c. 1856 Rare Silk Presidential Campaign Ribbon titled, "Fillmore & Donelson !," Printed by McCoull & Slater, Baltimore, Depicting a Portrait of Millard Fillmore beneath Crossed American Flags, for the American ("Know-Nothing") Party Presidential Ticket, Very Fine.
This scarce colorful bright Silk Campaign Ribbon, measures about 8 x 2.5 inches, printed with a pair of crossed rare design American Flags at top with a framed portrait bust of Millard Fillmore below, credited "McCoull & Slater, Print, 491 Baltimore Street". Nicely printed in bold red and blue lettering white silk, "FILLMORE & DONELSON !" running along the bottom. Some minor silk loss at the top edge, overall clean and handsome for display. Rare.


Millard Fillmore and Andrew Jackson Donelson campaigned in 1856 on the political ticket of the American Party, popularly known as the Know-Nothing Party, whose platform emphasized American nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment; the ticket was also endorsed that September by the remnant Whig Party at its final national convention, held in Baltimore.

Fillmore and Donelson ran against the eventual winner, Democrat James Buchanan, and the Republican John C. Fremont, and though the ticket carried more than twenty percent of the national popular vote, it won only Maryland's electoral votes, finishing a distant third. This ribbon was printed by McCoull & Slater, a short-lived Baltimore firm of "Plain and Fancy Book and Job Printers" operated by Robert McCoull and John Y. Slater from 1856 until their partnership dissolved in 1863.

The Maryland Center for History and Culture holds an example of this same ribbon, describing it as an early and rare color example of American Campaign ephemera.

Maryland was the only state Fillmore and Donelson carried in 1856, and Baltimore, where this ribbon was printed, was central to that result. The ticket won 55 percent of the vote in Maryland against just 21 percent nationally, a gap historians attribute in large part to the city's own turbulent political culture at the time.

Baltimore had earned the nickname "Mob Town" for its long history of election-day violence, and by the mid-1850s Know-Nothing-affiliated street gangs, with colorful names like the Plug Uglies, the Rip Raps, and the Blood Tubs, were locked in open combat with Democratic-aligned gangs at the polls.

The 1856 election season alone is estimated to have produced roughly 30 deaths and 350 injuries in the city. Tactics included "cooping," in which vulnerable men (the homeless, travelers, and intoxicated) were held captive and forced to vote repeatedly under different identities, and outright intimidation that kept opposing voters from the polls in entire wards.

By 1857, Know-Nothing candidates had swept Maryland's governorship, both houses of the state legislature, and its congressional delegation, prompting one historian to call Maryland "the banner Know Nothing constituency" in the country. The party's dominance proved short-lived, however; it never successfully built a national coalition, and by the time of the 1860 election, the growing crisis over Slavery and states' rights had eclipsed Nativism as the era's defining political issue.

The ribbon's printer, McCoull & Slater, operated at the corner of Baltimore and Sharp Streets during these same volatile years (1856-1863), making this piece a product of the very city and political moment that gave the American Party its only electoral victory.