[Pennsylvania Elections]: [Civil War]:

$2,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

SALT RIVER TELEGRAPH.—EXTRA. [with:] HO FOR SALT RIVER! [caption titles]. A pair of very rare "Salt River" political cartoons, one celebrating a Democratic victory and the other a Republican. The larger piece was printed before the expected (and achieved) victory of Democratic candidate Peter Lyle against Republican Joseph Cowell for Philadelphia Sheriff in 1867, and particularly criticizes Republican support for free Blacks. From the 1840s, "Salt River" became popular iconography in political caricature – a candidate's trip "up Salt River" meant a one-way ticket to political ruin. The phrase is colloquially said to have originated during the presidential campaign of 1832, when 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), 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" - Dictionary of American History V, p.19.The broadside itself includes a number of captioned vignettes, including two men (presumably Lyle and Cowell) engaged in a horse chase, with the caption "Stop that man

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