Dateline: One year before a Presidential election.
The grueling months through New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and on to Super Tuesday. Candidates take off the kid gloves and start gnawing at each other. The fourth estate publishes cutting profiles on the remaining candidates. The airwaves fill with sound bites of candidates attacking rivals. Many voters are jaded, disillusioned, uninterested.

George Washington delivered his Farewell Address from Congress Hall in Philadelphia.

The campaign trail was not always like this.

In the early days of American presidential elections it was considered untoward for someone to actively seek office. George Washington would have felt sullied by most aspects of today's campaign trail. Those favored by their party stayed away from the fray. The party did the campaigning and politicking for them. Attacks on candidates came in newspapers or from other party members. A candidate would never speak disparagingly of another candidate in public.

Many early Presidents — Washington and Jefferson prominently among them — wished they could be back home tending to their farms rather than tending to the country. In 1792 Washington was tired; he wanted to spend his remaining years at Mt. Vernon. His terse Second Inauguration Address given at Philadelphia's newly built Congress Hall reflects his displeasure at having to lead the country again.

While John Adams seemingly felt that he deserved to be President after Washington, he certainly would not "run" for office. Washington even looked askance at Adams for wanting the job. After all, public office was considered undignified obligation.

Thomas Nast's GOP elephant.

Though "the people" elected the first six presidents, there was little similar to today's election process. America's first five Presidents were all tied to the Revolutionary generation — revered figures all. And John Quincy Adams, the sixth President was the son of a President. Those in power felt that only an educated elite was fit to govern the United States.

They stood for office as a consequence of long service to the country and party. The losing candidate became the Vice President and was expected to support the President's policies. The "people" doing the voting were nowhere near all the people. Disenfranchised were women, Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants.

Thomas Nast's Democratic donkey.

It was not until the election of 1828 and the arrival of Andrew Jackson that contests began to get exciting for the voting public. Here for the first time the "common man" had a candidate that he could identify with. Andrew Jackson was perceived as one of them, the first candidate from outside the power structure of early America.

Jackson still did not campaign however. But he launched the era when politicians wanted desperately to try and show how poor and humble they had been. As a military hero, a frontiersman, and a populist, Jackson enchanted the common people and alarmed the political, social, and economic elite. Regardless, Jackson governed - and the nation did not disintegrate into anarchy as so many had feared.

In post-Jacksonian America, the issue of slavery dominated all elections to the Civil War, and then Reconstruction dominated the elections of post-bellum America. However, there was still no campaign trail as we know it today. But those who were seeking office — often military heroes and compromise candidates — grew more visible to the public.

Newspapers and even the telegraph recorded their thoughts and exploits. By 1860 there was an expectation that candidates would appear in public and debate issues. Speeches were social affairs, often lasting hours with issues analyzed substantively.

A mob of well-wishers showed up at the White House for Jackson's 1828 inauguration.

In the years following the war, the earliest seeds of the Republican and Democratic Parties began to germinate. Political traits associated with today's GOP and Democrats were a long way off however.

It was not until the election of 1896 that the campaign trail took on a character familiar to modern voters. First off, Mark Hanna, the campaign manager for William McKinley, raised the then staggering sum of $3.5 million, mostly from corporations fearful of economic disaster if William Jennings Bryan was elected. Hanna also marketed his candidate "as a product." McKinley's physical robustness was turned into a metaphor for America's recovering, robust economy.

Meanwhile, McKinley's opponent William Jennings Bryan took to the backs of trains and made between twenty to thirty speeches a day. Fading were the days when candidates would sit and home and have the press and electorate come listen to them.

Great "photo-ops" and orchestrated appearance were born. Now candidates would hit the campaign trail. They went on whistle-stop tours. The candidate appealed directly to the "people." And by the 1920s, the "people" who could vote proved a far better representation of America, as women, Native Americans, and African Americans could now vote.

Harry Truman was elected in 1948, a feat that few political experts had thought possible. To bolster his chances, Truman took to the rails and ran a "whistle-stop" campaign, speaking in over 200 towns in the weeks leading up to the election.

Media, such as the radio, then TV, and now the Internet, changed the nature of campaigning. In 1960 a radio audience listening to Presidential debates thought Richard Nixon had been the more impressive candidate. Those watching on TV were charmed by John F. Kennedy's charisma and wary of Nixon's jowled unshaven countenance. TV viewers gave the nod to Kennedy, as did the electorate as a whole in 1960.

Today Presidential candidates literally toot their own horns, with Bill Clinton using his saxophone-playing ability to help him get to the White House.

In our Information Age most anything that a concerned voter needs to know about a candidate — form policy to improper behavior can be found on the Internet. Beyond Books invites you to have a look at the campaign trail and some of the more seminal elections in American history.