29 Star U.S. Flag - Political Parade Flag, 1846 - 1848.
July 4, 1847 - July 3, 1848 (Iowa statehood December 28, 1846)
This flag was likely made for the 1848 presidential election, when James K. Polk was replaced by Zachary Taylor.

Parade and Political Campaign flags such as this had their origins during the Whig versus Democratic Party political campaigns in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. The national election of 1840 pitted the Whig, William Henry Harrison, against the Democratic incumbent, Martin Van Buren. As the issues of the campaign were lackluster, the Whigs brought personalities into the campaign as surrogates, taunting W.H. Harrison ("Old Tippecanoe"), the self-supposed candidate of the common people.

This campaign featured the first "media blitz", with banners and flags replete with slogans, pictures, and even replicas of the log cabin Harrison had allegedly been born in. The technique of printing on silk and cotton had, by 1840, been perfected so that inexpensive campaign and parade flags could be obtained economically by crowds of supporters to wave at political rallies and parades. This practice continued during the 1844 and 1848 presidential campaigns and remains a fixture in American politics to this day. This flag had likely been made for the 1848 presidential election before Wisconsin's accession in May of 1848 made the flag officially obsolete.

Exhibition History:
First and second Presidio Exhibits, 2003
29-star U.S. parade flag

Publication History:
Madaus, Howard M. and Dr, Whitney Smith, The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord and Conflict. Santa Cruz: VZ Publications, 2006, p. 48.

Provenance: Acquired by the Zaricor Flag Collection in 2002 from
the Mastai Flag Collection through auction at Sotheby's of New York City. ZFC0628

ZFC Significant Flag
Item is Framed

Sources:


Mastai, Boleslaw and Marie-Louise D'Otrange, The Stars and The Stripes: The American Flag as Art and as History from the Birth of the republic to the Present, Knopf, New York, 1973.

Collins, Herbert Ridgeway, Threads of History, Americana Recorded on Cloth 1775 to the Present, City of Washington, Smithsonian Press, 1979.

Cooper, Grace Rogers, Thirteen-Star Flags: Keys to Identification, Smithsonian Institution Press, City of Washington, 1973.

Madaus, Howard M.- Whitney Smith, The American Flag: Two Centuries of Concord and Conflict, VZ Publications, Santa Cruz, 2006.

Mastai, Boleslaw and Marie-Louise D'Otrange, The Stars and The Stripes: The American Flag as Art and as History from the Birth of the republic to the Present, Knopf, New York, 1973.

29 Star Flag - (1847-1848) (U.S.), Flags of the World, 11 November 2011, from: http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-1847.html

Image Credits:
Zaricor Flag Collection