Part 7 (2/2)
THE SOUTH SECEDES
[Ill.u.s.tration: Virginia Pausing.]
In view of what might have been done, it is somewhat exasperating to look over the actual cartoons of the war as they have come down to us.
Even when a clever idea was evolved none seemed to have the cleverness or the enterprise to develop it. As all the modern cartoonists realize, nothing is more effective than a well-planned series. It is like the constant dropping that wears away the stone. The most potent pictorial satire has always been the gradual elaboration of some clever idea--the periodic reappearance of the same characters in slightly modified environment, like the successive chapters of a serial story. The public learn to look forward to them, and hail each reappearance with a renewed burst of enthusiasm. The cartoonists of the Civil War do not seem to have grasped this idea. A single example will serve as an ill.u.s.tration. A clever cartoon, ent.i.tled ”Virginia Pausing,” appeared just at the time that Virginia, the last of the States to secede, joined the Confederacy. The several Southern States, represented as young rats, are gayly scampering off, in the order in which they seceded, South Carolina heading the procession. Virginia straggling in the rear finds herself under the paw of ”Uncle Abe,”
represented as a watchful and alert old mouser, and has paused, despite herself, to consider her next step. The Union, personified as the mother rat of the brood, lies stark and stiff on her back, with the Stars and Stripes waving over her corpse, and underneath, the legend, ”The Union must and shall be preserved.” Now this idea of the Southern States as a brood of ”Secession rats” was capable of infinite elaboration. It might have been carried on throughout the entire four years of the struggle, the procession preserving the same significant order, with South Carolina in the lead, Virginia bringing up the rear, and Lincoln, as a wise and resourceful mouser, ever in pursuit. It could have shown the rats at bay, cornered, entrapped--in short, the whole history of the war in a form of genial allegory. But if the initial cartoon, ”Virginia Pausing,” ever had a sequel, it perished in the general wreckage of the Confederacy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Some Envelopes of the Time of the War.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Long Abe.]
The welcome which awaited caricature, even of the crudest sort, at the outbreak of the war is ill.u.s.trated by the curious vogue enjoyed by envelopes adorned with all sorts of patriotic and symbolic devices--an isolated tombstone inscribed ”Jeff Davis alone,” a Confederate Mule, blanketed with the Stars and Bars--a slave-owner vainly brandis.h.i.+ng his whip and shouting to a runaway slave, ”Come back here, you black rascal.” The latter, safe within the shadow of Fortress Monroe, defiantly places his thumb to his nose, and in allusion to General Butler's famous decision, retorts: ”Can't come back, nohow, ma.s.sa. Dis chile's CONTRABAN'.”
It is not surprising to find that Lincoln throughout the struggle was a favorite subject for the caricaturist. His tall, ungainly, loose-knit figure, his homely features, full of n.o.ble resolve, seemed to offer a standing challenge to the cartoonist, who usually treated him with indulgent kindness. The exceptions are all the more conspicuous. A case in point is the cartoon commemorating Lincoln's first call for volunteers for three months--a period then supposed to be ample for crus.h.i.+ng out the rebellion. The artist has represented Lincoln as the image of imbecilic dismay, while a Union soldier with a sternly questioning gaze relentlessly presents to him a promissory note indorsed, ”I promise to subdue the South in 90 days. Abe Lincoln.” A much more typical and kindly cartoon of Lincoln is the one representing him as emulating the feat of Blondin and crossing the rapids of Niagara on a tight-rope, bearing the negro problem on his shoulders, and sustaining his equipoise with the aid of a balancing pole labeled ”Const.i.tution.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Promissory Note.]
The really clever cartoons of this period are so few in number, and stand out so prominently from a ma.s.s of second-rate material, that there is real danger of attaching undue importance to them. Such a plate as ”The Southern Confederacy a Fact! Acknowledged by a Mighty Prince and Faithful Ally,” which was issued by a Philadelphia publisher in 1861, although crudely drawn, is one of the very few that show the influence of the early English school. It represents the Devil and his a.s.sembled Cabinet in solemn conclave, receiving the envoys of the Southern Confederacy. The latter includes, among others, Jeff Davis, General Beauregard, and a personification of ”Mr. Mob Law, Chief Justice.” They are bearers of credentials setting forth the fundamental principles of the government, as ”Treason, Rebellion, Murder, Robbery, Incendiarism, Theft, etc.” Satan, interested in spite of himself, is murmuring to his companions, ”I am afraid in Rascality they will beat us.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Great Tight Rope Feat.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: At the Throttle.]
An effective allegorical cartoon, which appeared at a time when the cause of the Union seemed almost hopeless, pictures Justice on the rock of the Const.i.tution dressed in the Stars and Stripes and waving an American flag toward a happier scene, where the sun of Universal Freedom is brightly s.h.i.+ning. Behind her are hideous scenes of disorder and national disaster. A loathsome serpent, of which the head is called ”Peace Compromise,” the body, ”Mason and Dixon's Line,” and the tail ”Copperhead,” is crawling up the rock seeking to destroy her. In one of its coils it is crus.h.i.+ng out the lives of a number of black women and children. In one corner of the cartoon the figure of a winged Satan is hovering gleefully over a mob which is hanging a negro to a lamp-post--an allusion to the Draft Riots in New York. Some of the mob are bearing banners with the words ”Black Men have no Rights.” In the shadowy background of the picture a slaveholder is las.h.i.+ng his slave, tied to a post, with a whip called ”Lawful Stimulant.” An unctuous capitalist is talking with a group of Secessionists, seated on a rock called ”State Rights.” In contrast with the dark picture on which Justice has turned her back is the bright vista of the future, ”The Union as it will be,” into which she is looking. There we see a broad river and a prosperous city. A negress, free and happy, is sewing by her cabin door, her child reading a book upon her knee.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Expert Bartender.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Southern Confederacy a Fact!!!
Acknowledged by a mighty prince and faithful ally.
_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]
[Ill.u.s.tration: The Brighter Prospect.
_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]
CHAPTER XIX
THE FOUR-YEARS' STRUGGLE
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Why don't You take it?”]
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