Honest Abe Taking Them on the Half Shell

In this political cartoon commenting on developments in the presidential election of 1860, the gigantic face of Abraham Lincoln fills the page as he holds up two oyster shells on which his Democratic opponents Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge are sitting. Douglas, on the soft shell, cries "I'm a gone sucker!" while Breckinridge, on the hard shell, complains "Alas! that ever I should live to be swallowed by a rail splitter." Lincoln remarks "These fellows have been planted so long in Washington that they are as fat as Butter. I hardly know which to swallow first."