The view that symbolic expression is functionally equivalent to verbal expression, and therefore should be treated the same, would logically apply to constitutional speech protections as well as to speech restrictions. And this is indeed what several sources from the 1790s to the 1830s, and from several states, assume.
(Sources from the first half of the 19th century are generally considered to be probative of the original meaning of the Constitution, and have often been used this way by the Supreme Court. Though there’s always the risk that there was a major change in understanding of a provision in the decades following 1791, in this instance I have not found any evidence that this happened. Early 19th century sources are also relevant to understanding the original meaning of the First Amendment in 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted, since it is the Fourteenth Amendment that has been read as applying the First Amendment to the states. Likewise, I rely on cases and commentaries related to state constitutional provisions because they were generally viewed as similar in scope to the federal ones, and the law of freedom of the press was seen as a national body of law, albeit with occasional differences among jurisdictions. The Supreme Court has often relied on early interpretations of state constitutional provisions as elucidating the legal principles that were also implemented in federal constitutional provisions.)
1. The very first American case in which a speech restriction was held unconstitutional on free speech/free press grounds — the 1839 New York Brandreth v. Lance decision — treated paintings as tantamount to printed words. (During the late 1700s and early 1800s, very few speech-restrictive actions were set aside by courts on constitutional grounds. Most speech restrictions of the era were judge-made, so the judicially developed constitutional rules understandably fit with the judicially developed restrictions.)
Brandreth set aside a lower court injunction against an allegedly libelous unauthorized biography, reasoning that:
[T]his court cannot assume jurisdiction of the case presented by the complainant