Existing comment:
Grand National Democratic Banner
James K. Polk, 1795-1849
George M. Dallas, 1792-1864
Politics and religion were the two great preoccupations of public culture in nineteenth-century America and were reflected in everything from great public debates to the smallest aspects of personal conduct. Politics was intensely partisan, and citizens followed politics with the fervor of modern sports fans. Voting rates were very high, and political campaigning was designed not only to get out the electorate but also to bind voters to a particular party. Parades, illuminations, and visual displays of all kinds, including this banner for the 1844 Democratic national ticket, all involved voters in the rituals of popular democracy. Widely disseminated by campaign machines, printed materials had helped revolutionize democratic politics by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Nathaniel Currie, 1844 |