The great match at Baltimore, between the "Illinois...

Dissension within the Democratic party in 1860 and Stephen A. Douglas's capture of the party's presidential nomination at the party's May convention are satirized as a cockfight. Douglas stands, the victorious c***, atop his badly beaten rival, incumbent president James C. Buchanan. Feathers still fill the air from the fray. Douglas crows:"c*** a doodle doo!! / I've got the best of you. / And I can beat the Lincoln c***; / And Old Kentucky too!" Buchanan moans, "Oh dear! Oh dear! this is my last kick, I'm a used up old rooster." On the right an unidentified man sets a new c*** into the ring, Kentucky senator John C. Breckinridge. The man warns Douglas, "Don't crow too loud my fine fellow, here's a Kentucky chicken that will worry you a little." The Breckinridge c*** says anxiously, "I suppose now I'm in the pit that I must tackle the bantam, but I don't much like the job." A simian Irishman wearing a stovepipe hat watches from ringside left, probably representing the old-line Tammany Democrats of New York. He reflects, "He [Buchanan] wos a werry game old bird, but that ere bantam, was a leetle too much for him!"