Annotation

This cloth banner celebrates the electoral victory of Thomas Jefferson over John Adams in the presidential election of 1800. The banner is believed to be one of the earliest surviving textiles carrying partisan imagery, created at the dawn of the first American party system in which power passed from Federalists to Jeffersonian Republicans. Its imagery celebrates Jefferson's electoral victory, while denigrating Adams, his opponent. The banner pictures Jefferson's likeness below an eagle with a streamer in its beak that proclaims, "T. Jefferson President of the United States of America / John Adams is no more."