[Reconstruction]: [Pennsylvania Elections]:

$1,200 · Offered by William Reese Company

SALT RIVER EXPRESS WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1868 [caption title]. A very rare "Salt River" broadside from the Philadelphia mayoral election of 1868, celebrating the Democratic victory and the city's repudiation of Radical Republicanism. From the 1840s, "Salt River" became popular political iconography – a candidate's trip "up Salt River" meant a one-way ticket to political ruin. The phrase is said to have originated when presidential candidate Henry Clay (running against Andrew Jackson) hired a boatman to row him up the Ohio River to Louisville to make a speech:"The boatman, said to be a Jackson man, rowed Clay up Salt River [a tributary of the Ohio] instead, and Clay failed to reach Louisville in time for his speech. His defeat for the Presidency brought later derisive references to this incident, and Representative Alexander Duncan (Ohio, [Democrat]), gifted in coining apt terms, probably first used the expression, 'they have been rowing up Salt River,' in a speech in the House in 1839, to describe the futility of the opposition party" - DAH.Philadelphia, stolidly Republican throughout the Civil War, soon reversed course after the end of hostilities, becoming one of the more conservative of the major Northern cities:"The Democratic Party of Philadelphia made opposition to black rights a centerpiece of its political culture. As black activists seeking to reconstruct Philadelphia increasingly allied themselves with state and national Republicans in order to fight for racial equ

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