'The Fox Chace', Whig cartoon of Van Buren hunted by cider-barrel hounds, 1840
The Fox Chace, Van Buren hunted by cider-barrel hounds, 1840
The Fox Chace (1840): a Whig print sold at 25 cents draws Van Buren as a fox chased by hard-cider-barrel hounds toward Harrison and the White House.
Techniques named on the archive record
Name-callingBandwagon
Date
1840
Made by
Whig campaign print published by John Childs, New York; monogram of Edward Williams Clay
Medium
Cartoon
Country
United States
Regime
Van Buren Administration
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division , retrieved October 2, 2026
Source
Public domain: published 1840, US; LOC: "No known restrictions on publication." Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-84452. 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.
The Fox Chace is an 1840 Whig cartoon published in New York by John Childs, with the monogram of Edward Williams Clay. Martin Van Buren, drawn as a fox with a "Treasury" bird round his neck, runs from hounds made of hard-cider barrels toward a White House that Harrison guards with a pitchfork.
The hunt
The print is staged as a fox hunt. Van Buren is the fox, with a bird marked "Treasury" round his neck. The hounds have barrels for bodies, lettered "Hard Cider," "Reform 1841" and "Better Times." Webster and Clay run behind them. Harrison stands on the White House steps with a pitchfork to bar the way in. Names are printed under each figure, so the viewer cannot miss who is who.
[Harrison:] Oh ho! you are making for the White house my boy! but it's no longer a cover for you, I'm put here to keep you out of it!
[Webster:] He is nearly run out! he will not go another turn! see how his tail droops!
[Clay:] Hoicks! Hoicks! Tallyho! Look out General or he'll get into his hole!
[Van Buren, as the fox:] I must get to cover as soon as possible, my race is nearly run! D-n these cider barrel hounds.
[On the fox:] Treasury
[On the barrel-hounds:] TIP'S DOG HARD CIDER 1841. REFORM 1841 BETTER TIMES
Price 25 Cents.
THE FOX CHACE.
How it sells
The archive tags the print for name-calling and bandwagon. The name-calling is the animal: a sitting president turned into quarry, which needs no argument once the picture is drawn. The bandwagon is the pack. Every barrel, every slogan and both senior Whigs run the same way, and the White House is already in Harrison's keeping. The viewer is shown a race that is over.
The barrels carry no policy. "Reform" and "Better Times" are promises without a single measure attached, and the hard cider is a mood, not a program. The sheet does give the opposition a fair hit, in its way: the "Treasury" label on the fox points at the public purse, a fair subject for voters. It just makes the argument with a hunting horn instead of figures.
This was a commercial print. The imprint gives a price of 25 cents and a copyright entered by J. Childs in the Southern District of New York. A buyer paid to own it. The archive classes the source as openly identified and reads the monogram on the print as that of Edward Williams Clay.
The 1840 campaign on this site
Hard-cider barrels also appear on Thomas Sinclair's Philadelphia print of the Whig log cabin, with cider outside the door. A New Orleans broadside drew the log cabin as a trap baited with hard cider. The campaign print hub sets these sheets beside the rest of the century.
Sources
FRAME object record, 'The Fox Chace', Whig cartoon of Van Buren hunted by cider-barrel hounds, 1840. Whig campaign print published by John Childs, New York; monogram of Edward Williams Clay.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-84452, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain, published 1840; LOC: "No known restrictions on publication."
