Crockett’s biographer in Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett, of West Tennessee (1833) also situates Crockett within the nascent discourse of the self-made man. As does Howells in his biography of Lincoln, Crockett’s author, pseudonym James F. Strange, seeks to present Crockett as simultaneously singular (as the title “Eccentricities” suggests) and exemplary, a model and representative of what was possible in America under Whig policy. To give one brief example of this tension, Strange describes Crockett, “A hunter, poor, entirely without education, and without family influence, he was called upon by a large majority of the citizens of his district to represent them . . . without one single advantage other than the mere gifts of nature. He had to contend with men of genius, of fortune, and refined education . . . [and yet] Colonel Crockett rose to distinction.”15 This formulation calls attention to Crockett’s ability to beat the odds and achieve greatness but also, paradoxically, to his very ordinariness (which Crockett himself pointed to when he characterized his rise as due to “accident”).
From this rhetorical position of the self-made frontiersman, Crockett, throughout his political career, engaged in comparative biography, juxtaposing his own rustic circumstances and practical experiences to what he portrayed as his opponents’ luxurious ease. In his early career, for instance, running for the Tennessee legislature against Dr. William E. Butler, Crockett described his frontier roots and then blasted Butler as an aristocrat living a decadent city life. When he visited Butler’s home, Crockett reportedly refused to walk on an expensive rug and told the story of it in subsequent speeches: “Fellow citizens, my aristocratic competitor has a fine carpet, and every day he walks on truck finer than any gowns your wife or your daughters, in all their lives, ever wore!”16 This tactic is reminiscent of Lincoln’s visual and verbal invective upon Illinois politicians, such as Usher F. Linder, George Forquer, and Stephen A. Douglas. These attacks functioned through a comparison between a self-made man with connections to the people and aristocratic politicians whom Crockett and Lincoln depicted as considering themselves to be above their constituents. Both Whig politicians consistently presented themselves as honest, hardworking, commonsense rustics (like their audience members) in comparison to their opponents, whom they painted as opportunistic, aristocratic political operators.
Just how much of this Lincoln borrowed from Crockett’s example is unclear. Though Crockett’s biographies do not appear in Bray’s bibliography of books that Lincoln likely read, Lincoln was certainly familiar with Crockett’s political career and the mythology surrounding him. In any case, Lincoln’s fellow congressmen saw the connection. As they had done with Crockett, representatives who served with Lincoln thought of him as a “comical wild and wooly westerner,” “laughed at his awkward way of walking and the way he walked to the boardinghouse carrying books in a bandana handkerchief tied to the end of a pole. But by New Years [sic] they treasured him as ‘the champion story-teller in the Capitol.’” As P. M. Zall relates, “because of the way he performed in debate and the way he looked and talked, congressional Whigs felt they had been blessed with another Davy Crockett.”17
The Rail-Splitter President in Political Cartoons
A key difference between Crockett’s heyday in the 1830s and Lincoln’s in 1860 is the emergence of illustrated news. This newly pervasive medium allowed for the widespread dissemination of images of Lincoln, many of which portrayed him as he portrayed himself—as a laborer-turned-politician—thus further solidifying his status as a self-made man and visually connecting him to Northern voters.
A series of technological innovations in printing—including steam engines, rotary presses, new paper-making techniques, widespread use of lithography, and modernized processes for wood engraving—had advanced far enough by 1860 that, for the first time, voters could see political candidates’ images in newspapers and magazines. First, the use of steam to power presses increased the speed of presses by the 1840s. Second, the widespread adoption of rotary presses, which used curved plates rather than flat surfaces to print, and stereotyped casting, which created the plates, meant that newspapers and magazines could be printed at far-faster speeds. Third, the shift from handmade to machine-made paper in the first half of the nineteenth century improved both the quality and quantity of newsprint. Fourth, the newly widespread use of lithography, invented in the 1790s, allowed for greater tonal variation. Many pictorial satirists worked in the medium of lithography in their newspapers and periodical satires and separately printed posters.18
Maybe most important for the rise of illustrated news was the increasing use at midcentury of wood engraving, which allows art and text to appear, relatively inexpensively, on the same page. As opposed to the old woodblock cut with woodworking tools that hammer an image into the wood, the newer wood engravings, made with a burin, which can move smoothly along a wood surface, were more-precise drawings. With the use of stereotyped printing plates, printers could lock up the relief images engraved in wood and cast them as part of a single plate, which saved wear and tear on the original relief block during printing.
These advances saved time and increased circulation of printed images. Lithography and wood-engraving processes allowed larger press runs and helped make it possible for newspapers and magazines to disseminate an image within two to three days of receiving the original drawing. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, for instance, routinized wood engraving by machining the preferred wood from trees with trunks too small for full-page engraving into standard blocks of two square inches and bolting the blocks together to form a smooth block of any size. The head engraver drew the image’s outline on this large block, which was then unbolted, and individual blocks given to engravers with specialized skills (for example, faces or background details) to complete. This division of labor further sped up the engraving process.19
All of these technological advances led to a boom of illustrated newspapers, including P. T. Barnum’s short-lived Illustrated News in 1853 (which eventually folded into Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion), Frank Leslie’s (beginning in 1855), New York Illustrated News (1859–64), and Harper’s Weekly and Monthly. These newspapers and magazines produced a “storehouse of images for the entire country, providing virtual presence for people otherwise remote from the drama of the polity.” The use of illustrations helped to make news more exciting because the images broke up the monolithic page of print; by surrounding illustrations with elaborate borders to set them apart from the typeface, newspapers created “design conventions” that “likened news pictures to paintings in a gallery” and, thus, turned reading the news into a new experience. Photography existed, but there was not yet a method to reproduce photographs on the same sheet at the same time as print; therefore, cartoons reached many more people than did photographs. Graphic artists became important mediators, translating the world they reported on to the images of that world that readers consumed and internalized. When Lincoln first ran for president, political cartoons were newly omnipresent in the popular press. In speaking to a growing mass audience, cartoonists played a key role in shaping the public images of their caricatured subjects. The 1860 election was the first in which all candidates appeared visually in a wide array of illustrated newspapers and magazines containing a glut of political caricature. These caricatures and more-realistic portraits visually introduced voters to the presidential hopefuls and in doing so reinvented how American politics were presented to voters.20
Lincoln’s consciously fostered image was ready-made for caricature; this historical fortuity mitigated the content of the cartoons and print satires lampooning him. His press savvy and practice as a satirist made him aware of the consensus-building power of combining satire with a homespun persona and, as a public figure, of how satire could be used against him. Lincoln’s strategic use of his personal history and self-fashioning as a laboring man of the people helped him reap the benefits of American caricature without suffering (as much as other public figures, anyway)
from its denigrations. Whereas satire and caricature usually undercut their targets’ eminence, Lincoln cultivated a folksy lack of eminence as “Honest Abe” the “rail-splitter,” a hardworking, self-made man of humble origins who maintained a distinct affinity with common Americans. Lincoln was simultaneously more caricature-able than his opponents because of his unusual physical presence and his laboring background, which he highlighted through his self-presentation, and less susceptible to the negative ramifications of such caricature because through that modest and satiric self-presentation, he inoculated himself more than most caricatured subjects from the potential for a loss of prestige. In this way, caricatures and satires of Lincoln seem to have played right into his hands.
Whereas pro-Lincoln political cartoons attempted to characterize him as a “common man uncommonly qualified to be president,” anti-Lincoln images tried to paint him as an ungentlemanly lout. Cartoons depicting Lincoln negatively and cartoons depicting him positively relied upon the same visual shorthand, that is, emphasizing his height and homeliness, drawing him with an identifying ax, and/or depicting him as a jester or a laborer. As analysis of Lincoln cartoons shows, determining “which symbols the propagandist intends to be positive and which negative” does not necessarily signal whether these cartoons were actually read as absolutely positive or negative.21 Some cartoons intending to associate negative symbolism with Lincoln actually depict him as a self-made man and not a backwoods boor, a charming humorist rather than a vulgar and inappropriate joker, a man of impressive stature instead of a grotesque giant. This is because Lincoln’s self-satiric presentation anticipated these critiques and beat them to the punch, rendering them relatively innocuous. Lincoln, thus, crafted and controlled his image not only to win and maintain public support but also to shape criticism of him and exclude certain negative images. A laboring, joking, western man could not be dismissed as yet another East Coast elite or cunning operator, for example. Even some negative images of Lincoln safeguarded against potentially more-damaging criticisms.
In short, Lincoln, who has been called “the most visually conspicuous political figure in the history of the republic,” actually benefited from the emergence of popular illustrated periodicals such as those listed above as well as in comic periodicals like Vanity Fair, Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, Funniest of Phun, and Phunny Phellow.22 Many cartoons echo Lincoln’s campaign biography in depicting him as a laborer or farmer, using his identifying ax to physically go about political work. Harold Holzer, who has examined the Lincoln image extensively, points out that cartoonists and printmakers stressed “Lincolnian attributes that were physical, though decidedly civilian. In prints showing him as a railsplitter and flatboatman, Lincoln was portrayed as an American success story who escaped frontier poverty by sweat and strength. Even in caricature that mocked him, reminders of his strenuous life were much in evidence.”23 Holzer is right to notice the emphasis on physicality in Lincoln caricature, but he may underestimate the ideographic nature of caricature. In offering visual depictions of political activities, all cartoonists have to physicalize their subjects, that is, they need to draw objects instead of ideas in order to hit upon salient metaphors to convey their points. Since laborers deal more extensively with tactile objects than do politicians, Lincoln’s self-identification and cultivation of his image as a laborer translated well to the medium of political cartoons, which work by materializing complex political issues into symbolic images. The symbols of labor, humor, and populism that Lincoln and his campaign referenced and behaviorally enacted offered caricaturists ready-made, positively tinted ideographs. For example, cartoonists could capture Lincoln’s rail-splitter image in caricature through the easy-to-draw and easy-to-label symbols of the ax and the rail, which served as perfect physical symbols for the collected connotations Lincoln’s supporters wished to disseminate in celebrating his self-making.
These depictions began with the 1860 general-election campaign. “The Tribune Offering the Chief Magistracy to the Western Cincinnatus” in the satirical magazine Momus on June 9, 1860, portrays New York Tribune editor and powerful Republican kingmaker Horace Greeley as beckoning to Lincoln to leave his farm work to take up the mantle of leadership in Washington (fig. 3.1). The cartoon’s point is to insinuate that Greeley, identified by the word “TRIBUNE” on his coat, has the political power to court and appoint Lincoln as a presidential candidate. Indeed, Greeley’s Tribune circulated widely in the Northern states and had about ten thousand readers in Illinois alone. More important is the image of Lincoln as a workingman, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular arms, which wield his trademark ax. Lincoln here is a Cincinnatus, called from the fields to govern in a time of need. This trope—referring both to the Roman statesman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who quit his farm to serve Rome as dictator and resigned his office when his task was done, and to the U.S. Society of Cincinnati’s celebration of Revolutionary War officers—was still trenchant in mid-nineteenth-century America. Specifically, political campaigns connected American agrarianism to political independence and, thus, celebrated their candidates’ statuses as farmer-statesman, the “backbone of political democracy.”24
In “The Last Rail Split by ‘Honest Old Abe’” (fig. 3.2), another Momus cartoon from the 1860 campaign, Lincoln is pictured wielding a maul and using a wedge to split a rail, which is identified as the Democratic Party. Due in part to Douglas’s disagreements with President James Buchanan, Democrats could not agree on a candidate at the 1860 Charleston, South Carolina, convention, and several delegates from the Deep South withdrew after their platform was rejected. Eventually, the party offered two separate candidates: John C. Breckinridge from Kentucky and Douglas from Illinois. In this cartoon, Lincoln’s physical labor and his identification as the “rail” candidate become metaphors for political work, and the Lincoln-as-workingman image credits him with agency in effecting the split of his opposition party; he does it physically and emphatically.25
Such representations continued even after Lincoln took office. In the 1860 Currier and Ives poster cartoon “‘Uncle Sam’ Making New Arrangements” (fig. 3.3), the character of Uncle Sam (center, in knee breeches) stands before the White House, removing a notice that says, “Wanted. An honest upright and capable man to take charge of this house for four years. Undoubted testimonials will be required. Apply to Uncle Sam, on the Premises.” He hands Lincoln notice reading, “I have hired [him] for four years from March 1st 1861.” In this cartoon, Lincoln is pictured without a coat or vest, in suspenders and rolled-up shirtsleeves, and with his trademark ax. Such iconography is especially telling given the location—at the door of the White House—and the formality of dress of his unsuccessful opponents, John Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas, who are waiting in line to make their respective cases to Uncle Sam. Lincoln’s rusticity here differentiates him from the other candidates, all of whom look and speak in similar ways.26
Such depictions continued throughout Lincoln’s tenure in office. Harper’s Weekly was lukewarm toward Lincoln during the 1860 election because of the journal’s extensive readership in the South as well as its moderation on slavery and other controversial issues, earning it the nickname “Harper’s Weakly,” but was generally supportive after the onset of the Civil War. Harper’s “Lincoln’s Last Warning,” an October 11, 1862, Frank Bellew cartoon (fig. 3.4), again shows Lincoln in shirtsleeves wielding an ax. The tree is labeled “SLAVERY”; Lincoln tells a man, probably Jefferson Davis, “Now, if you don’t come down, I’ll cut the Tree from under you.” This cartoon renders Lincoln’s composition of the Emancipation Proclamation as the physical labor of chopping down a tree. Lincoln’s physical prowess means that his “warning” is not an empty threat: he has the strength to complete the task.27
The Cincinnatus trope is another carryover from the election to Lincoln’s term in office. For example, “Good Gracious, Abraham Lincoln!” from Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun in January 1861, tells the story of Lincoln’s meeting with Co
lumbia and the American eagle (fig. 3.5). Columbia, the American version of England’s Britannia figure and dating from around 1800, was often drawn as she is here: beautiful, with long hair and a flowing gown, likely a nod to neoclassical American interest in Greek culture. But unique to this drawing is the apprehension that is obvious in Columbia’s uneasy face and cowering posture upon seeing Lincoln’s rough-and-ready appearance (he is still carrying the rails). In the caption, she asks Lincoln how he managed “to get the situation of overseer of my farm.” Lincoln’s election and the public’s image of him (shaped both by the press and Lincoln himself) as simultaneously a rural worker and Western Cincinnatus had made possible this cartoon’s imagination of the United States as a farm. Of course, if the republic is a farm, this version of Lincoln is presumably highly qualified to serve as “overseer.” Lincoln’s response in the caption shows him to be well-meaning but rough around the edges. He promises to “act on the squar” and work for “the interests of the hull farm.” He will, he says, “take care that our blessed bird loses none of its pin feathers.”28
Lincoln’s emphasis of his laboring past led cartoonists to picture him doing other work besides that of an ax-wielding farmer. Often, this labor involved joining of some kind, a metaphor for Lincoln’s attempts to save or reconstruct the national union. For example, in Joseph E. Baker’s “The Rail Splitter at Work Repairing the Union,” a July 1865 Currier and Ives print, Lincoln uses his rail as a wedge to hold up the nation, represented as a ball, while vice presidential candidate Andrew Johnson uses needle and thread to sew the states back together (fig. 3.6). Johnson says to Lincoln, “Take it quietly Uncle Abe and I will draw it closer than ever!!” and Lincoln assures Johnson, “A few more stitches Andy and the good old Union will be mended!”29 In “A Job for the New Cabinet Maker,” which appeared in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper on February 2, 1861, Lincoln, again in work clothes and jacket-less, works as a cabinet maker, a pun on the president’s role in selecting cabinet members to advise him (fig. 3.7). He dips a brush into a bucket of “Union Glue” and tries to paste together a gaping crack separating two pieces, one piece labeled “NORTH” and the other “SOUTH,” of the cabinet on which he works.30 Like other cartoons, this image concretizes into manual labor the abstract job of reuniting the nation. Associating Lincoln with his laboring past helped cartoonists nudge readers to view the process of reunification as simplified and, therefore, understandable and achievable.
The National Joker Page 10