Rare early American political cartoon depicting a famous fight on the floor of the House of Representatives on February 15, 1798, which was started when the Federalist Representatives from Connecticut, Roger Griswold, attacked with a cane the Republican from Vermont, Matthew Lyon, who retaliated with fireplace tongs. The story instantly became legend, and soon poems and other satires appeared celebrating the nonesense in Congress, one of which is etched in the lower margin, "He in a trice struck Lyon thrice/ Upon is head, enrag'd sir,/ Who seiz'd the tongs to ease his wrongs,/ and Griswold thus engag'd, sir." There were two cartoons created depicting this encounter, and this is the second one. E. McSherry Fowble, in Two Centuries of Prints in America, #329, notes that "To make this event among statesmen appear even more outrageous, the design of this version so distorted the features of other congressmen, who had stooped to cheering the combatants or, at least, to enjoying the fracas, that he had to rework the copperplate by adding the names of key figures in the maragins." This is the second state, without the "17" in the top margin which marked the third state. See Richardson, The Birth of Political Caricature, p.87; Snyder, City of Independence, pp. 212-23; Weitenkampf, Political Caricature in the United States in Separately Published Cartoons, p.12; Murrell, A History of American Graphic Humor, I: 42-44.