"The Masked Battery or Loco Foco Strategy"

This cartoon illustrates the effect that the Texas question had upon the 1844 presidential campaign. The idea of the annexation of Texas, rejected by many of the early presidential candidates in the field, including Henry Clay and Martin Van Buren, was embraced by Democratic nominee James K. Polk. The "masked battery" is a large cannon fired by James Polk and the Democratic senator from Mississippi Robert J. Walker. Walker's February letter defending annexation brought the Texas issue to the fore in the campaign. The cannon has been "masked" from the Whigs on the left by two rows of knights, among whom are Van Buren and Calhoun (carrying the flags of their states, New York and South Carolina) and John Tyler and Richard M. Johnson. In a balloon above the scene appear Andrew Jackson's "General Orders" on the campaign strategy: "Let the enemy expend their fire on the veteran candidates in Armor, drawn up before the Battery so as to hide it perfectly. Then, when the enemy is prepared to charge, open suddenly to the right and left in double quick time, and let go the big Gun charged with Texas." Polk, lighting the charge, says "Alas poor Harry! You should not have stood by that Bank and opposed our younger sister State who asks our help." At the left, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and other Whigs are knocked down by the "Texas" cannonball. Clay is knocked into a column of the U.S. Bank, which breaks and topples the building. Clay exclaims: "Oh! who would have thought that behind those leaders they had a commander-in-chief & a masked battery, with my old enemy [Polk] I d--d to H--l, on the Pennsylvania avenue. How did he come here? I'm a gone coon!" Clay's running-mate Theodore Frelinghuysen appears at the far left as a devil, weighed down by an immense "Bag of lies about the Loco Foco Candidates not yet paid for." He says, "The main pillar of the Bank broken! who is now to pay me for all the lies I had stored up in Washington against the Loco Foco candidates? It is too late to make up any about Polk & Dallas, & I shall never be paid unless I take my men on whom the Bank is falling."

Date:
1844
Original Format:
Cartoon
Item#:
11.066
Height:
1984px
Width:
2776px
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