In addition to sharing a profession, most southwestern humorists were, like Lincoln, political Whigs, a fact that has led some scholars to describe southwestern humor as an elitist exercise in the mockery of uneducated yeoman. As one critic summarizes this position, “the once-fashionable view of this writing, clabbered up in its inapt metaphor [of cordon sanitaire (sanitary cordon or barrier)], is that the Southwestern authors were Whig moralists who tempered their amusement of Democratic hijinks by constructing cautionary tales of warning against uppity illiterates.”23 Recent generations of humor scholars have come to repudiate this account. As closer reading of these stories reveals, the narratives of southwestern humor do not quarantine their narrators; on the contrary, they foreground contact between traveling professionals and rural inhabitants. When genteel narrators reproduce the speech of rustics in print, the resultant “linguistic contamination” of these comedic contact zones makes the narrators sound more like yeomen and the fictional yeomen more genteel and learned. In addition to the stories that he borrowed directly from the southwestern humorists, Lincoln also engaged in the conscious use of “contamination” when telling his jokes and stories. His use of slang and dialect operated simultaneously as raillery and as self-satire, since he performed rusticity while gently mocking it. Even as president, Lincoln responded to “stylish visitors” to the White House with deliberately rustic diction and anecdotes.24 Through such performances, Lincoln used “linguistic contamination” to mock his visitors for putting on airs while personifying a particularly democratic essence as a representative of the people.
Southwestern humorists’ Whiggery, then, should be seen not as class-based elitism but as a good-natured clash between a burgeoning professional class and unlettered settlers in a frontier setting. If southwestern humor was written “largely by a new class of professionals—circuit lawyers, journalists, doctors, shopowners—whose line of work demanded, in ways the landed aristocracy were never bound, that they come into contact with poor whites,” Lincoln, as a circuit lawyer and a one-time grocery storekeeper in a frontier town, fit the bill. Further, these authors were professionals who “cast their lot with the future,” in contrast to the “unambitious yeomen and marginal settlers” whom they gently ribbed in their writing for their “quirky, complacent individualism” and resistance to the progress of civilization. This is the position that Lincoln held as a young man in New Salem and then Springfield: striving, Whiggish on progress and internal improvements but connected to his yeoman Kentucky and Indiana roots and friendly with the frontier farmers who were his neighbors. He, thus, performed what one scholar of southwestern humor has identified as a key theme of this literature: “backwoods civility,” in which the “positive possibilities of frontier folk” are represented in comic ways.25 Lincoln sought to show that he understood and respected—as people and as voters—western yeoman, even as he gently ribbed them about their aversion to the progress the Whig platform of internal improvements exemplified.
All of this is apparent in one of Lincoln’s early political satires, his 1842 “Letter from the Lost Townships” to the editor of the Sangamo Journal. In this piece, Lincoln takes on the persona of a farmwife named Rebecca, a character he continued from a previous letter from another author. His tough, folksy female narrator recalls Benjamin Franklin’s use of Silence Dogood to satirize public-sphere issues from a position of seemingly uninterested powerlessness.26 Rebecca’s political voice is also reminiscent of southwestern humorist F. M. Noland’s Pete Whetstone character, who argues in a plainspoken way for Whig policies. As the title implies, the setting is rural, and Rebecca and her neighbor Jeff see political matters in practical instead of esoteric or ideological terms. Lincoln had long been a staunch defender of banks, which he felt provided an elastic supply of money necessary for economic growth (and, relatedly, internal improvements projects) on the frontier. When the Bank of Illinois failed in 1842, he maintained that defense and blamed deleterious national policies.27 Whigs like Lincoln lambasted Democratic state auditor James Shields after he decided that state-bank currency would only be accepted at a discount. The pretense for the “Rebecca” letter is to ask the editor whether Shields is a Whig or a Democrat. Jeff launches into a diatribe against “the cursed British whigs,” claims to have seen Shields through a window at a Whig event, and rants, “He’s a whig, and no mistake: nobody but a whig could make such a conceity dunce of himself.” Rebecca responds by pointing out to Jeff that “the proclamation is in your own democratic paper.”28 Lincoln’s character, thus, lays blame upon Whigs but mistakenly. The content of Jeff’s complaint remains valid, but upon Rebecca’s revelation, the perpetrator shifts from Whig to Democrat.
But Jeff, still convinced that Shields is a Whig, wagers on it with Rebecca, who then asks the Sangamo Journal to settle the bet. This is the ostensible purpose of the “Rebecca” letter, but Lincoln’s persona also gives a second purpose: to “help to send the present hypocritical set to where they belong” and install men who will “take on fewer airs.” Hence, the letter seeks to co-opt the position of the common man for political gain. The basis of Jeff’s contention that Shields is a Whig is that he is conceited, like Whigs who “wouldn’t let no democrats in [to a Whig event], for fear they’d disgust the ladies, or scare the little galls, or dirty the floor.”29 In his satiric equation of Shields and Whiggery, Lincoln reverses common stereotypes about the political parties. That is, in presenting a Democrat as going against the will of common people, especially farmers, the logical assumption was that the Whigs, in their opposition to Democrats, were, therefore, for the will of common folk, despite the reputation Jeff imputes to them. “A measure of the effectiveness of Lincoln’s satire,” one scholar points out, “is that it nearly got him killed.” After two other “Rebecca” letters (probably not written by Lincoln), one of which Mary Todd coauthored, Shields demanded the name of the author from the Journal’s editor, Simeon Francis, and eventually challenged Lincoln to a duel. This incident brought Lincoln and Todd back into proximity after a previous falling out. In this sense, we can locate satire at the advent not just of Lincoln’s political career but also his marriage.30
Lincoln wrote many such pieces for several Illinois newspapers and sent reports from the state capital, Springfield, to the Sangamo Journal under pseudonyms like Johnny Blubberhead, Sampson’s Ghost, and Old Settler. Though it is impossible to tell for certain which articles are from Lincoln because most such pieces appear anonymously or under pseudonyms, scholars estimate that he authored hundreds. James H. Matheny, a Springfield lawyer who stood in Lincoln’s wedding, claimed to have delivered hundreds of editorials from Lincoln to Sangamo Journal editor Francis. In Illinois politics as played out in local newspapers, Lincoln was a constant satiric mouthpiece for Whig policies and goader of individual Democratic politicians, whom he lampooned severely. In some of these pieces, Lincoln even posed as prominent Democrats to make them seem silly or incompetent.31 Though he consistently lambasted Democrats in these articles, as the “Rebecca” letter shows, he did not do so entirely at the expense of yeoman frontiersmen. Here and elsewhere, Lincoln went even further than the southwest humorists in blurring distinctions between backwoodsman and gentleman. In his satires, he gained a laugh at the expense of baffled rubes but employed “backwoods civility” to situate himself through his public persona as empathetic. Lincoln’s take on southwestern humor was in a sense a performance of political doublespeak, in which he imbibed the language and interests of Illinois farmers while gently winking at their greenness; his self-deprecation, humble past, and modest demeanor made the satire convivial instead of mean-spirited.
Twenty years later, as President of the United States, Lincoln could little afford to be caught writing snarkily partisan sketches for newspapers, but he did consistently apply the work of other humorists to political situations. Indeed, by reciting and applying his favorite literary comedians, he was able to frame sarcastic critiques through indirection, in effect using them to
make points while denying responsibility for the jests’ content. Lincoln had plenty of material to choose from. While living in the White House, Lincoln had on hand copies of Joe Miller’s Jests and Lowell’s Biglow Papers along with collections of humorous essays and letters from dialect writers Orpheus C. Kerr, pseudonym of R. H. Newell; Artemus Ward, pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne; and Petroleum V. Nasby, pseudonym of David R. Locke.32 Lincoln joked to General Montgomery C. Meigs that anyone who hadn’t read the Orpheus C. Kerr Papers was “a heathen.” Lincoln kept and recited these works not simply for comic relief; he also applied their humor to more public discussions on serious political issues. After promoting Grant to lieutenant general, for instance, Lincoln recited to him a fable from Kerr’s Palace Beautiful and Other Poems about a monkey who thought he would be a great general if only he had a longer (and then longer and then longer) tail, until he collapsed under its weight.33 Journalist Noah Brooks—an acquaintance from Lincoln’s Illinois days and a constant visitor at the White House—claimed that Lincoln carried a Nasby newspaper column about the migration of blacks to Ohio and would recite it to friends and colleagues because he felt that “the feeling of the anti-war and ultra-conservative men was so capitally travestied” in it. According to Locke, editor of the Findlay, Ohio, Jeffersonian, Lincoln offered him a political post, “any place you ask for—that you are capable of filling—and fit to fill.” Locke declined, but this reveals how fully Lincoln mixed his humor and his politics. Even more telling of the political use of humor for Lincoln, soon after Lincoln’s death, a copy of Joe Miller’s Jests was found in his desk drawer, next to important papers.34
Lincoln’s explanation of Ward’s humor is illustrative of how Lincoln viewed and how he used the dialect humorists he so loved. Russell H. Conwell, a Civil War soldier and acquaintance of Lincoln and author of Why Lincoln Laughed (1922), claims, “Lincoln said that much of Ward’s humor was of the educational sort. It aroused intellectual activity of the finest kind, and he mentioned Ward’s constant use of riddles as an illustration. Then he spoke of the ancient Samson riddle and the fables of Aesop, and called attention to the fact that they employed a joke to train the mind by the study of keen satire. He said Ward was like that.” Granted, this may be an overzealous appraisal of the quality and depth of Ward’s work, but it does show that Lincoln viewed satire as a means of political education, training minds to question the surfaces of what is seen and assumed. Lincoln saw the shaping of public sentiment as a key role of politicians and knew that public opinion was malleable; it was, in the words of one biographer, “susceptible to education and redirection.”35 In redeploying jokes, fables, quotes, and scenes from his favorite humorists as satire, Lincoln was teaching political lessons to his auditors and encouraging them to engage in similar critical thinking.
Jokes on Lincoln’s Joking
Of course, not everyone got the joke. Such is the complexity of Lincoln’s character and image that he was simultaneously praised as a great dignitary and reviled as a tasteless comedian. Caricaturists and satirists commonly portrayed Lincoln’s love of humor as inappropriately frivolous during a solemn and devastating war. Lincoln’s love of wit was a key reason for the plethora of caricatures of him.36
Depictions of Lincoln as a jester began appearing from the beginning of his presidency. In “Great and Astonishing Trick of Old Abe, the Western Juggler,” for example, from an 1861 issue of the comic periodical Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, Lincoln is dressed as an entertainer and attempts to swallow the sword of war (fig. 1.2). The cartoon tries to make Lincoln look ridiculous by reducing his attempt to deal with secession to a circus trick. More severe in its criticism of Lincoln the joker is Frank Bellew’s “The National Joker,” in another humor magazine, Funniest of Phun, in September 1864 (fig. 1.3). Here, Lincoln, in a jester outfit and standing in a circus ring, smiles and tells his audience, “This reminds me of a little joke,” and “This reminds me of another little story,” common attributions to Lincoln in Civil War cartoons to characterize his penchant for telling humorous anecdotes. In drawing the President of the United States in a jester’s outfit, Bellew endeavored to demean the president’s use of humor as decidedly unpresidential. The horrifying scenes of war pictured in the bubbles overhead—the hospital, Liberty aflame, and the battlefield—imply that Lincoln’s humor was in exceedingly poor taste during wartime. Part of this disgust arose from a false but powerful rumor, given credence and currency by being printed in the New York World, that Lincoln had made off-color jokes while touring the Antietam battlefield. A similarly damning juxtaposition of the horrors of war and Lincoln’s love of humor is at work in printmaker Joseph E. Baker’s 1864 lithograph “Columbia Demands Her Children!” (fig. 1.4). In this cartoon, an angry Columbia points accusingly at Lincoln and shouts, “Mr. LINCOLN give me back my 500,000 sons!!!” Lincoln looks nonplussed and sits in a relaxed position at his writing desk, with his right leg slung over the back of his chair. A call for more troops lies on the floor. Searching for an answer, Lincoln says, “Well the fact is—by the way that reminds me of a STORY!!!”37
The 1864 poster “I Knew Him, Horatio” uses a Shakespeare allusion to offer a similar critique of Lincoln (fig. 1.5). In this cartoon, General and Democratic presidential nominee George B. McClellan plays the role of Hamlet, holding Lincoln’s severed, laughing head and soliloquizing, “I knew him, Horatio; A fellow of infinite jest . . . Where be your gibes now?”38 The imputation here is that Lincoln’s joking will lead to a political death, with McClellan as the benefactor. Unlike pro-Lincoln cartoons that picture a “long Lincoln” to emphasize his staying power, this cartoon repurposes the Hamlet soliloquy to imply the opposite: Lincoln’s transience as a one-term president (or so the cartoonist falsely predicts).
A potentially self-defeating problem with these cartoon attacks on Lincoln’s sense of humor is their context. “The National Joker,” for example, appeared in the comic periodical Funniest of Phun. Presumably, the readers of this magazine enjoyed humor, even during wartime; the magazine was counting on this fact for its continued existence. As such, its readers would most likely not be the types to impugn Lincoln for having and exercising a sense of humor similar to their own. Political cartoons make light of serious issues and, conversely, use levity to make serious points; the comic periodicals in which many of them appeared worked in the same way, so any critiques within those media of using humor to deal with serious issues likely came off as hypocritical and, thus, probably ineffectual.
Print satires that mocked Lincoln for making jokes faced the same dilemma of hypocrisy. For example, the 1864 campaign song sheet “Hey! Uncle Abe, Are You Joking Yet?” connects Lincoln’s humor to abolition: “Honest Old Abe was a queer old coon, / Joked with a nigger and play’d the buffoon.” In the pamphlet Abraham Africanus I, His Secret Life, Revealed under the Mesmeric Influence, Mysteries of the White House (1864), “Lincoln,” narrating his life story while mesmerized, admits, “I learnt my statesmanship from a comic almanac, and got my jokes from an old Joe Miller,” and persists in telling jokes even while under hypnosis.39 New York Democrat J. F. Feeks, who printed both of these pieces, as well as The Lincoln Catechism (1864) and Lincolniana or Humors of Uncle Abe (1864), also published borrowed jokes; the criticism of Lincoln for doing the same might appear highly disingenuous even to Feeks’s partisan readers.
Some criticisms of Lincoln as a clownish leader with a reputation for joking were delivered by characters who were themselves satirized simultaneously. Southwestern humorist Charles H. Smith, writing as Bill Arp, a naive Georgia cracker, published three letters to Lincoln in the Georgia paper Southern Confederacy in 1861 and 1862 (collected in book form in 1866). These letters offer friendly but demeaning advice and satirize Arp’s misunderstanding of politics and geography as well as the North’s lack of progress in the war. In one letter, Arp invites Lincoln and Seward to come visit him “so we can fix up and swap a lie or two with you.” Here Arp figures Lincoln as a fellow southwes
tern humorist, able to give and take in the telling of tall tales for amusement. In another letter, Arp sarcastically lauds Lincoln’s standing as a comic and even offers advice in preserving his witticisms for posterity: “I would like to see you personally, Mr. Lincoln, and hear you talk and tell some of your funny anecdotes, like you told Governor Morehead [former Kentucky governor, present for the “Lion and the Woodsman’s Daughter” fable]. I laughed when I read them till the tears fairly rained from my eyelids—I know I could make my fortune, Mr. Lincoln, compiling your wit. May I be your Boswell, and follow you about?”40 In claiming to be Lincoln’s compatriot as a humorist, the obviously flawed Arp denigrates Lincoln as a vulgar joker by bringing him down to Arp’s own level. But, again, the readers of Smith’s Bill Arp letters enjoyed humor during the war, even humor about the war, which is what Arp’s letters to Lincoln mostly traffic in.
Even if they hated the man, Southern readers seem to have relished Lincoln’s jokes. After all, even Confederate publications circulated comic anecdotes under Lincoln’s name. The humor magazine Southern Punch, for instance, repeated several jokes that it attributed to Lincoln, including the following: “Old Abe, in discussing the political polygamic interests of Utah, is said to have remarked: ‘It is all nonsense to talk about polygamy. I know, from experience, that one wife at a time is as much as any man can get along with.’”41 This is a nonpartisan, nonsectional joke, with one butt located far away, in Utah, and the other, Mary Todd Lincoln, in the White House; it, therefore, associates Lincoln with laughter in a harmless light (aside from its sexism) that belies attempts to render a negative image of Lincoln’s joking.
In the Northern comic press, Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun included a satire on Lincoln in the May 1, 1861, issue that chided him early in his presidency for his penchant for joking. In a fake letter to the editors, “Lincoln” tells a poor joke and says, “You can judge by this that I’m just the right one to appreciate your Budget, and that there’s a sort of federal feeling between us.” Finally, he leads up to his reason for writing: to ask advice on national policy. “Lincoln” explains, “Splitting sides is one thing, splitting rails is also one thing, if it isn’t anything else—but splitting up these great United States is another thing, and no mistake.” The Budget editors’ reply takes Lincoln to task for his claims as a humorist: “Our dear and incompetent old friend, we enclose you fifty cents for that weak joke. . . . You may do very well for a dismembered President, but leave joking alone; you don’t know enough, and never will.” This insult implies not that humor is particularly distasteful or beneath his office but, rather, that Lincoln is beneath humor, which requires a ready wit that Lincoln lacks. The Budget then offers the following political advice: “remember that you are legislating for white people.” This suggestion hints at the periodical’s underlying, racist reason for its criticisms of Lincoln. Indeed, the Budget was consistently suspicious of abolitionism even as it tempered its denunciations of Lincoln after his election and Southern secession.42
The National Joker Page 4