# A log cabin drawn as a voter trap, New Orleans, 1840

An unsigned 1840 New Orleans broadside addressed to the "People of Louisiana" pictures the Whig log cabin as a trap baited with hard cider. No printer or party is named on the sheet.

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      'Federal-Abolition-Whig Trap, to Catch Voters In', New Orleans broadside, 1840

      A log cabin drawn as a voter trap, New Orleans, 1840
      An unsigned 1840 New Orleans broadside calls the Whig log cabin a trap "to catch voters in," baited with hard cider. No printer or party is named.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-calling
      Date1840Made byUnnamed issuer, anti-Whig broadside addressed to the People of Louisiana (New Orleans); no printer or party named on the sheetMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeVan Buren AdministrationSourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain: published 1840, US; LOC: "No known restrictions on publication." Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-40710. LOC rights: "No known restrictions on publication."
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  An unsigned 1840 New Orleans broadside addressed to the "People of Louisiana" pictures the Whig log cabin as a trap baited with hard cider. No printer or party is named on the sheet.

## What the sheet prints

A crude woodcut sits at the top: a tilted log cabin propped over a barrel marked "Hard Cider," with a man on all fours creeping underneath to drink. The text below explains the picture as if to a child. The cabin is bait, the cider is the hook, and the man creeping in is about to be caught.

FEDERAL BANK WHIG MOTTO. "WE STOOP TO CONQUER."

FEDERAL-ABOLITION-WHIG TRAP. TO CATCH VOTERS IN.

PEOPLE OF LOUISIANA, above you have an accurate representation of the federal "Log-Cabin" Trap, invented by the bank-parlor, ruffle-shirt, silk-stocking GENTRY, for catching the votes of the industrious and laboring classes, of our citizens, of both town and country. [...]

People of Louisiana, what think you of the invention? Are you willing to swallow the bait?

Excerpt from the FRAME transcription; [...] marks text omitted here. Full record at propagandaarchive.org.

## Who issued it

Nobody signs it. The sheet names no printer and no party, and the archive classes the source as blurred. The text speaks against the Whigs and their ticket, which it calls "Tip. and Ty.," during the 1840 presidential contest, while Martin Van Buren was in office. That is all the record supports. An anonymous campaign sheet is legal and old. It is also a reason to read it with more care, because no one stands behind the claims.

## How to read it

The headline stacks three labels into one hyphenated word: Federal, Abolition, Whig. In Louisiana in 1840, a slave state, calling a party "Abolition" worked as an alarm, not a description. The body never argues that the Whigs held abolitionist views. It just prints the word and moves on.

The rest of the sheet is class resentment run in both directions. The Whigs are "silk-stocking GENTRY" who think working people are "destitute of reason," and the broadside agrees with them about the men it pictures: "loafers," "suckers," a man with his "belly popped out." The sheet says it is defending the laboring voter from contempt, then holds the voters who went to the cabin in contempt. It also tells readers the trap "is now nearly deserted," a claim about crowds that it gives no way to check.

For the same habit eight years earlier, aimed at the Bank and its friends, see the pro-Jackson print Old Jack, the New Orleans mouser, where Bank men are rats.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Federal-Abolition-Whig Trap, to Catch Voters In," New Orleans broadside, 1840. Unnamed issuer.

- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-40710. loc.gov/pictures/item/2008661363, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain, no known restrictions on publication.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/anti-whig-log-cabin-trap-broadside-new-orleans-1840/