William Penn's chair and George Washington's hair: the political and commercial means of objects at the Philadelphia Great Central Fair, 1864
Date
2005
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In order to raise money for Union troops' medical supplies, Philadelphians hosted The Great Central Fair in aid of the U.S. Sanitary Commission in June 1864. Amid the sales counters of manufactured goods were exhibits with antiques, such as the Department of Relics and Curiosities and the William Penn Parlor. This paper explores the meaning and function of those objects in the context of the Civil War. By utilizing published sources, manuscripts, scrapbooks, and photographs, a comprehensive understanding of the types of objects emerges; scholarship on colonial revival and nineteenth-century exhibitions renders the objects' political, ideological, and commercial meanings. The Fair organizers, many of them members of the Union League, employed the objects for the political and ideological purpose of supporting the Lincoln Administration's prosecution of the war in order to preserve a cultural identity that legitimized their role as the ruling class, while serving the commercial function of fundraising.