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The Election of 1800 was a bitter partisan battle. This article highlights the opposition felt towards incumbent president John Adams, focusing on both political and moral failings on his behalf. Adams would go on to lose New York’s vote and the presidency.

In this cartoon from 1797, as Monticello Classroom explains, "Jefferson’s political enemies portrayed the then-vice-president as dangerously pro-French, un-Christian, and un-American. Jefferson kneels ready to sacrifice the U.S. Constitution …[as] God and an American eagle oppose him, as Satan happily looks on.”

Thomas Paine did not hesitate to critique John Adams and the federalist party during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. As a result, federalists published this image of Thomas Paine working with the devil to bring down the Nation.

According to the Library of Congress, “State and federal laws governing elections and citizenship are listed in this anonymous broadside, clearly published with an eye to the elections leading up to the national presidential election of 1800. In Pennsylvania, Federalists and Republicans battled to elect supporters for the state legislature so that they could control the selection of presidential electors. In the end, Pennsylvania’s electors split their votes between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.”

Newspapers during the Election of 1800 were very partisan and did not shy away from personal and private attacks on candidates. Samuel Harrison Smith started the National Intelligencer as a Republican affiliated paper at the behest of Thomas Jefferson.

James Calendar was a partisan editor who wrote this piece denouncing John Adams on the basis of his moral failings.

The election of 1860 came with stark partisanship between candidates Abraham LIncoln, John Bell, Stephen A. Douglas, and John C. Breckinridge. In this cartoon, Lincoln wins “The National Game” by using his "good bat" –– a wooden rail labeled "Equal Rights and Free Territory.”

This political cartoon is anti-Lincoln, pointing to his leadership as the reason for the South seceding from the Union.

In this cartoon, Lincoln is dressed as a “Wide Awake,” a member of a Republican-supporting youth group in the North. In the background, we see incumbent James Buchanan helping the other presidential candidates through the window of the White House. This depicts the partisan splits leading up to the 1860 election.

The intense partisan debates around the Election of 1860 alluded to the coming violence and secession of the Civil War. In this cartoon,  each candidate works to pull the “National Map” further apart.

The “Wide-Awakes,” a youth movement, formed first in Hartford, Connecticut in 1860. Influenced by published writings and songs about their movement, clubs formed throughout the north and midwest. The groups were Republican-leaning, abolitionist, and increasingly paramilitary over the course of the year leading up to the election.

This image ran in Harper’s Weekly and shows the Wide-Awakes carrying torches and wearing uniform capes at a rally in New York.

Prior to this event, presidential candidates had never before debated on television. Television introduced new challenges and offered new opportunities to the candidates; their appearances, body language, expressions, and live interactions were now broadcast to a wide audience for immediate scrutiny.

This letter concerns the use of television for the presidential debate, and the work required with ABC, NBC, and CBS to televise these debates.

This document describes an appearance by John F. Kennedy, then a candidate, on television. The importance of the new medium is emphasized in phrases such as, “Senator Kennedy . . . makes a planned, strong, and dramatic closing statement . . . which excites and brings the audience to its feet.”

This news article, published forty years after women received the right to vote, describes the limited role women have in the 1960 political conventions and campaign.

Message from Nixon to the pathbreaking Black baseball player Jackie Robinson on his contributions to the 1960 campaign, with a reference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. being jailed in Georgia.

This political cartoon is a commentary on the televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Television was a new medium in the 1960 presidential election; in the image, patriotic icons Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty watch the candidates wrestle on a giant television.

Political cartoon of presidential candidate Richard Nixon, from the 1960 presidential election.