Description
In this editorial cartoon from the 1856 presidential election, James Buchanan-in the light suit-helps hold down the head of a Free Soiler while Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas and President Franklin Pierce shove an African-American slave down his throat. In 1860, Douglas, who wrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, would carry Pennsylvania, but lose the presidential election to Abraham Lincoln. The artist lays on the Democrats the major blame for violence perpetrated against antislavery settlers in Kansas in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Here a bearded freesoiler has been bound to the Democratic Platform and is restrained by two Lilliputian figures, presidential nominee James Buchanan and Democratic senator Lewis Cass. Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas and president Franklin Pierce, also shown as tiny figures, force a black man into the giants gaping mouth. The freesoilers head rests on a platform marked Kansas, Cuba, and Central America, probably referring to Democratic ambitions for the extension of slavery. In the background left is a scene of burning and pillage; on the right a dead man hangs from a tree.
