# "Curse the d--d congress committee and their guns!", an anonymous 1832 print

An anonymous 1832 lithograph against the Bank side draws a phaeton lettered Courier Enquirer, pulled by horses collared Biddle and Burrows, careering off the road while a coach carrying Jackson and Van Buren rolls smoothly toward the Capitol.

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- "Curse the d--d congress committee and their guns!", an anonymous 1832 print

      "Curse the d--d congress committee and their guns!" (anti-Bank print, 1832)

      "Curse the d--d congress committee and their guns!", an anonymous 1832 print
      An anonymous 1832 print runs a Courier Enquirer phaeton, drawn by horses named Biddle and Burrows, off the road while Jackson's coach rolls on.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-calling
      Date1832Made byUnattributed (anonymous lithograph; no publisher or artist named on the sheet)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeJackson AdministrationSourceUnidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosureSourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain: published in the U.S. in 1832; LOC rights information: "No known restrictions on publication." Anonymous lithograph, 'Curse the d--d congress committee and their guns!', [1832]; Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-65154
      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 anonymous 1832 lithograph against the Bank side draws a phaeton lettered Courier Enquirer, pulled by horses collared Biddle and Burrows, careering off the road while a coach carrying Jackson and Van Buren rolls smoothly toward the Capitol.

## Two roads

The print is a road scene with a signpost. One arm points "To Washington," the other "To the Dismal Swamp." In the foreground a phaeton with a panel reading COURIER / ENQUIRER is being dragged off course by two horses whose collars read BIDDLE and BURROWS. Three men stand by the signpost; one holds a placard reading THE VETO, and the Library of Congress says the other two hold guns. In the distance, the archive records, a coach carrying Jackson and Van Buren travels toward the Capitol without trouble.

No fear of my horses stumbling. The people have removed all obstacles from this Road. [speech balloon, driver of the distant coach]

Curse the D--d Congress Committee & their Guns ! their Report has frightened my Leader off the right track.-- God knows where he'll drag me with my $ 52,000!.. [speech balloon, driver of the phaeton]

Good bye Col! Since you can't go the Right Road I'll quit the Concern. [speech balloon, standing man on the phaeton]

Curse him, how hard he Draws on me! H'll surely break my Rein. [speech balloon, horse BIDDLE]

Keep to the right Nic. or we'll Run down the Bank !! [speech balloon, horse BURROWS]

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the Library of Congress JPEG with enlarged crops and not independently checked; the archive notes that "he'll" in the phaeton driver's balloon is a best reading of a blurred word. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. LC-DIG-ppmsca-65154.

## What it does

The archive tags the sheet for name-calling, and the labels do most of the work. A newspaper becomes a runaway carriage, and the men the cartoonist opposes become its horses, named on their collars. The driver complains about a congressional committee's report and worries about his "$ 52,000," which invites the viewer to suspect, with no proof on the sheet, that money is steering the paper. Meanwhile the Jackson coach has a clear road because "the people" cleared it.

This is one picture against another party's paper, and that is ordinary campaign work. What deserves a note is the issuer line. The sheet names no artist and no publisher, and the archive files the source as unidentified and the issuer type as mixed. A cartoon that accuses a newspaper of being bought, while hiding who made the cartoon, asks readers to judge one side's sponsorship and not the other's. The record does not say who paid for this one.

## The same year on this site

Another 1832 print here, by Michael Williams of New York, draws Jackson as a barn cat clearing rats labeled for the Bank of the United States and Henry Clay. Both sheets turn Jackson's opponents into animals tied to the Bank, and neither shows its working. The campaign print hub holds the rest of the century's party pictures.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Curse the d--d congress committee and their guns!" (anti-Bank print, 1832). Unattributed (anonymous lithograph; no publisher or artist named on the sheet).

- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ppmsca-65154, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain, published in the U.S. in 1832; LOC: "No known restrictions on publication."

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/curse-congress-committee-runaway-phaeton-1832/