Abraham Lincoln And The London Punch Part 5

Thereafter _Punch_ lost his supreme interest in the great Civil War. He made no allusions to Gettysburg or to Vicksburg. The "neutral hope" was painfully dampened by Northern triumphs. His commercial sympathy was all with the losing side. The wish was father to the not very neutral thought that the negro might prove the undoing of his Northern allies.

On August 15 appeared a cartoon ent.i.tled "Brutus and Caesar, from the American Edition of Shakespeare." To the tent of Brutus (Lincoln) enters at night the ghost of Caesar, a black spectre. This colloquy occurs:--

Brutus--Wall, now, do tell! Who's you?

Caesar--I am dy ebil genius, ma.s.sa LINKING. Dis child am awful Inimpressional.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BLACK CONSCRIPTION.

"WHEN BLACK MEETS BLACK THEN COMES THE END (?) OF WAR."]

In October appeared a cartoon headed with unconscious satire, "John Bull's Neutrality." John Bull standing with his arms akimbo in the doorway of his shop is glaring defiantly at two bad boys, clad respectively in federal and in confederate uniforms, who slink away before his glance and drop the stones they were preparing to hurl at his windows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN BULL'S NEUTRALITY.

"LOOK HERE, BOYS, I DON'T CARE TWOPENCE FOR YOUR NOISE, BUT IF YOU THROW STONES AT MY WINDOWS, I MUST _THRASH YOU BOTH_."]

"Look here, boys," says John, "I don't care twopence for your noise, but if you throw stones at my windows I must thrash you both."

The same moral is enforced in the following poem:--

MR. BULL TO HIS AMERICAN BULLIES

Hoy, I say you two there, kicking Up that row before my shop!

Do you want a good sound licking Both? If not, you'd better stop.

Peg away at one another, If you choose such fools to be: But leave me alone; don't bother, Bullyrag and worry me!

Into your confounded quarrel!

Let myself be dragged I'll not By you, fighting for a Merrill Tariff; or your slavery lot.

What I want to do with either Is impartially to trade: Nonsense I will stand from neither Past the bounds of gasconade.

You North, roaring, raving, yelling, Hold your jaw, you b.o.o.by, do; What, d'ye threaten me for selling Arms to South, as well as you?

South, at me don't bawl and bellow, That won't make me take your part; So you just be off, young fellow: Now, you noisy chap, too, start!

To be called names 'tis unpleasant; Words, however, break no bones: I control myself at present; But beware of throwing stones!

I won't have my windows broken, Mind, you brawlers, what I say, See this stick, a striking token; Cut your own, or civil stay.

In a succeeding cartoon _Punch_ called for a separation between the fighters, for now, said he, "dis-union is strength." Another cartoon hails the fraternization--reported to have taken place between negroes bearing the flags of the rival armies--with the epigram "When black meets black then comes the end of war."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS, OR THE MODERN ULYSSES.]

Henry Ward Beecher's visit to England, in the autumn of 1863, is celebrated by a cartoon and by a poem in which due praise is given to the vigor of his oratory and to the excellence of his intentions.

BRITISHER TO BEECHER

Alas! what a pity it is, PARSON BEECHER, That you came not at once when Secession broke out, As ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S Apostle, a preacher Of the Union; a gospel which Englishmen doubt; For that Union, you see, Was a limb of our tree: Its own branches to break themselves off are as free.

Still, BEECHER, if you had been only sent hither, When at first the Palmetto flag flouted the sky, Commissioned foul slavery's faction to wither, And this nation invoke to be Freedom's ally, With your eloquent art You had won England's heart; We were fully disposed towards taking your part.

Instead of a Reverend BEECHER, appealing To our conscience, in Liberty's name, for the right, We heard a cool scoundrel advise in the stealing Of BRITANNIA'S domains, North and South to unite; And your papers were full Of abuse of JOHN BULL; Whilst he bore the blockade which withheld cotton wool.

Malevolence, taking our ill-will for granted, Has reviled us, pursued us with bl.u.s.ter and threat, Supposing itself the remembrance had planted In our bosom of wrongs which we couldn't forget, And should take, in its case Of misfortune, as base A revenge as itself would have ta'en in our place.

Tirades against England, with menace of slaughter, Never yet have your SUMNERS, and such, ceased to pour, Your bards talk of blowing us out of the water, And threaten to "punish JOHN BULL at his door."

Now this isn't the way To make Englishmen pray That the Yankees may finish by gaining the day.

An afterthought only is "Justice to n.i.g.g.e.rs;"

'Tis a cry which those Yankees raised not till they found That they for a long time had been pulling triggers, At their slaveholding brothers, and gained little ground.

First ABE LINCOLN gave out That he'd fain bring about, The Re-union with slavery too, or without.

So don't waste your words in attempts at persuasion, Which impose on no Britain alive but a fool, But husband your breath for another occasion, That is, BEECHER, keep it your porridge to cool.

"Strictly neutral will I Still remain standing by."

Says BRITANNIA: "D'ye see any green in my eye?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STORM-SIGNAL.

We know not whence the storm may come, But its coming's in the air, And this is the warning of the drum, Against the storm, PREPARE!]

Later, _Punch_ published this:

ADIEU TO MR. BEECHER

MR. BEECHER has left us; he has sailed for America, where he can tell his congregation just what he likes, but where he will, we are sure, tell MESSRS. LINCOLN and SEWARD the exact truth, namely that large numbers of the uneducated cla.s.ses crowded to hear a celebrated orator, and that the press has been very good-natured to him. Also, we hope he will say, because he knows it, that the educated cla.s.ses are at the present date just as Neutral in the matter of the American quarrel as they were before the reverend gentleman's arrival. Having duly stated these facts to the PRESIDENT and the Minister, MR. BEECHER may put them in any form he pleases before the delightful congregation, whose members pay 40 a-year, each, for pews. And to show that we part with him in all good nature, we immortalise his witty allusion to ourselves in his farewell speech:--

"I know my friend _Punch_ thinks I have been serving out 'soothing syrup' to the British Lion. (_Laughter._) Very properly the picture represents me as putting a spoon into the lion's ear instead of his mouth; and I don't wonder that the great brute turns away very sternly from that plan of feeding." (_Renewed Laughter._)

A gentler criticism upon us could not be, and we scorn to retort that, having a respect for anatomy, we did not make the lion's ear large enough to hold the other spoon depicted in that magnificent engraving. For the REVEREND BEECHER is not a spoon, whatever we may think of his audiences in England. And so we wish him good-bye, and plenty of greenbacks and green believers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EXTREMES MEET.

_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 re-election of Abraham Lincoln, in November, 1864, called forth a grotesque and unpleasant caricature of Lincoln as the "Federal Ph[oe]nix."

It was accompanied by these verses:

THE FEDERAL PH[OE]NIX

When HERODOTUS, surnamed "The Father of History"

(We are not informed who was History's mother), Went a travelling to Egypt, that region of mystery, Where each step presented some marvel or other,

In a great city there, called (in Greek) Heliopolis, The priests put him up to a strange story--rather-- Of a bird, who came up to that priestly metropolis, Once in five hundred years, to inter its own father.