Introduction

Buttons and banners, ribbons and posters, coffee mugs and whiskey flasks, match books and mouse pads. For nearly 200 years, presidential candidates and their supporters have used almost every means available to attract votes. Though television and the internet may have replaced the torchlight parades and "whistle-stop" tours of the past, getting the message out remains the primary objective of every presidential campaign.

As a hobbyist and collector of American presidential memorabilia, Dr. Allen Frey has assembled a chronological, visual summary of every presidential election. Photographs of more than 100 authentic historical items from his collection present a pictorial record of the personalities, themes, slogans, and issues of our nation’s elections. Every election has a page dedicated to it and includes a concise summary of the major features of the election. All of the items that appear in this online exhibition are from the Allen Frey Collection. Many of these objects and the accompanying text are also featured in Dr. Frey’s book, Getting the Message Out: A Collector's View of Presidential Campaigns. Dr. Frey's book, Getting the Message Out: A Collector's View of Presidential Campaigns, is available for purchase at http://www.amazon.com/.

Credits

All campaign memorabilia and text contained in this online exhibition are from the Allen Frey Collection

Website developer: Greg Hansard

Photography: Meg Eastman

Website text editor: Graham T. Dozier

Special thanks to Virginia Historical Society Registrar, Rebecca Rose

Header image designed by Jennifer Rohrbaugh Nesossis

Related Resources

Political Campaigning: From the Collection of Allen Frey (2010 Online Exhibition)
As Americans experience the congressional and gubernatorial campaigns of 2010 and examine the results of their selections, the Virginia Historical Society turns—as it has done before—to local collector Allen Frey to see what the past can tell us about the present. We have placed online a dozen examples drawn from Dr. Frey's collection of American presidential campaign materials, to see if politicians and campaigns of the past were as vitriolic as they are today. View Political Campaigning from the collection of Allen Frey

Getting the Message Out: A Collector's View of Presidential Campaigns (2012 Publication)
Buttons and banners, ribbons and posters,coffee mugs and whiskey flasks, match books and mouse pads; for almost 200 years, presidential candidates and their supporters have used almost every means available to attract votes.Though T.V. and the Internet may have replaced the torchlight parades and "whistle-stop" speeches of the past, getting the message out remains the primary objective of every presidential campaign. As a hobbyist and collector of American presidential memorabilia, Dr. Allen Frey has assembled a chronological, visual summary of every presidential election. Photographs of over 500 authentic historical items from his collection present a pictoral summary of the personalities, themes, slogans and issues of our nations elections. An accompanying concise summary describes the major features of each election and offers interesting facts about many of the campaign items that were utilized. Purchase Getting the Message Out: A Collector's View of Presidential Campaigns