Description:

Lincoln Abraham


Abraham Lincoln 1860 Campaign Token from Holzer Collection

 

This 1860 campaign token with tintypes of the candidates inset was owned by prominent Lincolniana Collector Harold Holzer.

 

Campaign Token with Tintype Images, c. 1860. Recto reads “Abraham Lincoln / 1860,” and verso reads “Hannibal Hamlin / 1860.”  Pasted into a period case measuring 1.75" x 2". The hole in the top allowed the supporter to attach the token to a string or chain and wear it as a medallion, .75" round. Some flaws in Lincoln's image.

 

 Historical Background

After Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination for the Presidency in May 1860, and the Convention selected Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as his running mate, he faced a divided Democratic Party and a compromise-oriented Constitutional Union Party at the national election in November. Although Lincoln and Hamlin were not even on the ballot in many southern states, they swept the free states except for a divided New Jersey, and gained 180 votes in the Electoral College, well over the 152 needed to win.

 

As with many political campaigns before and after, posters, slogans, buttons, and other ephemera played an important role in the 1860 presidential election. They bolstered the already committed and sought to convince the reluctant and undecided of their candidate’s virtues or the opposing candidate’s vices. They sometimes suggested campaign strategy and the temperament of the times. This button is among the first to use photographic images of the candidates in the design.

 

The tintype of Lincoln is a copy of an 1858 ambrotype, probably taken in Peoria, Illinois. The use of photography in political campaigns was still unusual at the time, and most campaign buttons did not have photographic images of the candidates, making this token particularly rare.

 

Provenance: This piece is from the collection of Harold Holzer (b. 1949), a prominent Lincoln scholar and collector of Lincolniana. He is the author or editor of fifty-two books, most on Abraham Lincoln, and specializes in representations of Lincoln in visual culture. Holzer was senior vice president for public affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from 1992 to 2015 and served as co-chair of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission from 2000 to 2010.

 

 

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