An Important and Graphic Political Print,

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 1/10/2013

“LIBERTY, THE FAIR MAID OF KANSAS - IN THE HANDS OF THE BORDER RUFFIANS,” Philadelphia, John L. Magee, 1856, uncolored lithograph, 19-1/2” x 14,” x 19 1/2.” Printed on poor paper. Evenly tanned, and with some further darkening around the edges. Upper margin chipped, and with some small tears (tape-repaired on the verso). About good overall. Matted. This very rich political cartoon criticizes the Democratic Party during the 1856 Presidential campaign. The Democratic ticket, headed by James Buchanan as Presidential candidate, supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act, popular sovereignty, states' rights, and limited government. The image predicts death and destruction from an outbreak of civil war in Kansas because of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and a Democratic victory. In the background, there is total chaos - faceless figures murder as others try to escape in wagons, and livestock run amuck. On the left side of the image, in front of a burning dwelling, a woman says to a man, "Come, husband, let us to go heaven where our poor Children are." The man laughs to his peers, "She thinks I'm her husband, we Scalped the Cus and she like a D_mn fool went Crazy on it." In the foreground, Liberty, the central female representing the United States and draped in an American flag, begs President Franklin Pierce, "Spare me!" To the left of Pierce and Liberty, James Buchanan and Pierce's secretary of state, William Marcy, pick the pockets of a deceased victim of the chaos around them. To the right of Pierce and Liberty, Democratic Party leader Stephen A. Douglas scalps a farmer and exclaims, "We will subdue them yet!" Beside Douglas, Lewis Cass licks his lips and laughs, "We would'nt hurt her for the world, would we Frank?" Pierce, Cass, and Douglas all appear heavily armed, and Pierce stands on the corner of the flag that is around Liberty. A powerful American political print, brutally satirizing the Democratic leaders who crafted and passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, one of the most controversial and divisive pieces of legislation of the antebellum era. The Kansas-Nebraska Act provided for the eventual admission of those two territories as states, and left the question of whether slavery would be allowed up to local popular sovereignty, thereby nullifying the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The main result of the legislation was to further divide the country into anti-slavery "free- soilers" (mostly in the north and represented by the emerging Republican party) and pro- slavery southerners and westerners (represented by the Democrats). Another result was the migration into Kansas (mostly from Missouri) of so-called "border ruffians" who would vote in Kansas elections in a pro- slavery manner, which they hoped would eventually bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state. Violence inevitably followed as "border ruffians" and "free-soilers" fought it out in Kansas in a sort of civil war. OCLC locates a total of only seven copies. A powerful print, addressing the most important issue of the day.

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