Title: Lincoln in Caricature
Author: Wilson, Rufus Rockwell
Language: English
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LINCOLN IN CARICATURE

By Rufus Rockwell Wilson

Author Of "Washington: The Capital City"

Illustrated With Thirty-two Plates

Printed For Private Distribution

1903

[Illustration: titlepage]



LINCOLN IN CARICATURE


[Illustration: 000] (Illustrated cap)

INCOLN in caricature is a phase of the career of the great war President
that has thus far lacked adequate treatment. Yet he was the most
bitterly assailed and savagely cartooned public man of his time, and one
has only to search the newspapers and periodicals of that period to find
striking confirmation of this fact. The attitude of Great Britain toward
the Union and its President was then one of cynical and scarcely veiled
hostility, and nowhere were the sentiments of the English government
and of the English masses more faithfully reflected than in the cartoons
which appeared in London _Punch_ between 1861 and 1865, many of which
had Lincoln for their central figure. He was also frequently cartooned
in _Vanity Fair_ the American counterpart of _Punch_; in _Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper_, and in _Harper's Weekly_. Indeed, nowhere were
the changing sentiments of the people of the North, their likes and
dislikes, their alternates hopes and fears, their hasty, often unjust
judgments of men and measures, more vividly reflected than in the
cartoons dealing with Lincoln which appeared in the last named journal
during the epoch-making days of his Presidency. Thus the thirty-two
plates from these sources here brought together have a value and
interest already important and sure to increase with the passage of
time, for they reflect with unconscious vividness, and as nothing else
can do, the life and color of an historic era, and how his fellows
regarded the grandest figure of that era. It is with their value
as human documents in mind that they have been rescued from their
half-forgotten hiding places, and assembled in chronological sequence,
with such comment as may be necessary to make their purpose and meaning
clear to older men, whose memory may have grown dim, as well as to the
new generation that has come upon the stage in the eight and thirty
years that have elapsed since the close of the Civil War.



[Illustration: 001]



|Plate Number One--This cartoon, "Lincoln à la Blondin," which appeared
in _Harper's Weekly_, on August 25, 1860, seems to have been suggested
by Blondin's crossing of Niagara on a tight rope with a man on his
back--an event then fresh in the public mind. It also recalls an
interesting phase of Lincoln's first campaign for the Presidency, which
had its origin in a characteristic incident of the candidate's earlier
years. It was in March, 1830, that Lincoln, at that time a youth of
twenty-one, removed with his father and family from Indiana to Illinois,
locating on the bluffs of the Sangamon River about ten miles from
Decatur. There he and his kinsman, John Hanks, built a hewed log house,
and broke fifteen acres of prairie sod with the two yoke of oxen they
had driven from Indiana. They then felled the trees, cut off the logs,
and with mauls and wedges split the rails to fence in the land they had
broken. The following winter, the winter of the "deep snow" as it
was known in Illinois, Lincoln alone made three thousand rails for a
neighbor, walking three miles each day to do it. The Republican state
convention of Illinois assembled at Decatur on May 9, 1860, and the
first act of its chairman was to invite Lincoln, who was modestly seated
in the body of the hall, to a seat upon the platform. An eye-witness
describes the scene that followed as one of tumultuous enthusiasm. No
way could be made through the shouting throng, and Lincoln was borne
bodily, over their heads and shoulders, to the place of honor. Quiet
restored, the chairman again arose and said:

"There is an old Democrat outside who has something he wishes to present
to this convention."

Then the door of the hall swung open, and a sturdy old man marched in,
shouldering two fence-rails, surmounted by a banner inscribed, in large
letters:

"Two rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the
Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830."

The bearer was John Hanks himself, and he had come to do his part in
making his old friend President. "It was an historic scene and
moment. In an instant Lincoln, the rail-splitter, was accepted as the
representative of the working man and the type and embodiment of
the American idea of human freedom and possible human elevation. The
applause was deafening. But it was something more than mere applause,"
for there was no opposition afterwards, to a resolution that declared
Lincoln to be the first choice of the Republicans of Illinois for
President, and instructed the delegates to the national convention to
cast the vote of the State as a unit for him. It is a part of history
how the tidal wave of enthusiasm behind this resolution swept from
Decatur to Chicago, and thence over the country.



[Illustration: 002]



|Plate Number Two--This cartoon, "The Inside Track," published in _Vanity Fair_, on March
2, 1861, has for its motive the popular doubt and incertitude attending
the make-up of the Cabinet and the policy of the new Administration
toward the South. The President-elect is shown, with a doubtful
expression on his face, flanked on either side by Thurlow Weed, who is
drawn to represent a western river gambler of the period, and William
H. Seward, while Horace Greeley, their sworn political foe, thrusts his
head through the door in time to hear Weed remark impressively:
"Trust to my friend Seward--trust to us. We'll compromise this little
difficulty for you. But trust to us. Gentlemen from the country are
often swindled by unprincipled sharpers. Trust to us." Seward, as we
know, became Lincoln's Secretary of State, and Weed one of his trusted
advisers, while the editor of the _Tribune_ remained until the end a
thorn in the side of the President.



[Illustration: 003]



|Plate Number Three--This cartoon, "The Flight of Abraham," published
in _Harper's Weekly_, on March 9, 1861, holds up to ridicule Lincoln's
memorable secret journey from Harrisburg to Washington, but its
point-of-view is a mistaken one. Lincoln's advisers had good grounds
for believing that there existed a plot to murder him during his passage
through Baltimore, and every consideration forbade needless risk. The
trip across Maryland was, therefore, made suddenly and in private, but
there was no attempt at personal disguise, as the cartoon infers, nor
any undignified concealment on the part of Lincoln or the friends who
accompanied him.



[Illustration: 004]



|Plate Number Four--This cartoon "Winding Off the Tangled Skein,"
published in _Harper's Weekly_, on March 30, 1861, recalls the days of
doubt and waiting which preceded the firing on Sumter and the first call
for troops.



[Illustration: 005]



|Plate Number Five--This cartoon, "The Spirit of '76," published in
_Vanity Fair_, on May 4, 1861, breathes the spirit which prompted the
great uprising of the North when the truth was brought home to its
people that a war between the sections was not to be avoided. It
shows the President watering a flower bed with the "Spirit of '76," and
remarking to Columbia, who watches his work: "Ain't there a nice crop!
There's the hardy Bunker Hill flower, the Seventh Regiment pink, the
firebug tulip. That tri-colored flower grows near Independence Hall. The
western blossoms and prairie flowers will soon begin to shoot."

"What charming plant is this?" asks Columbia, pointing to a miniature
gallows.

"That is rare in this country," answers the President. "It will blossom
soon and bear the Jeffersonia Davisiana."



[Illustration: 006]

|Plate Number Six--This cartoon, "The Situation," published in _Harper's
Weekly_, on July 13, 1861, reminds one that the advocates of compromise
were numerous and noisy until well toward the close of the war. Here
Lincoln is depicted as a constable in the act of arresting Davis. "I've
got you now, Jeff," are his words as he lays hold of his prisoner.
"Guess you have," is the reply of Davis. "Well, now let us compromise."



[Illustration: 007]

|Plate Number Seven--This cartoon, "Got the Right Weapon at Last,"
published in _Harper's Weekly_, on October 19, 1861, has for its subject
the first of the national loans which assured a successful prosecution
of the greatest war in history. Jay Cooke, who still lives, was the
agent through whose patriotic and sagacious efforts most of these loans
found takers, and he it was to whom Grant, in the closing days of the
war, sent this message: "Tell him for me that it is to him more than to
any other man that our people will be indebted for the continued life of
the nation."



[Illustration: 008]

|Plate Number Eight--This cartoon, without title, published in _Vanity
Fair_, on November 16, 1861, has for its subject the Union's relations
with foreign powers. It depicts the President, guarding with sword
and cannon a pond filled with trout (the Confederacy) in which three
boys--England, France and Spain--are anxious to cast their lines. "Boys,
I reckon I wouldn't," is his significant comment.



[Illustration: 009]

|Plate Number Nine--This cartoon, "Up a Tree--Colonel Bull and the Yankee
Coon," was published in _Punch_ on January 11, 1862. The artist, whose
point-of-view is one of contemptuous ridicule, inspired by the Mason and
Slidell incident, and having in mind Davy Crockett's familiar story
of Colonel Scott and the coon, depicts that animal with the head of
Lincoln, crouched on the limb of a friendly tree, and gazing furtively
down on John Bull, armed with a blunderbuss and about to fire, whereat
the following dialogue ensues:

Coon--"Air you in arnest, Colonel?"

Colonel Bull--"I am."

Coon--"Don't fire--I'll come down."



[Illustration: 010]

|Plate Number Ten--This cartoon, "Sinbad Lincoln and the Old Man of the
Sea," published in _Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper_, on May 3,
1862, shows the President as Sinbad carrying on his shoulders the Old
Man of the Sea--Gideon Welles, whose course as Secretary of the Navy was
then the cause of much ill-natured comment. We had no navy when the war
began, and Welles had to create one. His way of doing it provoked much
opposition, but he had always the confidence of the President, and so
good a judge as the late Charles A. Dana has told us that though "there
was no noise in the street when he went along, he was a wise, strong
man, who understood his duty, and who was patient, laborious and
intelligent at his task." The generous growth of hair which the artist
has given Welles was not his own. Instead he wore a wig, which was
parted in the middle, the hair falling down on each side, and it was,
perhaps, from his peculiar appearance that the idea originated that he
was old-fashioned in his methods.



[Illustration: 011]

|Plate Number Eleven--This cartoon, "The New Orleans Plum," published in
_Punch_ on May 24, 1862, deals with the capture of that city, and with
it the mouth of the Mississippi--one of the first decisive victories of
the war. The artist, borrowing from the old nursery tale, showed Lincoln
seated in a corner and plucking a plum from the generous pudding in his
lap. Possibly for fear that his design might not be perfectly clear to
the British mind, the artist appended to it the legend: "Big Lincoln
Horner, up in a corner, thinking of humble pie, found under his thumb, a
New Orleans plum, and said,'What a cute Yankee am I!'"



[Illustration: 012]

|Plate Number Twelve--This cartoon, "The Latest from America," published
in _Punch_ on July 26, 1862, aims to make light of the war news sent
out from New York at that time. The President is represented as a
bartender, standing behind a bar on which are bottles inscribed
"Bunkum," "Bosh" and "Brag," and shifting a concoction labelled "The New
York Press" from the glass of Victory to that of Defeat.



[Illustration: 013]

|Plate Number Thirteen--This cartoon, "The Overdue Bill," published in
_Punch_, on September 27, 1862, has for its motive the Union's crying
need of men and money. The President is shown seated at a desk, with
hands, as usual, thrust into his pockets, glancing discomfitedly at
a paper inscribed "I promise to subdue the South in ninety days--A.
Lincoln," held out to him by a Confederate soldier, who says "Your
ninety days' promissory note isn't taken up yet, sirree!" It would
have been more fitting to have made Seward the central figure in this
cartoon, for it was Lincoln's Secretary of State, and not the President
himself, who was loudest in proclaiming that the war would end in three
months. It is worth recording that Seward when questioned in after years
by a friend as to the reasons which prompted this famous prediction
of his, at first declined to give an answer, but finally said that he
believed at the time that if the South did not give in within ninety
days the North would.



[Illustration: 014]

|Plate Number Fourteen--This cartoon, "What will He do with Them?"
published in _Vanity Fair_, on October 4, 1862, heralds the forthcoming
Emancipation Proclamation, the President being pictured as a vagrom
bird-peddler, whom an absence of customers impels to the remark: "Darn
these here black-birds. If nobody won't buy'em I'll have to open the
cages and let'em fly." This design recalls an historic Cabinet meeting
held on the Saturday following the battle of Antietam, which cut short
Lee's invasion of the North and compelled him to recross the Potomac.
The members of the Cabinet were summoned, on this occasion, not to give
advice but to hear a decision. The President told them that the hour for
delay had passed, and that the time had come to make the emancipation of
the slaves the declared policy of the Administration. Public sentiment
would now sustain it. A strong and outspoken popular voice demanded it,
and the demand came from the best friends of the government. "And I have
promised my God that I would do it," added the President, reverently and
in a low voice. "Did I understand you correctly, Mr. President?"
asked Secretary Chase, who had heard but indistinctly the low-voiced
utterance. "I made a solemn vow, before God," was the answer, "that if
General Lee should be driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the
result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves." And he did.



[Illustration: 015]

|Plate Number Fifteen--This cartoon, "Lincoln's Last Warning," published
in _Harper's Weekly_, on October 11, 1862, also deals with the subject
of emancipation. The President is depicted about to apply the axe to the
tree of slavery, and saying to Davis, who is crouching in its branches:
"If you don't come down, I'll cut the tree from under you."



[Illustration: 016]

|Plate Number Sixteen--This cartoon, "Keep on the Track," published in
_Vanity Fair_, on November 22, 1862, has to do with the result of the
congressional elections of that year. Here the President is made to do
duty as a locomotive engineer and to remark to his fireman (Secretary
Seward), who is staggering under a load of fagots, each inscribed
"Democratic Majority:" "I've got the right fuel now and I guess I can
keep her steady. Chuck in more, William."



[Illustration: 017]

|Plate Number Seventeen--This cartoon, without title, published in
_Harper's Weekly_, on January 3, 1863, was prompted by the fearful
Union slaughter at Fredericksburg. Columbia confronts the President and
demands an accounting for the thousands slain in that conflict. "This
reminds me of a little joke," Lincoln is made to say. "Go," is the angry
rejoinder, "tell your joke at Springfield." Which calls to mind a story
told the writer by the late Governor Curtin of Pennsylvania. It was
after the battle of Fredericksburg, and Governor Curtin had gone to the
front to look after his State's dead and wounded in person. While
thus engaged he received a telegram from Lincoln bidding him come to
Washington. He responded at once, and reaching the White House late in
the evening found that the President had retired. Seated by the latter's
bedside, he told what he had seen. "It was not a battle," said he; "it
was, a slaughter. Many of the wounded have received no attention, and
thousands of the dead are still unburied. From the bottom of my heart,
Mr. President, I wish we could find some way of ending this war."

Lincoln listened patiently, but with manifest anxiety, to the Governor's
statement. When it was finished, he said:

"Curtin, it's a big job we've got on hand. It reminds me of what once
happened to the son of a friend of mine out in Illinois. There was an
apple-tree in the old man's orchard of which he was especially choice,
and one day in the fall his two boys, John and Jim, went out to gather
the apples from this tree. John climbed the tree to shake the fruit
off, while Jim remained below to gather it as it fell. There was a boar
grubbing in the orchard, and seeing what was going on, it waddled up
to the tree and began to eat the falling apples faster than Jim could
gather them from the ground. This roiled Jim, and catching the boar by
the tail he pulled vigorously, whereat the latter, with an angry squeal,
began to snap at his legs. Afraid to let go, Jim held on for dear life,
until finally, growing weary, he called to his brother to help him.
John, from the top of the tree, asked what was wanted.'I want you,' said
Jim, between the rushes of the boar,'to come down here and help me to
let go of this darned hog's tail.' And Curtin," added the President,
"that's just what I want of you and the rest: I want you to pitch in and
help me let go of the hog's tail I have got hold of."

Before beginning this story Lincoln had been deeply depressed. When
it was finished he laughed as heartily as did his auditor, and seemed
instantly to recover his wonted spirits. "Pardon me, Mr. President,"
said the Governor, prompted by this change of mood, "but is not this
story-telling habit of yours a sort of safety valve for you?"

"You have hit it, Curtin," was the quick reply. "If I could not tell
these stories I think I should die."



[Illustration: 018]

|Plate Number Eighteen--This cartoon, published in _Harper's Weekly_,
on January 10, 1863, also reflects the resentment provoked by the
Fredericksburg fiasco, for which General Halleck and Secretary Stanton
were at first held responsible in the popular mind. Lincoln is shown
holding these officials over the side of the Ship of State. "Universal
Advice to Abraham--Drop'Em," was the significant legend appended to this
cartoon.



[Illustration: 019]

|Plate Number Nineteen--This cartoon, "Scene from the American Tempest,"
published in _Punch_, on January 24, 1863, was prompted by the final
Proclamation of Emancipation, issued on the first day of that year. The
President, clad in the uniform of a Union soldier, hands a copy of his
proclamation to a grinning negro, who points to a glowering Confederate
in his rear and says: "You beat him'nough, Massa! Berry little time,
I'll beat him too."



[Illustration: 020]

|Plate Number Twenty--This cartoon, without title, was published in
_Harper's Weekly_, on May 16, 1863. It deals with the underlying cause
of England's unfriendly attitude toward the Union--the sudden shutting
off of the supply of raw material for her cotton mills. Lincoln leans on
a cannon and confronts John Bull in plaintive mood. "Hi want my cotton
bought at fi'pence a pound," pleads the Briton. "Don't know anything
about it, my dear sir," is the curt reply. "Your friends the rebels
are burning all the cotton they find, and I confiscate the rest. Good
morning, John."



[Illustration: 021]

|Plate Number Twenty-one--This cartoon, "Right at last," was published
in _Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper_, on June 13, 1863. Grant was
still hammering at the defences of Vicksburg, with the outcome of
his campaign in doubt, and the people of the North impatient and
distrustful. The editor of the _Tribune_ was especially earnest and
insistent in the demand that his work should be given into other hands.
The President, who holds in his hand a broom bearing Grant's name, is
made to say: "Greeley be hanged! I want no more new brooms. I begin to
think that the worst thing about my old ones was in not being handled
right."



[Illustration: 022]

|Plate Number Twenty-two--This cartoon, without title, was published in
_Vanity Fair_, on July 4, 1863. When Lee invaded Pennsylvania to meet
defeat at Gettysburg, the President called upon the States of New York,
Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, for 120,000 men, for temporary
use, and they were promptly supplied him. The design under review, in
happy keeping with the day upon which it was issued, showed Lincoln
holding aloft a flag and calling for volunteers, who are flocking to
him from every side. This was the last time he was cartooned in _Vanity
Fair_. A week later that journal ceased to exist.



[Illustration: 023]

|Plate Number Twenty-three--This cartoon, "Rowdy Notions of
Emancipation," published in _Punch_, on August 8, 1863, has for its
subject the lamentable draft riots in New York City. A gang of rioters
are shown beating one negro and another lies prostrate on the ground,
while President Lincoln stands at one side, dismayed but apparently
unwilling to put an end to the foul work going on at his elbow. Here
_Punch's_ artist is once more needlessly and manifestly unjust, for if
any one deserved censure for the excesses of the draft riots, Horatio
Seymour, then Governor of New York, not Lincoln, was the man upon whom
the whip should have fallen.



[Illustration: 024]

|Plate Number Twenty-four--This cartoon, "Extremes Meet," was published
in _Punch_, on October 24, 1868. The Polish insurrection was then in
progress, and the American President and the Russian Czar are depicted
triumphantly clasping hands in the foreground of an impressive picture
of rapine and desolation. The result sought by the artist is made clear
in the appended dialogue:


_Abe_--Imperial son of Nicholas the Great,

We air in the same fix, I calculate,

You with your Poles, with Southern rebels, I,

Who spurn my rule and my revenge defy.



_Alex_--Vengeance is mine, old man; see where it falls.

Behold yon hearths laid waste, and ruined walls,

Yon gibbets, where the struggling patriot hangs,

Whilst my brave myrmidons enjoy his pangs.


The Polish insurrection, then in progress, furnishes the motive of this
cartoon, which serves to recall the good will shown by Russia for
the Union, when it stood without other friends among the nations. How
substantial was this good will furnishes the cue to a chapter in our
history which yet remains to be written. A part of this chapter
the writer once had from the lips of the late Simon Cameron, of
Pennsylvania. Just before General Cameron went to Russia as American
Minister in the early part of 1862 he was charged with a secret
commission. He was directed, upon the presentation of his letters to
the Russian Chancellor in St. Petersburg, to say that President Lincoln
asked that the Minister might have a personal and confidential interview
with the Czar. If this was accorded he should say to the Czar that the
President was troubled about the possibility of interference by England
or France in behalf of the Confederacy, and that if the friendship of
Russia was such as to justify the monarch in conveying, confidentially,
any intimation of his feelings and attitude in such a contingency, the
President would be grateful. The interview was accorded, the message
was delivered and the answer was cordial, and in about these words: "The
friendship of Russia for the United States has long continued, and
is such as to justify the President's request. The reply of Russia is
ready. You will convey to Mr. Lincoln my personal regards, and say that
the danger of interference by any European nation is exceedingly remote;
but in that improbable contingency, or upon the appearance of real
danger of it, the friendship of Russia for the United States will be
made known in a decisive manner, which no other nation will be able to
mistake."

This message was duly reported to the President. How the Czar kept his
promise came out in an interview which he granted in 1879 to Wharton
Barker, for many years Russian financial agent in America. He said to
Barker: "In the autumn of 1862 France and England proposed to Russia
in formal (but not in official) way, the joint recognition by European
nations of the independence of the Confederate States. My immediate
answer was:'I will not cooperate in such action, and I will not
acquiesce; but, on the contrary, I shall accept recognition of the
independence of the Confederate States as a _casus belli_ for Russia,
and that the governments of France and England may understand that this
is no idle threat, I will send a Pacific fleet to San Francisco and an
Atlantic fleet to New York.' Sealed orders were given to both admirals.
My fleets arrived at the American ports, there was no recognition of
the independence of the Confederate States by England and France,
the American rebellion was put down and the great American republic
continues. All this I did because of love for my own dear Russia. I
acted thus because I understood that Russia would have a more serious
task to perform if the American republic, with advanced industrial
development, was broken up and England left in control of most branches
of modern industrial development."

It was England's warm resentment of Russia's attitude that prompted
the cartoon under consideration. Even more pronounced in its mocking
cynicism was _Punch's_ cartoon for November 7, 1863. The tacit
alliance between Russia and the United States still grated upon English
sensibilities, and the artist provoked the multitude to laughter by
depicting the President as Mephistopheles saluting the Russian bear.
Hard things in plenty were said of Lincoln, both at home and abroad, but
this is the only instance in which he was portrayed in Satan's livery.
British malice could go no further than this.



[Illustration: 025]

|Plate Number Twenty-five--This cartoon, "Drawing Things to a Head,"
published in _Harper's Weekly_, on November 28, 1863, shows how
the friendship of Russia was regarded in the loyal States. Lincoln,
ensconced in a snug apothecary shop, watched from the opposite side
of the street by John Bull and Napoleon, is made to say to Secretary
Seward, who is presented as an errand boy with a basket of Russian salve
on his arm: "Mild applications of Russian salve for our friends over the
way, and heavy doses and plenty of it for our Southern patient."



[Illustration: 026]

|Plate Number Twenty-six--This cartoon, "This Reminds Me of a Little
Joke," published in _Harper's Weekly_, on September 17, 1864, recalls
the extraordinary Presidential campaign of that year. There was,
during the opening months of 1864, a determined and more or less
noisy opposition to the renomination of Lincoln. This came from two
sources--the radical abolitionists, who chafed at what they called
the President's half-hearted policy in regard to slavery, and another
element, which, while supporting the Union, believed that slavery should
be let alone; but it shrank into insignificance as time went on, and
when the Republican Convention met at Baltimore on June 7, Lincoln was
renominated on the first ballot. The Democratic National Convention was
held twelve weeks later in Chicago. A few days before it met President
Lincoln said to a friend: "They must nominate a peace Democrat on a war
platform, or a war Democrat on a peace platform." The convention chose
the second of these alternatives. It adopted a platform which declared
the war a failure and demanded an immediate cessation of hostilities,
and it nominated for President the best known of all the war Democrats,
General George B. McClellan. The latter's chances of election, whatever
they may have been, disappeared within a fortnight of his nomination.
The course of the war during the summer had been studded thickly with
bloody and seemingly indecisive battles. Both in the East and the West
the opposing armies were grinding in almost continuous struggle. But
Sherman's capture of Atlanta and Farra-gut's entrance into Mobile
harbor, proved to the people of the North that the end was in sight, and
when the President called for five hundred thousand more men they
came forward rapidly, a large and valuable percentage of them being
volunteers who had served their time under previous enlistments.
Long before election day it was evident that no prospect remained of
Democratic success. When the polls were closed and the votes counted,
Lincoln's enormous popular majority of more than 400,000 fairly buried
the McClellan electoral tickets. Kentucky and Delaware, with New Jersey,
testified their disgust with Emancipation, but they were of small
account in an electoral college of 233 votes, wherein 212 were solidly
against them.



[Illustration: 027]

|Plate Number Twenty-seven--This cartoon, "The American Brothers; or, How
Will They Get Out of It," was published in _Punch_ on November 5, 1864.
It has, in the light of after events, a touch of humor not intended by
the artist. When it was drawn, the belief was generally prevalent in
England that Lincoln's defeat at the coming election was a foregone
conclusion. Thus, this cartoon pictures Lincoln and Davis bound to
adjacent benches by ropes, significantly labelled "Debts," but it
was still wet from the press when Lincoln, as we have just seen, was
re-elected by the largest majority in the electoral college ever given
to a candidate.



[Illustration: 028]

|Plate Number Twenty-eight--This cartoon, "Long Abraham Lincoln a Little
Longer," published in _Harper's Weekly_, on November 26, 1864, tells its
own story and bears witness to the joyful relief with which the people
of the North greeted the re-election of Lincoln. Very like the foregoing
in spirit and treatment (and for that reason not reproduced in this
place) is a cartoon published in _Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper_
on December 3, 1864. It bears title, "Jeff Davis' November Nightmare,"
and places the President, with legs drawn up, on the bed of the
Confederate leader. "Is that you still there, Long Abe?" asks the
suddenly awakened man. "Yes, and I am going to be four years longer," is
the reply.



[Illustration: 029]

|Plate Number Twenty-nine--This cartoon, "The Federal Phoenix," was
published in _Punch_, on December 3, 1864. Its character is explained in
its title, and it shows one of those fabled birds, on which the artist
has placed the head of Lincoln, rising from a pyre, the fuel for which
is furnished by commerce, credit, the Constitution, a free press, habeas
corpus and State rights. How it impressed the public for whom it was
intended can only be conjectured, but to the eyes of an American,
a generation after the death of the man whom it thus held up to
condemnation, it seems as brutal in motive as it is misleading in fact.



[Illustration: 030]

|Plate Number Thirty--This-cartoon, "The Threatening Notice," published
in _Punch_, on February 26, 1865, represents Lincoln remonstrating with
the American eagle in the dress of Uncle Sam over the Senate's proposed
abrogation of Canadian treaties. "Now, Uncle Sam," the President is
reported as saying, "you're in a darned hurry to serve this notice on
John Bull. Now, it's my duty as your attorney, to tell you that you may
drive him to go over to that cuss, Davis." But John Bull was not to be
driven "over to that cuss, Davis." Two months later the war was ended,
and Lincoln dead. _Punch_ has caricatured him for the last time.



[Illustration: 031]

|Plate Number Thirty-one--This cartoon, "From Our Special War
Correspondent," was published in _Harper's Weekly_, on April 15,
1865. Lincoln, who had lately made his last visit to the front, was
represented, with a drumhead for a table, writing from City Point,
Virginia: "All seems well with us." These words, in the light of after
events, are not without a touch of pathos. When the journal in which
they appeared reached its readers, Booth's bullet had done its work and
Lincoln had become the gentlest memory in our history.



[Illustration: 031]

|Plate Number Thirty-two--This cartoon, "Britannia Sympathizes with
Columbia," published in _Punch_, on May 6,1865, testifies to the
world-wide grief which attended the death of the great war President,
and shows how strong had become his hold upon all men who love brave
deeds and honest lives. Britons had not hesitated to criticise and
upbraid him living, but dead they were quick to recognize him as the
noblest, knightliest figure of an age rich above all things else in the
number and grandeur of its great men.

It has been impossible to trace the authorship of most of the cartoons
herewith reproduced from _Harper s Weekly_ and _Frank Leslie's
Illustrated Newspaper_, but three of them, at least, are known to be
from the pencil of the elder Frank Bellew, an English artist who came
to this country to embark with John Brougham in the publication of a
short-lived weekly, called the _Lantern_, later helping to found half
a dozen other periodicals. Bellew had cleverness and versatility, and a
rich vein of humor, as the drawings "Sinbad Lincoln and the Old Man of
the Sea," "Lincoln's Last Warning" and "Long Abraham a Little Longer"
bear witness, but he failed to achieve complete success in his work, and
left no impress upon the political thought of his time.

The designer of a majority of the cartoons reproduced from _Vanity
Fair_, which, between 1859 and 1863, ran a checkered but lively
existence, was the late Henry Louis Stephens, a man of fertile and
incisive wit, with unusual ability to enforce a pictorial moral by
simple yet telling methods. For a brief period Mr. Stephens's attitude
toward Lincoln seems to have been touched by the not always good-natured
suspicion with which the public regards a new and comparatively untried
man; but no sooner had Sumter been fired upon than the artist and his
journal became ardent and unswerving in their support of the Union, and
so continued until the end. Stephens's drawings, though somewhat crude
and faulty in method, are, nevertheless, notable for their originality
and force. He lacked, however, either the inclination or the opportunity
to continue in the field for which he had shown so marked an aptitude,
and long before his death, in 1883, fallen into obscurity.

All of the cartoons reproduced from London _Punch_ are from the pencil
of Sir John Tenniel, who, in 1901, concluded half a century of brilliant
service on that journal. Tenniel was already an artist of repute when
he joined the staff of _Punch_ in 1851, and for many years preceding his
self-sought retirement he was recognized as incomparably the greatest
caricaturist of his time--his pencil a force to be taken into account
by sagacious statesmen in every forecast of the drift of public opinion.
His range is not a wide one, yet within its clearly defined limits he is
nearly always powerful. Although his methods are usually simple, through
them he secures signal breadth and strength, while now and then he gives
an impression of power such as one fancies an Angelo might have given
had he amused himself by drawings reflecting upon the politics of his
time. If there was any doubt in official minds respecting the necessity
of sending an army to the rescue of Khartoum, it vanished when Tenniel
drew his picture of General Gordon standing behind an earthwork and
looking across the desert for a glimpse of the expected redcoats. That
touched the heart of England, and was more potent than the fiercest
denunciation from the Opposition bench of the Gladstone ministry's
inaction in the Soudan.

Tenniel is first of all a satirist, but he has seldom been either unjust
or unfair in his work. His longest and most memorable departure from
fairness was when, in common with the ruling class of England generally,
he misinterpreted our Civil War and caricatured the chief actor therein
with astonishing perversity. Still, he was not more frequently or more
deeply in the wrong than some of our own politicians, who could
not plead his excuse of distance from the scene, and, to his credit, be
it said, when once convinced of his error he made prompt and generous
amends therefor. Nothing could have been more fitting nor finer in its
way than his design, already referred to, which showed Britannia laying
a wreath on the bier of the martyred President and which was accompanied
by these appreciative lines from the pen of Tom Taylor:



|You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier,

_You_, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,

Brood for the self-complacent British sneer,

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,



His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkept, bristling hair,

His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,

His lack of all we prize as debonair,

Of power or will to shine, of art to please.



You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh,

Judging each step as though the way were plain;

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph,

Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain.



Beside this corpse that bears for winding sheet

The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew;

Between the mourners at his head and feet,

Say, scurril jester, is there room for _you?_



Yes, he has lived to shame me for my sneer,

To lame my pencil and confute my pen--

To make me own this hind of princes peer,

This rail-splitter, a true-born king of men.



My shallow judgment I have learned to rue,

Noting how to occasion's height he rose;

How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true,

How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.



How humble yet how hopeful he could be;

How in good fortune and in ill the same;

Nor bitter in success nor boastful he,

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.



He went about his work, such work as few

Ever had laid on head and heart and hand,

As one who knows where there's a task to do,



Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command;

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow,

That God makes instruments to work His will,

If but that will we can arrive to know,



Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill.

So he went forth to battle on the side

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied

His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights;

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,

The iron-bark that turns the lumberer's ax,

The rapid that o'erbears the boatman's toil,

The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,

The ambushed Indian and the prowling bear--

Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train:

Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear,

If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.



So he grew up, a destined work to do,

And lived to do it; four long-suffering years'

Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,

And then he heard the hisses changed to cheers,

The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,

And took both with the same unwavering mood;

Till, as he came on light, from darkling days,

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,

A felon hand, between the goal and him,

Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,

And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,

Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!

The words of mercy were upon his lips,

Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,

When his vile murderer brought swift eclipse

To thoughts of peace on earth, good will to men.



The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,

Utter one voice of sympathy and shame!

Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high,

Sad life, cut short, just as its triumph came.



A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before

By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt

If more of honor or disgrace they bore;

But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out.



Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,

Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly driven;

And with the martyr's crown crownest a life,

With much to praise, little to be forgiven.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Lincoln in Caricature" ***

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