Packaging Presidents: Two Centuries of Campaigns and Candidates
Library of Congress Resources
Exhibits, Presentations and Collections
Wise Guide
On the Campaign Trail. The "Wise Guide" was designed to introduce visitors to the many fascinating, educational and useful resources available from the nation’s library. The "Wise Guide" is refreshed monthly, like a magazine, and offers links to the best of the Library’s online materials. Each article is based on items in a collection, database, reading room or other area of the Library’s online presence.
Prints and Photographs
Prints and Photographs Division: Cartoon Prints, American. Link to more than 500 political prints made in America during the 18th and 19th centuries. Search the entire collection by subject or click on the terms "political cartoons" or "caricatures."
Prints and Photographs Pictorial Americana. Pictorial Americana, a 1955 Library of Congress publication, is being prepared for the Internet in stages. Images from the campaigns from 1836 through 1908 are featured.
American Memory Collections
American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I and the 1920 Election, 1918-1920. The Nation's Forum Collection consists of fifty-nine sound recordings of speeches by American leaders from 1918-20. The speeches focus on issues and events surrounding the First World War and the subsequent presidential election of 1920. Speakers include: Warren G. Harding, James Cox, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Samuel Gompers, Henry Cabot Lodge, and John J. Pershing. Speeches range from one to five minutes.
The Printed Ephemera collection is a rich repository of Americana. The collection comprises 28,000 primary-source items dating from the 17th century to the present and encompasses key events and eras in American history. While the broadside format represents the bulk of the collection, there are leaflets, pamphlets, proclamations, advertisements, blank forms, programs, election tickets, catalogs, clippings, timetables, and menus. They capture the everyday activities of ordinary people who participated in the events of nation-building.
America Singing: Nineteenth Century Song Sheets. For most of the nineteenth century, before the advent of phonograph and radio technologies, Americans learned the latest songs from printed song sheets. Not to be confused with sheet music, song sheets are single printed sheets, usually six by eight inches, with lyrics but no music. These were new songs being sung in music halls or new lyrics to familiar songs, like "Yankee Doodle". Some of America's most beloved tunes were printed as song sheets, including "The Star Spangled Banner" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic". Song sheets are an early example of a mass medium and today they offer a unique perspective on the political, social, and economic life of the time, especially during the Civil War. Some were dramatic, some were humorous; all of them had America joining together in song.
Exhibits
Herblock’s History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium. From the stock market crash in 1929 through the new millennium beginning in the year 2000, Herb Block has chronicled the nation's political history, caricaturing twelve American presidents from Herbert Hoover to Bill Clinton. Block's cartoons on presidential campaigns typically caricature candidates, question party platforms and monitor the candidates' claims and attacks on each other, as he delves into their records and tactics. In the 2000 presidential campaign—his eighteenth as a cartoonist—he deals with issues that include the role of religion within the political arena and the need for campaign finance reform. Within the collection be sure to visit "Presidents" and "Hare and Tortoise." Accessed January 13, 2008
Humor’s Edge: Cartoons by Ann Telnaes. Ann Telnaes became the second woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, a highly competitive field in which fewer than 5 percent of the practitioners are women. The Pulitzer Prize committee awarded her the prize for "a distinguished cartoon or portfolio of cartoons published during the year, characterized by originality, editorial effectiveness, quality of drawing, and pictorial effect". Her drawings exemplify these qualities in dynamic, inventive compositions, which capture humorous and dismaying aspects of the election, communicate the candidates' foibles and flaws, and convey her unflinching views on the roles of the Florida legislature and U.S. Supreme Court in the election's outcome. Accessed January 13, 2008
Oliphant’s Anthem Pat Oliphant at the Library of Congress. Pat Oliphant won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1966, just two years after he left his native Australia for an American career. Now, thirty years later, he is considered among the most gifted practitioners in the history of the profession. He has caricatured seven United States presidents, from Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton. Be sure to visit exhibit section #3 Presidential Campaigns. Accessed January 13, 2008
Illinois Learning Standards
The following Illinois Learning Standards and Goals may be addressed when teaching topics within Packaging Presidents.
Language Arts
Goal 1: Read with understanding and fluency.
- Apply word analysis and vocabulary skills to comprehend selections.
- Apply reading strategies to improve understanding and fluency.
- Comprehend a broad range of reading materials.
Goal 2: Read and understand literature representative of various societies, eras and ideas.
- Understand how literary elements and techniques are used to convey meaning.
Goal 3: Write to communicate for a variety of purposes.
- Use correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and structure.
- Compose well-organized and coherent writing for specific purposes and audiences.
- Communicate ideas in writing to accomplish a variety of purposes.
Goal 4: Listen and speak effectively in a variety of situations.
- Listen effectively in formal and informal situations.
Goal 5: Use the language arts to acquire, assess and communicate information.
- Locate, organize, and use information from various sources to answer questions, solve problems and communicate ideas.
- Analyze and evaluate information acquired from various sources.
- Apply acquired information, concepts and ideas to communicate in a variety of formats.
Social Studies
Goal 14: Understand political systems, with an emphasis on the United States.
- Understand and explain basic principles of the US government.
- Understand the structures and functions of the political systems of Illinois, the US and other nations.
- Understand election processes and responsibilities of citizens.
- Understand the roles and influences of individuals and interest groups in the political systems of Illinois, the US and other nations.
- Understand US foreign policy as it related to other nations and international.
- Understand the development of the US political ideas and traditions.
Goal 16: Understand events, trends, individuals and movements shaping the history of Illinois, the United States and other nations.
- Apply the skills of historical analysis and interpretation.
- Understand the development of significant political events.
- Understand the development of economic systems.
- Understand Illinois, US and world social history.
- Understand Illinois, US and world environmental history.
Goal 17: Understand social systems, with an emphasis on the United States. Understand social systems, with an emphasis on the united States.
- Locate, describe and explain places, regions and features on the Earth.
- Analyze and explain characteristics and interactions of the Earth’s physical systems.
- Understand relationships between geographic factors and society.
- Understand the historical significance of geography.
Goal 18 – Understand social systems, with an emphasis on the U.S.
- Compare characteristics of culture as reflected in language, literature, the arts, traditions and institutions.
- Understand the roles and interactions of individuals and groups in society.
- Understand how social systems form and develop over time.
Fine Arts
Goal 25: Know the language of the arts.
- Understand the sensory elements, organizational principles and expressive qualities of the arts.
Goal 27: Understand the role of the arts in civilizations, past and present.
- Analyze how the arts function in history, society and everyday life.
