Jump on the Bandwagon

A genuinely documented piece of 19th-century American campaigning. "Bandwagon" originally just meant the wagon that carried a circus band, a term used by showman P. T. Barnum in his 1855 autobiography. In 1848, circus clown Dan Rice used his own bandwagon to drive politicians through town while music drew a crowd for campaign speeches. As candidates grew more popular, more politicians wanted a visible seat on the bandwagon to share in the momentum. The figurative sense of climbing aboard a winning cause was fully established by the 1890s, with the exact phrase "jump on the bandwagon" appearing in a letter by Theodore Roosevelt in 1899.