[McClellan, George B.]: [Election of 1864]:

$2,250 · Offered by William Reese Company

THE CHICAGO PLATFORM AND CANDIDATE [caption title]. A rare Currier and Ives print from the presidential election of 1864, satirizing the Democratic presidential candidate and former general, George B. McClellan, as an equivocating hypocrite. As Neely and Holzer explain, the presidential campaign of 1864 inspired a flurry of "separate-sheet display cartoons: thought-provoking, witty, but often cruel lampoons that struck hard at the most divisive political and personal issues of 1864. In these cartoons one can see illustrated vividly the raw toughness of the campaign as well as the skill of the artists who covered it." These prints, they note, could be "vicious: personal, mean-spirited, cruel, race-baiting, and divisive," and, in this context, McClellan, "[t]he military man now running on a peace platform made for one obvious target." The image here shows a two-faced McClellan at center, standing atop rickety planks - a literal representation of the Democratic party's Chicago peace platform - and holding a copy of his letter of acceptance. The planks are supported precariously at each corner on the shoulders of four figures: Confederate president Jefferson Davis; New York congressman and prominent Copperhead Fernando Wood; another Copperhead and the author of the Chicago platform, Clement Vallandigham; and "Jeffs friend," the devil. Standing on opposite sides of the image are representatives of each of the constituencies to whom the two-faced McClellan is pandering: a uniformed

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