The Presidental Election of 1860

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Every presidential election is a big event where everyone can participate and vote for the candidate that they think will carry out their promises and make the country progress. Campaigns from different candidates are presented to try and convince people for their vote. In these campaigns, the candidates will try to attract people with catchy slogans and then persuade them with their public speaking abilities; gaining their trust and vote. Among the campaigns, there will be people making cartoons about the presidential elections supporting a certain candidate or making fun of the candidates they are against off. These cartoons show people’s thoughts about the candidates; whether they believe that the candidates will fulfill their promises or not. Cartoons that were against a candidate, represent them in a mocking way and show the worst qualities of that candidate; yet, when the candidate was preferred, the cartoons displayed his best qualities and stand out the most.
One big election that caught my attention was The Election of 1860. First of all it caught my attention because among the candidates was Abraham Lincoln and as we know because of history, he won; second of all since I don’t know too much of the American History, he was the only one I knew among the others. Abraham Lincoln was elected as a candidate for the Republican Party, while the Democrats had two candidates, Stephen Douglas and John Breckinridge and the Union Party had John Bell. During the time of these elections the east coast was divided by the North and South; where the North, mostly republican supporters, were against slavery and wanted to abolish it. The South, in the contrary, was ruled by democrats, who supported slavery and wanted to keep it. Since the...

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...of images are more effective and clearer, it shows different candidates and you can differentiate who is making fun and praised. I think that the images for the campaigns shouldn’t be that hard to understand, first of all because some people might not get the meaning behind it, and just get the outside meaning. If you don’t get the metaphor or what the image stands for, you will make wrong assumptions that one candidate is better than other just because of who the images are making fun of. There were many people who were illiterate and could only base their votes on looking at the cartoons or hearing at the speeches of the candidates, they were easily influenced. Compared to now where there are still some people easily influenced, there are others who base their votes not only in the campaigns of the candidates, but on the candidate’s background and achievements.

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