Beschreibung:

[Americana] [Jefferson, Thomas, and John Adams] Printed 1796 Presidential Campaign Handbill Extremely rare campaign handbill from the 1796 United States Presidential election, the first to feature emerging political parties "Who drew the Declaration of Independence, that great Charter of our Enfranchisement? Answer--Thomas Jefferson" No place, no date (Maryland, ca. November-December, 1796). Small bifolium sheet, 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 in. (197 x 121 mm). Printed campaign handbill; uncut sheet including another copy of same. Creasing from when folded; toned and lightly spotted; bottom edge worn; small open tear at fold on second leaf. An extremely rare, and unrecorded, pro-Thomas Jefferson handbill from the 1796 presidential election. This was only the third presidential election in the history of the United States, and the first one to be contested by nascent political parties, the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists. It was the first presidential election where partisan affiliation began to play a significant role, and it was the first to use campaigning tactics to influence voting, such as the printing of handbills and pamphlets such as this, and the use of party operatives to organize campaign strategy and voting drives. The election pitted former Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson against Vice President John Adams It is the only presidential election that saw the president and vice president elected from opposing parties, with Adams elected president and Jefferson vice president. This handbill takes the form of a catechism in support of Thomas Jefferson featuring ten questions and ten answers. In the 1790s the catechistic format was often used as a pedagogical tool by political activists to teach voters to be partisans and party members, as it was a format familiar to most lay readers. The text highlights Jefferson's achievements as a statesman, politician, and defender of America from foreign influence, while casting Adams and his Federalist colleagues--specifically Alexander Hamilton--as monarchists and "miscreants." While the handbill is not dated, the contents of it, as well as its appearance in newspapers of the time, place its printing in the fall of 1796. References to various issues that were important in the 1796 election are mentioned, for example, in the fourth question, the Neutrality Proclamation of 1793; in the fifth question, the Genêt Affair; in the sixth question the trial of Gideon Henfield; in the seventh question, the 1791 Declaration of Pillnitz. Other issues are referred to--although not unique to the 1796 election, as they were also campaign issues in 1800--such as Thomas Jefferson's term as the governor of Virginia and his purported dereliction of duty during the American Revolution in the face of invading British troops, in question eight (the first public charge of cowardice by Jefferson was made by Virginia lawyer Charles Simms in September 1796), and Adams's and Hamilton's supposed support of monarchy and hereditary government in the last question (stemming from Adams's Defence of the Constitutions of the Government of the United States of America in 1787, and Hamilton's June 18, 1787 speech at the Constitutional Convention). In The First Presidential Contest: 1796 and the Founding of American Democracy, historian Jeffrey L. Pasley writes, "One of the most economical and effective pro-Jefferson texts produced anywhere in 1796 came out of the Eastern Shore town of Easton [Maryland]. This was a catechism that succinctly taught the gospel of Thomas Jefferson as it would be passed down for generations, starting with the sacred text (Declaration of Independence) that up until this time had been only sporadically presented as a national mission statement and had not even been widely credited to Jefferson." Pasley locates four newspapers throughout the country that reprinted the text of this handbill: the first appearing in Easton in James Cowan's Maryland Herald and Eastern Shore Intelligencer, on