[Political Cartoon] | A rare political cartoon featuring Franklin and satirizing the 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution, Banks, and more

[Political Cartoon]

Zion Besieged and Attacked. [Philadelphia, William Poyntell, 1787]

Hand-colored etching (sheet: 413 x 512 mm; platemark: 358 x 449 mm). Paper mildly toned, with some creasing, spotting and staining largely in the margins, three short tears and one tiny chip at edges, pencil annotations identifying around ten figures. Matted.

An uncommonly large, incredibly complex, and vanishingly rare American political cartoon.

"Perhaps the most complex and labyrinthine political cartoon ever made" (Library Company of Philadelphia, Made in America Printmaking, 1760–1860, Philadelphia, 1973, pp. 8–9).

This anonymous cartoon satirizes the mercantile classes' furious reaction to the Pennsylvania legislature's revocation of Robert Morris's Bank of North America's charter in 1786. A portly Benjamin Franklin, the President of the state's Executive Council, is shown at right in a fort representing the 1776 Constitution of Pennsylvania. Franklin's fort is besieged by an army of bankers, as well as devils, witches, satyrs, and other nightmarish creatures who represent Morris's supporters and other enemies of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The cartoon also includes caricatures of prominent American politicians and philosophers, including Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, and Robert Morris. "The artist also vents his spleen on banks, medical practices, the rising interest in ballooning, pamphleteering, and printing with the vision of a latterday Breughel" (Ibid).

The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, the most radical and democratic of early state Constitutions, featured an elected unicameral legislature and an executive council. It was eventually scrapped and replaced in 1790 by a more conservative document with a bicameral legislature, modelled more closely on the Federal Constitution.

While untitled and unsigned, understandable for such politically contentious printing as this, the title appeared in an advertisement placed by Philadelphia printer, printseller, stationer, and collector William Poyntell in the 31 January 1787 edition of the Pennsylvania Journal or Weekly Advertiser. The imprint is inferred from the same source. There was also an explanatory broadside printed, signed "By a friend of the People." The example of this cartoon held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania includes a title at the top reading "The Siege of Zion 1787"—as there is no evidence of erasure in the plate, it is likely that this version represents an earlier state of the etching.

Rare: only two other copies are known (Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Library of Congress), and we find no past auction records.

REFERENCES

OCLC 879307216; Library Company of Philadelphia, Made in America Printmaking, 1760–1860 12