I Never thought about it before....

[historybuff22]

    Check out the coins in your pocket. Lincoln is Right wing and the rest left wing?

Rick Brown
HistoryBuff.com
A Nonprofit Organization

[RJNorton]

I think Lincoln is facing to the right because that was the direction he was facing in the photograph Victor David Brenner used to make his bas-relief for the penny. President Theodore Roosevelt approved Brenners's choice.

[LincolnMan]

Still it seems rather curious, doesn't it? Is there a hidden meaning behind it ? Penny for your thoughts!

[Gene C]

Here are my thoughts Bill. I think it means.....
I'm sorry that's all the thoughts you can get for a penny. For more thoughts please deposit another penny

[historybuff22]

If I am not mistaken, by the early 1900s glass negatives were no longer being used. Thus, VDB could have made a print using the negative backwards--- Thus, facing right,

Rick Brown
HistoryBuff.com
A Nonprofit Organization

[L Verge]

When did the terms "left wing" and "right wing" come into use in the political arena? I know they were used extensively in the 1960s and on to define radicals and the establishment, but did they date further back than that?

[Wild Bill]

Left and right came in during the French Revolution. The left was revolutionary and the right was monarchist

[Gene C]

Thanks Wild Bill, that was very infomative.
(Persoanlly I think that was at least 2 cents worth)

[L Verge]

I did a little searching after posting and found that the terms literally applied to where the legislators sat, and the practice continued, based chiefly in France. By 1848, they were termed "democratic socialists" on the right and "reactionaries" on the left.

When the Third Republic came in in 1871, the terms were adopted by political parties -- a bunch of them: Republican Left, Centre Left, Centre Right, Extreme Left (1876) and Radical Left (1881) -- again, this is in France. Beginning in the early twentieth century the terms left and right came to be associated with specific political ideologies and were used to describe citizens' political beliefs, gradually replacing the terms "reds" and "the reaction" or "republicans" and "conservatives". By 1914 the left half of the legislature was composed of Unified Socialists, Republican Socialists and Socialist Radicals, while the parties that were called "left" now sat on the right side

In Britain, the terms "right-wing" and "left-wing" came into politics in the late-1930s when the government was debating the Spanish Civil War. The U.S. appears to have been a late-comer in the political name-calling arena.