Col Fremont's Last Grand Exploring Expedition in 1856
date: label: Date made
content: 1856
name: label: depicted
content: Fremont, John Charles
label: depicted
content: Greeley, Horace
label: depicted
content: Beecher, Henry Ward
label: depicted
content: Carson, Kit
label: depicted
content: Seward, William Henry
label: lithographer
content: Currier, Nathaniel
notes: label: Description
content: This political cartoon satirizes the 1856 Presidential race, in which Colonel John Charles Fremont ran as the first candidate of the newly-formed Republican Party. By referring to the Presidential election as Fremont’s “Last Grand Exploring Expedition,” the print references the Colonel’s earlier expeditions into the American West as the “Pathfinder.” Fremont sits upon a horse with the head of Horace Greeley, labeled as the “Abolition Nag.” William Seward leads the horse towards “Salt River,” or a metaphor for political demise. Greeley questions Seward, remarking that, “it seems to me we are going down the same road we did in ‘Fifty two.’” During the 1852 election, the Philadelphia-based lithographer John Childs had published a visually similar print in which the Whig nominee, General Winfield Scott, is led towards Salt River.
label: Description
content: The new Republican Party ran on an anti-slavery platform, with the slogan “Free Soil, Free Men, and Fremont.” Fremont and his party challenged the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which employed the doctrine of popular sovereignty to allow the people living in these territories to vote them into the Union as either slave or free states. This resulted in the outbreak of violence between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the Kansas Territory, earning it the nickname “Bleeding Kansas.” Henry Ward Beecher, a Congregationalist clergyman, raised funds to buy rifles for abolitionist forces in Kansas, and these guns became known as “Beecher’s Bibles.” Beecher campaigned for Fremont during the election, and stands behind him in the print, carrying a half dozen rifles. On the far right, a frontiersman, presumably Kit Carson, who accompanied Fremont on his exploring expeditions, warns the Colonel that he has fallen in with “a bad crowd.” Instead, he suggests that it would be better for the nation if Fremont abandoned his party’s attachment to the abolitionist cause, an unlikely prospect given his and his wife’s unshakeable anti-slavery positions. This anti-Republican print reveals how divisive the issue of slavery was to voters in the years leading up to the Civil War.
label: Description
content: Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888) was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and after serving an apprenticeship in Boston, he moved to New York City in 1834. In New York, he briefly partnered with Adam Stodart, but their firm dissolved within a year, and Currier went into business on his own until 1857. In that year he partnered with his bookkeeper, James M. Ives (1824-1895), forming the famous lithography firm of Currier and Ives, which continued under their sons until 1907.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: New York, New York City
topic: label: depicted
content: Horseback Riding
label: Subject
content: Exploration and Discovery
label: Subject
content: Political Parties
label: Subject
content: Horses
label: Subject
content: Political Caricatures
label: related event
content: Kansas-Nebraska Act
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Domestic Life
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content: Clothing & Accessories
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content: American Civil War Prints
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content: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Harry T. Peters "America on Stone" Lithography Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: DL.60.3431
label: catalog number
content: 60.3431
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Lithograph
label: Object Type
content: Lithograph
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ink (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: image: 10 in x 15 3/4 in; 25.4 cm x 40.005 cm