The History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: "No Higher Law."

_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]

Caricature dealing with the Presidential campaign of 1856 is represented by the cartoon called "The Presidential Campaign of '56."

Buchanan, who proved the successful candidate, is mounted on a hideous monster resembling a snake, and marked "Slavery." The monster is being wheeled along on a low, flat car drawn by Pierce, Douglas, and Ca.s.s. A star bearing the word "Kansas" is about to disappear down the monster's throat. In the distance Fremont, on horseback, is calling out: "Hold on! Take that animal back! We don't want it this side of the fence." Buchanan is saying, "Pull down that fence and make way for the Peculiar Inst.i.tution." The fence in question is the Mason and Dixon's line. The faces of Ca.s.s, Douglas, and Pierce, who are drawing along the monster, are obliterated--they are absolutely formless.

The evils of slavery from a Northern point of view are shown in a cartoon called "No Higher Law." King Slavery is seated on his throne holding aloft a lash and a chain. Under his left elbow is the Fugitive Slave Bill, resting on three human skulls. Daniel Webster stands beside the throne, holding in his hand the scroll on which is printed, "I propose to support that bill to the fullest extent--to the fullest extent." A runaway slave is fighting off the bloodhounds that are worrying him, and in the distance, on a hill, the figure of Liberty is toppling from her pedestal.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Practical Ill.u.s.tration of the Fugitive Slave Law.

_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Great Disunion Serpent.

_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]

The cartoon "Practical Ill.u.s.tration of the Fugitive Slave Law" sums up very completely Abolitionist sentiment on the subject. The slaveholder, with a noose in one hand and a chain in the other, a cigar in his mouth and his top-hat decorated with the single star, which was the sign of the Southern Confederacy, is astride of the back of Daniel Webster, who is crawling on all-fours. In Webster's left hand is the Const.i.tution. "Don't back out, Webster," says the slaveholder. "If you do, we're ruined." The slave-woman who is being pursued has taken refuge with William Lloyd Garrison, of the Boston _Liberator_, who is saying: "Don't be alarmed, Susanna, you're safe enough." One of Garrison's arms is encircling the negress's waist, at the end of the other is a pistol. In the back of the picture is the Temple of Liberty, over which two flags are flying. On one flag we read: "All men are born free and equal;" on the other, "A day, an hour, of virtuous Liberty is worth an Age of servitude."

CHAPTER XVII

NEGLECTED OPPORTUNITIES

Down to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the history of American political caricature is a history of lost opportunities.

Revolution and war have always been the great harvest times of the cartoonist. Gillray and Rowlandson owe their fame to the Napoleonic wars; Philipon and Daumier, to the overthrow of Louis Philippe; Leech and Tenniel reached their zenith in the days of the Crimean War and the Sepoy Mutiny. It is not the election cartoon, or the tariff cartoon, or the cartoon of local politics, it is the war cartoon that is most widely hailed and longest remembered. Yet of all the wars in which the United States has been engaged, not one has given birth to a great satiric genius, and none but the latest, our recent war with Spain, has received comprehensive treatment in the form of caricature.

It is not strange that the Revolutionary War and that of 1812 failed to inspire any worthier efforts than William Charles's crude imitations of Gillray. The mechanical processes of printing and engraving, the methods of distribution, the standards of public taste, were all still too primitive. The Mexican War was commemorated in a number of the popular lithographs of the day; but it was not a prolonged struggle, nor one calculated to stir the public mind profoundly. With the Civil War the case was radically different. Here was a struggle which threatened not only national honor, but national existence--a struggle which prolonged itself grimly, month after month, and was borne home to a great majority of American families with the force of personal tragedy, arraying friend against friend, and father against son, and offering no brighter hope for the future than the vista of a steadily lengthening death-roll. There was never a time in the history of the nation when the public mind, from one end of the country to the other, was in such a state of tension; never, since the days of Napoleon, had there been such an opportunity for a real master of satiric art. It seems amazing, as one looks back over the pictorial records of these four years, that the magnitude of the events did not galvanize into activity some unknown genius of the pencil, and found then and there a new school of American caricature commensurate with the fever-heat of public sentiment. The existing school of caricature seems to have been absurdly inadequate. The prevailing types were a sort of fas.h.i.+on-plate lithograph--groups of public men in mildly humorous situations, their features fixed in the solemn repose of the daguerreotypes upon which they were probably modeled; or else the conventional election steeplechase, in which the contestants, with long, balloon-like loops trailing from their mouths, suggest an absurd semblance to the cowboys of a Wild West show, all engaged in a vain attempt to la.s.so and pull in their own idle words.

Many of the cartoons actually issued at the outbreak of the Civil War impress one with a sense of indecorum, of ill-timed levity. What was wanted was not the inept.i.tude of feeble humor, but the rancor and venom of a Gillray, the stinging irony of a Daumier, the grim dignity of a Tenniel. And it was not forthcoming. The one living American who might have produced work of a high order was Thomas Nast; but although Nast's pencil was dedicated to the cause of the Union from the beginning to the end, in the series of powerful emblematic pictures that appeared in _Harper's Weekly_, his work as a caricaturist did not begin until the close of the war.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rough and Ready Locomotive against the Field.

_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]

It is interesting to conjecture what the great masters of caricature would have made of such an opportunity. The issues of the war were so clear-cut, their ethical significance so momentous, that an American Gillray, a Unionist Gillray, would have found material for a series of cartoons of eloquent and grewsome power. It is easy to imagine what form they would have taken: an Uncle Sam, writhing in agony, his limbs shackled with the chains of slavery, his lips gagged with the Fugitive Slave Law, slowly being sawn asunder, while Abolition and Secession guide the opposite ends of the saw, or else the American Eagle being worried and torn limb from limb by Southern bloodhounds and stung by copperheads, while the British Lion and the rest of the European menagerie look on, wistfully licking their chops and with difficulty restraining themselves from partic.i.p.ating in the feast. Such a cartoonist would have found a mine of suggestion in "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; he would have crowded his plates with Legrees and Topsies, Uncle Toms and Sambos and Quimbos, fearful and wonderful to look upon, brutal, distorted, and unforgettable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: What's Sauce for the Goose is Sauce for the Gander.

_From the collection of the New York Historical Society._]

It is equally easy to imagine what a Daumier might have done with the material afforded by the Civil War. Some types of faces seem to defy the best efforts of the caricaturist--smooth, regular-featured faces, like that of Lord Rosebery, over which the pencil of satire seems to slip without leaving any effective mark. Other faces, strong, rugged, salient, seem to invite the caricaturist's efforts; and these were the types that predominated among the leaders of the struggle for the Union. Daumier's genius lay in his ability to caricature the human face, to seize upon a minimum of lines and points, to catch some absurd semblance to an inanimate object, some symbolic suggestion. And when once found, he would harp upon it, ringing all possible changes, keeping it insistently, mercilessly before the public. One can fancy with what avidity he would have seized upon the stolid, indomitable figure of Grant, intrenched behind his big, black, ubiquitous cigar.

That cigar would have become the center of interest, the portentous symbol of Grant's dogged, taciturn persistence. Gradually that cigar would have grown and grown, its thickening smoke spreading in a dense war cloud over the whole series of cartoons, until finally it became the black, s.h.i.+ning muzzle of a cannon, belching forth the powder and fire and ammunition that was to decide the issue of the war. What Tenniel would have done is evidenced by what he actually did in _Punch_. The great tragedies of those four years, Gettysburg and Bull Run and the Battle of the Wilderness, would have been pictured with the tragic dignity that stamps his famous cartoon in which he commemorated the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Nast's Famous Cartoon "Peace."]

CHAPTER XVIII

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?"]