The Guard

THE CHICKEN COCK ON LAKE
CHAMPLAIN—WHIG DECENCY.
During the last war with Great Britain, a
tremendous struggle was made by both parties
to preserve the naval
supremacy of Lake
Champlain. Commodore McDonough who
commanded the American fleet, determined to
risk a general engagement. So confident
were the British of success, that a small ves-
sel, loaded with British subjects, came into
the bay where the battle was fought, as spee-
tators, to witness the prostration of the star-
spangled banner.
The action was com-
menced by the British vessel
firing a broadside.-
At that instant, says
the historian, a chicken
cock, which had escaped
from one of the coops,
on McDonough's vessel, flew upon one of the
guns, and, by a loud crow, seemed to hurl back
a defiance on the haughty
foe.
The instant this
was heard, the whole body
of sailors, officers,
and all, greeted the gallant bird with three
cheers. Sailors are
naturally superstitious;
and Mr. Cooper, in his "Naval History," says,
the crowing of the gallant rooster "had a pow-
erful effect upon the known tendencies of the
seamen." During the battle, the chicken cock
flew upon some of the rigging, and from there,
far above the heads of the combatants, could
be heard between the pauses of the fearful
fight, the war cry of that gallant and fearless
bird. For this circumstance, as well as for its
prompt resentment of any invasion of its terri-
tory, and its deep-rooted hatred of red coat in-
vaders, the democracy have adopted it as an
emblem of their principles.
During the late coon convention in this city,
when the very pick of the whig speakers were
present, a chicken was carried in the proces-
sion, tied down so as to prevent its defending
itself, while a prowling, filthy coon—the cho-
sen emblem of the same whigery that Clay is
the embodiment—was gnawing its hinder
parts, in the presence of the crowd of both
sexes, and that, too, while the chicken was yet
alive. Comment on these facts is unnecessary.
—Ohio Statesman.