Early American politics.

In the colonial period the wives of men in the public eye were far from shrinking violets. Take Martha Washington, for example. In October 1775, en route to Boston to join her husband and his troops, she stopped in Philadelphia where she was the guest of Washington's aide Joseph Reed. While there, she is said to have made a visit to the calico printer John Hewson, where she ordered a kerchief printed with an image of her husband on horseback. This is thought to be the forerunner of the American political kerchief, a form of boosterism that has been used to increase the public's awareness of political candidates since 1789.

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To coincide with the Republican National Convention taking place in New York City this month, the New-York Historical Society has organized an exhibition entitled If Elected: Campaigning for the Presidency, which is on view through November 3 and includes posters, broadsides, sheet music, lapel buttons, parade lanterns, ribbons, kerchiefs, banners, and flags. These last three comprise a group of seventy-five textiles that form a special component of the exhibition under the title "Campaigns on Cotton."

As John R. Monsky has written in the Winterthur Portfolio (Winter, 2002), "Handkerchiefs were not merely popular as items of clothing in colonial times. They were often printed with significant information, such as maps that could be folded into one's pocket or charts containing tabular information such as London cab fares for certain distances." They were also a relatively inexpensive but durable way to promote either a presidential candidate or one of the major issues of his campaign.

The presidential campaign of 1840 marked a turning point in electioneering ...