I dug a piece of the 1884 presidential election and sometime before I found it, somebody shot it.
This is an 1884 Blaine & Logan campaign token, made for the Republican presidential ticket of James G. Blaine and John A. Logan.
The 1884 election pitted Blaine against Democrat Grover Cleveland in one of the nastier presidential campaigns of the 19th century. Both candidates faced intense personal attacks, and the election was ultimately decided by an incredibly narrow margin in New York. Cleveland carried the state by just over 1,000 votes, won its electoral votes, and became president.
This little gilt brass token was once political advertising something meant to be carried, worn, or saved by a supporter of Blaine and Logan.
But this particular example picked up another chapter somewhere along the way.
It was shot.
Whether somebody eventually used an obsolete political token for target practice, took out some lingering political frustration, or there’s another explanation entirely, I’ll never know. That mystery is part of what makes digging these things so interesting.
It started as a campaign piece in 1884, survived underground for quite awhile, and eventually came back out of the dirt with both its political history and its battle scar intact.
That’s the kind of treasure I’m looking for.
