A Lincoln Campaign Piece Made of "Composition" Material
BillJones
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As most of you are aware, I collect presidential campaign tokens and (later) buttons from all of the elections. Lincoln is one of my specialties. It is rare for me to acquire a new Lincoln piece these days, but this one popped up in a recent Heritage auction from the Eric P. Newman collection.
The obverse features a bust of Lincoln in surprisingly high relief. The wording offers the usual innocuous information with the name of the candidate and the date of his birth.
The images and message on the reverse is far more interesting. It shows a fence rail and an ax in a log with the slogan, "Protection to honest industry." This picks up on the populist campaign theme "Lincoln the rail-splitter" which the 16th president used to divert attention from the fact that he had not split any rails for years, and was in fact a highly successful lawyer.
The implication is that "protection" was somehow going to benefit those who were engaged in hard, physical labor. Of course the beneficiaries were business owners who benefited from the fact that high tariffs or "protection" prevented or limited the importation of foreign goods. This allowed them to charge higher prices for their products, which was not at all to benefit of frontier farmers and wage earners. "Protection" had been a staple for the Whig Party ancestors of the Republican Party, and would be a feature of all GOP campaigns into the 20th century.
This piece is listed in DeWitt/Sullivan as AL 1860-46. It is made of something call "composition" which is decidedly non metallic. It is also listed to exist in copper and white metal. Given the high relief of the Lincoln portrait it would be interesting to know how a private minter would have been able to strike this design effectively on a mass production basis. Perhaps that's why the "composition" pieces were made.
The piece is holed for suspension (hfs) and is shown in DeWitt/Sullivan mounted on a metal Union shield hanger. The piece that I purchased was probably on a hanger at one time, but it is now in an NGC slab with a grade of MS-64.
I would to love to learn more about the "composition" or "lava" (as Heritage called it) material. If you any of you do more about it, I'd really like to read whatever you have to say.
Retired dealer and avid collector of U.S. type coins, 19th century presidential campaign medalets and selected medals. In recent years I have been working on a set of British coins - at least one coin from each king or queen who issued pieces that are collectible. I am also collecting at least one coin for each Roman emperor from Julius Caesar to ... ?
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Congratulations on acquiring it.
Although I have read a bit about the different materials used
for medallions and tokens, I can't bring much to the table on the subject.
As far as production with the high relief, that shouldn't have been a problem.
Most of the medals I collect are extremely high relief with hundreds of pieces made.
I would be very leery of forcing something like that, of unknown composition and strength, into a prong holder.
Lava was used in the 18th century to create jewelry such as cameo brooches.
Lava was carved, not molded, or struck.
Possibly gutta percha?
I would be very leery of forcing something like that, of unknown composition and strength, into a prong holder.
I would also be a little afraid of dropping it on a hard surface. Even gently.
Now I am curious. I want to know exactly what it is made of.
I thought of gutta percha first as well but who knows.
Like I don't have anything else I need to be doing...
It broke out around the exit almost like clay or terra cotta would.
Definitely doesn't look like metal.
I assumed that was the case with this type of material.
There also seems to be quite a few out there that were broken through when holed and repaired.
Oh well. Back out into the heat. I will bookmark this and search more later.
I love your new Lincoln. I like your explanation of the significance of the slogan on the reverse. I would like to add that the modern Republican party evolved to a considerable degree from the Free Soiler Movement. Farmers and wage earners alike felt particularly threatened by efforts to spread slavery northward and westward. Competition from slave labor, morality aside, would lower their incomes and diminish their ability to prosper and provide for their families. People of the mid west sought protection from domestic as well as foreign threats.
I very rarely post, but I love the knowledge which you and so many others freely share.
You bring up some interesting points. Yes, small farmers in the mid west and north were concerned about how slave labor could make it hard for them to compete because it was "cheep." On the other hand there were wage earners in the northern cities who didn't want to see the slaved freed because they thought that the freed slaves would compete with them for jobs and would lower their wages.
Few people realize it, but the Homestead Act was passed during the Lincoln Administration. Some people have said that this act was near to Lincoln's heart because of the problems his father had, when Lincoln was a child, in securing clear title to his land. Lincoln's father eventually gave up on the state of Kentucky because he twice lost court cases concerning the title to the land he was tilling.
Finally while the word "Protection" may have had different meaning to different people, it was pretty much related to protective tariffs soon after Lincoln's day. Here is an 1888 Benjamin Harrison piece that tried to get wage earners to support protective to protect them from "British pauper wages."
That's an interesting piece, Bill.
Congratulations on acquiring it.
Although I have read a bit about the different materials used
for medallions and tokens, I can't bring much to the table on the subject.
As far as production with the high relief, that shouldn't have been a problem.
Most of the medals I collect are extremely high relief with hundreds of pieces made.
Striking high relief images on a metal planchet is harder than you think. For a piece that has an image as high as the bust of Lincoln on this piece, it would have also most certainly taken more than one blow from the dies to bring up the image. Between each strike, the planchet had to be heated or annealed before it could be struck again. If it were to be struck without the re-annealing step, there was a good chance that it could split or crack because the metal was brittle from the previous strike.
This is one of the reasons why the 1907 High Relief $20 gold coins were hard to make at the Philadelphia Mint. Depending upon you want to believe it took from three to five blows to bring up Augustus St. Gaudens design. Gold is the most malleable of all metals, yet it too had to be annealed before each blow from the dies.
I don't have any idea as to how rare this Lincoln piece is in copper and white metal, but I doubt that there are very many of them around. My guess is that the maker found it easier to mold these pieces in the "composition" material.