Congressional Scales

Congressional Scales

This lithograph by Currier & Ives, an American printmaking firm based in New York, satirized President Zachary Taylor's attempts to balance southern and northern interests in 1850 as they related to slavery in the territories gained in the Mexican War. Taylor perches atop a pair of scales, with a weight in each hand; the weight on the left reads "Wilmot Proviso" and the one on the right "Southern Rights." Below, the scales are evenly balanced, with several members of Congress, including Henry Clay (a southern Whig) in the tray on the left, and others, among them Lewis Cass (a northern Democrat) and John Calhoun (a southern Democrat), on the right. Taylor says, "Who said I would not make a "NO PARTY" President? I defy you to show any party action here." Legislators on the left state, "How much do you weigh? Eight dollars a day. Whack fol de rol!" and "My patience is as inexhaustible as the public treasury." Legislators on the right state, “I said that we'd be even with you," "We can wait as long as they can," and "We hold our own." On the ground, at right, John Bull (a personification of Great Britain) remarks, "That's like what we calls in old Hingland, a glass of 'alf and 'alf." The congressional debates ultimately resulted in the Compromise of 1850, which provided for the admission of California to the Union as a free state, the organization of New Mexico and Utah as territories on the basis of popular sovereignty, the abolition of the slave trade in Washington, D. C., and the enactment of a harsher fugitive slave law.

“Congressional Scales,” Library of Congress, accessed January 26, 2015, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90716208/.

1850