1. < Back to Search Results

Great Match at Baltimore

Creator:
Currier & Ives
Location:
New York, New York
Origin Date:
1860
Materials:
paper
Measurements:
overall: 17 1/2 in x 20 in
Item ID:
71.2009.081.0056
Holding Institution:
Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum
Available for Viewing:
No
Category:
Fine Art

Description

Dissension within the Democratic party in 1860 and Stephen A. Douglas's capture of the party's presidential nomination at the party's May convention are satirized as a cockfight. Douglas stands, the victorious cock, atop his badly beaten rival, incumbent President James C. Buchanan. Feathers still fill the air from the fray. Douglas crows: "Cock a doodle doo!! / I've got the best of you. / And I can beat the Lincoln Cock; / And Old Kentucky too!" Buchanan moans, "Oh dear! Oh dear! this is my last kick, I'm a used up old rooster." On the right an unidentified man sets a new cock into the ring, Kentucky Senator John C. Breckinridge. The man warns Douglas, "Don't crow too loud my fine fellow, here's a Kentucky chicken that will worry you a little." The Breckinridge cock says anxiously, "I suppose now I'm in the pit that I must tackle the bantam, but I don't much like the job." A man wearing a stovepipe hat watches from ringside left, probably representing the old-line Tammany Democrats of New York. He reflects, "He [Buchanan] wos a werry game old bird, but that ere bantam, was a leetle too much for him!" Part of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum