory annexed to the United States following the Mexican War. 1865: Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery, although it did not grant formerly enslaved persons the full rights of citizenship. 1868: Fourteenth Amendment grants that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens and are guaranteed “equal protection of the laws.” 1870: Naturalization Act of 1870 extends naturalization rights to former African slaves not born in the United States; Asian immigrants remain excluded from citizenship. 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 is the first U.S. law to ban immigration based on race or nationality; it would be repealed in 1943. 1898: U.S. Supreme Court rules in United States v. Wong Kim Ark that any child born in the United States, regardless of race or parents’ citizenship status, is an American citizen. 1917: Jones-Shafroth Act grants U.S. citizenship to residents of Puerto Rico. 1921: First quota law is passed limiting the annual number of immigrants based on country of origin. 1924: Indian Citizenship Act extends U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans. 1940: Alien Registration Act requires all non-citizen adults to register with the government and empowers the president to deport foreigners suspected of espionage or being a security risk. 1952: Immigration and Nationality Act eliminates race as a bar to immigration or citizenship. 1965: Hart-Celler Act abolishes the national origins quota system, replacing it with a preference system that focuses on immigrants' skills and family relationships with citizens or U.S. residents. 1986: Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 grants amnesty to millions of individuals living in the United States who entered the country before January 1, 1982. 2001: USA Patriot Act amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to broaden the scope of aliens ineligible for admission or deportation to include terrorist activities.
159. VHSDEM_220515_1092.JPG: A Nation Only for Some Ku Klux Klan marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, August 8, 1925 At the height of their political power the Ku Klux Klan, in 1925, brought to the nation’s capital over 40,000 members in full regalia to promote their ideals of white Christian supremacy before the public.Out of belief or fear, many Americans sought to limit diversity in the United States. Ku Klux Klan Founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, the Ku Klux Klan combated post-Civil War reforms and terrorized freed African Americans in the former Confederacy. Dormant for decades, by the mid-1920s a reconstructed Klan was again a powerful political force in both the South and the North, spreading hatred against African Americans, immigrants, Catholics, and Jews. Klan membership plummeted after a series of scandals involving its leadership. Although never as powerful as it was in the 1920s, Klan organizations rose to oppose the growing civil rights movements of the 1950s and ’60s.
160. VHSDEM_220515_1099.JPG: Know-Nothing Party The American Party, also called the Know-Nothings, was a major national political force in the 1850s. It saw immigrants and Catholics as the greatest threat to self-government and to the nation. Arguing for rule by native-born Protestants, the Know-Nothings ran former President Millard Fillmore as their presidential candidate in the 1856 election. Though James Buchanan won the presidency, Fillmore received over 21 percent of the vote. During the Civil War the movement fractured and largely disappeared, but fear and distrust of new immigrants remained within the core beliefs of many future political movements. Know Nothing Poster, 1854 Advertising broadside for The Dollar Weekly Times, an American Party-affiliated newspaper, 1850s
161. VHSDEM_220515_1109.JPG: Americanize America From 1880 to 1920 over 20 million people, largely from eastern and southern Europe, came to the United States. In response, the government and industries developed Americanization programs to turn the foreign-born into patriotic citizens by teaching “real American” values and English.
162. VHSDEM_220515_1111.JPG: “The Mortar of Assimilation,” Puck, June 26, 1889 Although the ideal of Americanization was to welcome all foreigners, some groups were viewed as too disruptive for the rest of the pot. In this example, Irish radicals were seen as too unruly to mix in.
163. VHSDEM_220515_1120.JPG: Poster, "Many Peoples One Nation" This poster, issued by the private National Americanization Committee and distributed by the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Education, represents the ideals of the Americanization movement through the use of the flag and its symbolic message expressed in verse.
164. VHSDEM_220515_1127.JPG: The Melting Pot Graduation ceremony, 1916 The Ford Motor Company dramatized the ideals of Americanization in its elaborate English school graduation pageants. Workers in foreign dress entered into a giant pot stirred by the school’s teachers and emerged in their best “American” clothes waving United States flags.
165. VHSDEM_220515_1134.JPG: Celebrating Diversity School pageant with the teacher dressed as the Statue of Liberty surrounded by students from the Lower East Side of New York wearing traditional costumes, around 1910
166. VHSDEM_220515_1143.JPG: Love It or Leave It This 1970s bumper sticker was directed at anti-Vietnam War protesters and the counter-culture they represented, but the calls for exclusion of certain groups span the history of the nation. Americans desiring a more homogeneous citizenry did not limit their restrictions to certain ethnic and racial groups, but also sought to exclude those of differing political, social, and economic philosophies, religious beliefs, or sexual orientations.
167. VHSDEM_220515_1149.JPG: Bumper sticker, 1970s
168. VHSDEM_220515_1152.JPG: Courting the “Ethnic Vote” Reflected in the long history of American politics is a recognition, and sometimes a celebration, of the diversity of the nation’s electorate.
169. VHSDEM_220515_1158.JPG: Defining Citizenship Americans have prided themselves on being a nation of immigrants who helped to build the country and enriched its society and culture. Yet there has been an ongoing tension between welcoming newcomers and being concerned that the character of the nation might be changed. From the earliest years of the Republic, laws, representing various points of view, have been passed and guidelines have been developed to instruct prospective citizens on American history, values, rights, and responsibilities. Becoming Americans New citizens taking the Oath of Allegiance as part of their naturalization ceremony, Chicago, October 13, 1939
170. VHSDEM_220515_1166.JPG: Proud Americans Arab American children from the Nicola family, around 1920
171. VHSDEM_220515_1173.JPG: How to Become a Citizen of the United States, 1926 Though a key requirement of citizenship is learning English, many guides are still available in the native languages of new immigrants. The Foreign Language Information Service provided translations in thirteen European languages.
172. VHSDEM_220515_1174.JPG: Gateway to Citizenship: A Manual of Principles and Procedures, 1948 This guide includes President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s January 1941 “Four Freedoms” message to Congress, along with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, the historic founding documents new immigrants are required to study. A section of “Statements by Foreign-Born Americans” was added and included such notables as Albert Einstein.
173. VHSDEM_220515_1181.JPG: Do We Need a Shared National Identity? Following independence, citizens of the new nation sought to forge their own identity and create a unique history. They established holidays such as the Fourth of July and later Thanksgiving Day and chronicled the story of America from the landing at Plymouth Rock through the Founding Fathers and the Revolutionary War. In part Americans did so not only for themselves, but also to instill in future generations a shared ideal of citizenship. An ongoing debate resulted: if there were to be common beliefs and a national narrative that expressed the values of the nation, what should be included?
174. VHSDEM_220515_1183.JPG: Student Demonstration Colorado students protesting a proposal by the Jefferson County School Board to emphasize patriotism and downplay civil unrest in school curriculum, October 2, 2014
175. VHSDEM_220515_1188.JPG: A New National Holiday Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, transformed the civil rights leader into an icon of the struggle to fulfill the American promise of equality for all. This panel is from the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, a demonstration in Washington, D.C., which King helped to organize but did not live to see. On April 8, 1968, four days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Congressman John Conyers introduced a bill to establish a federal holiday in his honor. For advocates of the legislation it was an effort to place Dr. King and the civil rights movement into the national narrative. It took years of organizing to overcome strong resistance. In 1983 the King Holiday bill was signed into law. Initially only twenty-seven states officially acknowledged the holiday. Not until 2000 did all fifty states recognize the day.
176. VHSDEM_220515_1198.JPG: Creating the Father of Our Country Mason Locke Weems’s biography of George Washington became the most widely read 19th century book about the Revolutionary War and its celebrated hero. Weems recounted many familiar anecdotes about Washington, including the famous story of the cherry tree, and helped to establish a national narrative that cemented Founding Fathers in our national consciousness. Washington’s stature as Father of our Country is borne out by the dozens of pageants and plays that celebrated the bicentennial of his birth and continue today.
177. VHSDEM_220515_1208.JPG: The Pledge of Allegiance Francis Bellamy wrote the original Pledge of Allegiance. It was first published in The Youth's Companion to coincide with the dedication of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago on October 21, 1892, as a way to instill American nationalism through flag ceremonies. The pledge was quickly adopted across the country. Photograph by Jacob Riis of students in Mott Street Industrial School saluting the flag, New York City, around 1892
178. VHSDEM_220515_1221.JPG: Teaching American History Since the 1990s there have been many attempts to establish national standards for teaching American history. These efforts have sparked contentious debates over how much schools should focus on teaching patriotic values and the history of the nation through the Founding Fathers and aspirational figures, or teaching historical understanding and the stories of less famous and diverse people and groups. Schools throughout the nation have struggled to find the right balance appropriate for their communities.
179. VHSDEM_220515_1224.JPG: What are the Rights and Responsibilities of Citizens? The founding generation of American political leaders asserted that the independent nation would be based on the ideal that its citizens had the right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” and that the government under the Constitution was designed to “promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” With these rights, they believed, came responsibilities that citizens needed to assume in order to fulfill the promise of the new nation. These lofty goals and principles never had a singular interpretation and over time have led to differing ideas and heated debates. All for One World War I poster produced for the Bureau of Education
180. VHSDEM_220515_1228.JPG: Responsibilities A Citizen’s Jury In a nation based on the sovereignty of the people, the jury system is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. Established under the Constitution is the right to an impartial jury of one’s peers. This right also implies an obligation of citizens to serve as members of a jury. Photograph of jury listening to evidence, Louisville, Kentucky, 1954
181. VHSDEM_220515_1239.JPG: Responsibilities The Virtuous Citizen Of the many core responsibilities of citizenship, the most basic has been being a “good citizen.” The founding generation believed that liberty and freedom could only survive if the Republic and its people were virtuous. For them, and still today, this means respecting the country’s institutions, fulfilling civic duties, contributing to the community, and generally being a good neighbor.
182. VHSDEM_220515_1248.JPG: Responsibilities The United States Census The U.S. Constitution requires that the federal government take a census every ten years. Citizens are required by law to be counted and to participate in this fundamental aspect of the democratic process. The primary purpose of the census is to allocate seats in the House of Representatives to the states according to their population.
183. VHSDEM_220515_1251.JPG: Responsibilities Military Service The scope and brutality of the Civil War quickly challenged the military resources of the North and South. The Confederacy and the Union established general compulsory military service. Many considered the draft an infringement on their individual liberty. Critics charged class discrimination, as the North and South draft laws provided financial ways to avoid service. The debate over a military draft has continued ever since. Today all men are required to register for Selective Service at eighteen years of age.
184. VHSDEM_220515_1254.JPG: Responsibilities Taxes The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1913, granted Congress the power to impose a federal income tax on individuals. The concept of contributing your fair share is widely held, but agreeing on what that is all depends on who is paying the bill.
185. VHSDEM_220515_1272.JPG: Right to an Education Though not guaranteed by the Constitution, Americans have largely agreed that an educated citizenry is a requirement for a healthy democracy. The more controversial question was: should it and can it be equal and open to all? On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that public schools segregated by race were unconstitutional, stating “in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” Through their decision, the Court entered into the ongoing debate of whether education should be a right of every citizen.
186. VHSDEM_220515_1280.JPG: Right to Health Care Citizens have turned to the government to advance public health, whether combating yellow fever epidemics in the 1790s or funding cancer research in the 21st century. In the 2000s the long-debated subject of national health care became a hotly contested political issue. The central question was: should all citizens have the right to medical care, and if so, how should it be made available? Rally for health care reform, New York City, September 22, 2009
187. VHSDEM_220515_1287.JPG: The Right to Bear Arms The Second Amendment of the Constitution granted that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The debate over what this right actually means is highly contested. Equal Rights for All The most basic right of citizenship has been equal access and protection under the law. The fight to extend this right to all began before the Declaration of Independence proclaimed “all men are created equal,” and continues today.
188. VHSDEM_220515_1289.JPG: A Meaningful Job Is freedom from want the right of all Americans? What responsibility does the nation have to provide employment to its citizens? In response to economic crisis, at times the government has enacted massive employment programs. One such program, the Works Progress Administration, employed as many as eight million people during the depression of the 1930s. Federal legislation enacted in 1964 led to the establishment of the Office of Economic Opportunity as part of the “War on Poverty.”
189. VHSDEM_220515_1308.JPG: The Four Freedoms In defense of democracies around the world, President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his annual message to Congress on January 6, 1941, articulated the aims of the nation facing the threat of a world at war. “We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms,” he stated. Two of these freedoms were specifically included in the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Two were freedoms deeply desired by a generation confronted by economic depression and the threat of dictatorships, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Artist Norman Rockwell dramatized those aims in a series of paintings that appeared as covers for the Saturday Evening Post and as posters produced by the Office of War Information for its war bond campaign in 1943.
190. VHSDEM_220515_1320.JPG: Uncle Sam By the mid-19th century Uncle Sam became the most recognizable personification of the U.S. government. Rather than an authority figure, he most often was portrayed with affection and used as an emblem of national kinship to Wilburt E. Leppien wore this costume and handed out these printed cards. Leppien first appeared as Uncle Sam in 1956 and took part in numerous ceremonies and parades across the country, including five presidential inaugurations.
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