Medalet promoting the Republican Party and Abraham Lincoln for president, 1860. Brass. DeWitt AL 1860-60.
Obv. Inscription around, MILLIONS FOR FREEDOM, enclosing center, NOT/ ONE/ CENT/, in a semicircle below, FOR SLAVERY. Rev. Around, SUCCESS TO REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES, enclosing displayed eagle with shield on breast, olive branch in right talon and arrows in left.
Listed in his standard reference, American Political Badges and Medalets, as a pro-Lincoln item, DeWitt states that this medalet was "probably one of the earliest pieces of the campaign." Fashioned after an earlier Whig token (Low 58), it demonstrates the centrality of the slavery issue to the Republican platform. Lincoln himself tried to remain neutral on the question, opposing only the extension of slavery into the territories, avoiding the political powder keg of abolition (his circumspection, of course, was lost on Southern fire-eaters, who saw only another "Black Republican").
We offer a choice specimen.
