Another Currier satire favoring American party candidate Millard Fillmore. A "buck" (James Buchanan) runs toward the White House, visible in the distance, as the two rival candidates take aim at him with their shotguns. Republican John C. Fremont's gun explodes (left), as he struggles to free himself from a pool of "Black Mud." On the far left his two abolitionist supporters Henry Ward Beecher and editor Horace Greeley are also mired in an "Abolition Bog." Fremont: "Oh! Oh! Oh! I've got Jessie this time--" (a puzzling allusion to his wife Jessie Benton). Greeley: "Oh! Brother Beecher! our Kansas Gun has bursted and upset our gunner. I'm afraid we put in too big a load." Reference is to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the ensuing violence in Kansas, an issue exploited by the Republicans. Beecher: "Confound the Gun! if I can only get out of this muss I'll stick to preaching and let fire-arms alone." The oblique reference to Beecher's part in outfitting armed antislavery emigrants for Kansas is made in more obvious terms in "Col. Fremont's Last Grand Exploring Expedition in 1856" (no. 1856-20). On "Union Rock" (right), which is square in the path toward the White House, stands Millard Fillmore. He aims his flintlock at Buchanan and says confidently, "Ah! Fremont, your sectional Gun has exploded just as I predicted; but my American rifle will bring down that Old Buck."
IIIF Manifest