DALLAS, TX.- The painted flag, adorned with a campaign catchphrase surrounded by flowers, is 180 years old. It's also as timely as today's tweets and tomorrow's headlines.

"HARRISON AND REFORM.,” says one of the handful of presidential-campaign flags offered in Heritage Auctions' Americana & Political event taking place Sept. 14-15. That was the slogan of William Henry Harrison at a time when the United States of America teetered on the precipice of economic ruin sparked by the Panic of 1837 and the long-lasting depression that followed. Banks began failing; unemployment spiked; prices for agricultural exports plummeted.

A crisis wrought largely by President Andrew Jackson, who ordered the withdrawal of federal government funds from the Bank of the United States, was only worsened by his successor (and acolyte) Martin Van Buren. Into the maelstrom stepped Harrison, at the time considered a national hero after waging war on Native Americans in the fall of 1811 along the Tippecanoe Creek in current-day Indiana.

Running as a Whig in 1840, Harrison presented himself as the hero of Tippecanoe and The American Everyman — "a humble, simple man in the dress of the working class,” according to the University of Virginia's Miller Center, described on its website as a "nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Virginia that specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history.” Van Buren, on the other hand, was portrayed in songs and speeches as "a decadent snob who ate off expensive dinnerware and liked to perfume himself.”

Harrison's political persona was pure invention: He was born into wealth and lived in luxury. But an electorate desperate for change drank it up, literally, as Harrison's campaign events often included the distribution of E.C. Booz-distilled whiskey in bottles shaped like log cabins (if you were ever wondering where the word "booze” originated). There was the campaign song "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too.” And there was the dispensing of campaign pins and flags adorned with the simple slogan "Harrison and Reform.”

In other words, Harrison's 1840 campaign for the American presidency created the template for every political operation that followed.

"He's arguably the first person to campaign for the presidency,” says Jeff Bridgman, a Pennsylvania-based dealer of antique American flags. "And Harrison was certainly the first candidate for whom a significant number of flags and banners were made.”




Harrison, of course, went on to serve the shortest term of any president: He died of pneumonia, likely contracted during his inauguration, but a month after his swearing-in.

The "HARRISON AND REFORM.” flag is not alone in Heritage's upcoming event.

Here, too, is the "Horatio Seymour for President” Greenback flag – an extraordinarily rare and rather beautiful piece depicting the (rather unpopular) former New York governor's run for president in 1868. Seymour's known as the reluctant candidate as twice before he had declined the Democratic Party's nomination for president, and only became the nominee in 1868 because he was the convention's chairman and no one else wanted the job.

Perhaps the rest of the pack could foresee the inevitable: a landslide victory by Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War hero.

"Not only is this a portrait flag, which is important to collectors, but it has this great bill — the greenback — and Lady Columbia and all these wonderful campaign slogans,” says Bridgman. "And the star pattern, the circle and a square, is fantastic.”

The campaign flag for James Garfield and Chester A. Arthur's 1880 run is like Garfield's campaign itself — rather unassuming, with the candidates' names emblazed on a panel affixed to the fabric as was once common. Its design was like that of most Civil War-era flags, but it's also quite large — 81 inches by 42 inches.

"Showy,” says Bridgman, a flag meant to be seen by many and from far away.

"Garfield was a civil War general, so it's interesting to see a Civil War flag used with a Civil War figure, and likely this was for a Civil War audience,” says Bridgman. "Most of the voters in the north at the time were veterans, and that's who you really wanted.”

Garfield, too, served a short term in office — a mere six months, having been wounded and eventually felled by assassin Charles Julius Guiteau. The slain president was a civil-rights champion, and it has often been said his was the presidency with great promise left unfulfilled. From the National Park Service's website: "He enhanced the power and prestige of the office of the presidency. He had plans for bringing the country back together after the mess of Reconstruction and it would have been interesting to see those results. James Garfield is the great 'What if' president.”