An 1836 sheet holds two Ohio Democratic tickets for Martin Van Buren and Richard M. Johnson. Each carries a hog-race woodcut in which Van Buren outruns Webster, Harrison and White, and each lists the same 21 Ohio electors.
Two tickets, one race
This single sheet carries the same Democratic ticket twice, side by side. Both name Martin Van Buren for president and Richard M. Johnson for vice president, and both list the party's Ohio electors. What changes is the small woodcut on each. On the left, the archive's description has Webster, Harrison and White riding pigs behind Van Buren under the line "Go it, ye Cripples!" On the right, a rider shouts "Stop VAN !!!" and gets the answer "No, I'm bound to beat."
PRESIDENTIAL RACE—Tune, Three pluck one.
[Balloon] Van will beat
[Balloon] That's a Fact
[Balloon] The story is told !!!
[Balloon] The People will tell
[Labels on the pigs] Webster / Harrison / White / Van Buren
Go it, ye Cripples!
Democratic Ticket.
FOR PRESIDENT,
MARTIN VAN BUREN.
FOR VICE PRESIDENT,
RICHARD M. JOHNSON.
OHIO ELECTORS.
John M. Goodenow,
Othniel Looker,
[...]
James Means.
[Balloon] Stop VAN !!!
[Balloon] No, I'm bound to beat.
What the pictures argue
Nothing on the ticket makes a case for Van Buren's policies. The argument is the race itself. Four balloons in the "Cripples" woodcut announce the result: "Van will beat," "That's a Fact," "The story is told !!!" and "The People will tell." The three rivals get a single collective label, "Cripples." The archive tags the sheet with two techniques, name-calling for that label and bandwagon for the balloons that treat victory as settled.
The rest of each ticket is typeset text: the two candidates and a column of 21 elector names, from John M. Goodenow to James Means. The archive notes that both tickets list the same electors. The woodcut carries the joke; the working part of the paper is the list of men an Ohio voter was being asked to support.
Who printed it
No printer is named on the sheet. The maker line calls it an Ohio Democratic presidential electors ticket and records the Library of Congress guess, "Cincinnati?", with its question mark. The issuer type is a party, and the archive records the purpose as "Persuade or win support."
The archive also holds two more 1836 Ohio Democratic tickets, titled "Liberty & equal rights" and "Going the whole hog." The Harrison side of the same contest is on this site in Political Race Course, a New York lithograph that stages 1836 as a horse race with Harrison in front. An earlier ticket for the Jackson side, from Baltimore, is the 1828 Hickory tree ticket. The presidential campaign print hub covers 1800 to 1900.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Democratic tickets, "Go it, ye Cripples!" and "Stop Van!!!" (Ohio electors, Van Buren and Johnson), 1836. Printer not stated (LOC: Cincinnati?).
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain, published 1836; LOC: "No known restrictions on publication."
