RICHARD VARICK | A very scarce Federalist campaign broadside from the 1810 New York gubernatorial election

RICHARD VARICK

MORE FRENCH KINDNESS. THE FOLLOWING LETTER DESERVES THE SERIOUS CONSIDERATION OF EVERY FRIEND TO HIS COUNTRY. … BY ORDER OF THE CORRESPONDING COMMITTEE OF NEW-YORK, RICHARD VARICK, CHAIRMAN. [NEW YORK, 1810]

Letterpress broadside (11 7/8 x 8 1/2 in.; 277 x 215 mm); lightly browned, verso and portion of right margin recto filled with arithmetic figuring, pinholes at intersecting holes.

This is a very early, and possibly unrecorded, example of an American electioneering handbill, issued in support of the Federalist candidates for Governor and Lieutenant Governor, Jonas Platt and Nicholas Fish. The broadside addresses the issue of French infringement of U.S. maritime rights and purports to print a an extract of "a Letter from a Gentleman at Nantes, dated 13th February, 1810, to a respectable House in this City," which charges that "if a vessel and cargo be American property it is sufficient to cause its seizure and probable condemnation in France."

The letter was being circulated, Varick claimed, because he felt it was his duty "to lay it before our fellow citizens, and to ask them, whether it does not excite their warmest indignation." Political temperatures in the Empire State remained cool, however: the Federalist candidates lost to the Democratic-Republican slate of incumbents Daniel D. Tompkins and John Broome, despite their being labelled here as the candidates of "the French Party."