56. Mitgang, Abraham Lincoln, x; Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 80; McGill, American Literature, 5. See also Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 2:287–89, 400–401; and Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, xiv.
2. “Little Big Man”: Modesty and Attack in Lincoln’s Writings and Speeches
1. Lincoln, Collected Works, 4:62.
2. Ibid., 4:65; Sandage, Born Losers, 82.
3. de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 37.
4. Ford, History of Illinois, 199; Bray, “Power to Hurt,” 43.
5. Letter recounting Lincoln’s childhood, Blair Manuscripts; Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 80.
6. Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:113–14.
7. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:65–66; Bray, “Power to Hurt,” 53; Jameson, Fables, 138.
8. Northrup Frye derives his conception of irony from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, wherein, in Frye’s words, “the eiron is the man who deprecates himself, as opposed to the alazon. Such a man makes himself invulnerable, and . . . there is no question that he is a predestined artist, just as the alazon is one of his predestined victims.” Anatomy of Criticism, 40. On Socratic irony, see Highet, Anatomy of Satire, 56–63.
9. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:61–62, 67, original emphasis.
10. Ibid., 1:62.
11. Joshua Speed statement for William Herndon, (by 1882), in Wilson and David, Herndon’s Informants, 589; Lincoln quoted in Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln 1:105; Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 116.
12. Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 128–29; James H. Matheny, interview by William H. Herndon, 1865–66, in Wilson and Davis, Herndon’s Informants, 472.
13. Ninian W. Edwards, interview by William H. Herndon, 1865–66, in Wilson and Davis, Herndon’s Informants, 447.
14. Shackford, David Crockett, 52–53.
15. John M. Scott, “Lincoln on the Stump and at the Bar,” in Scott to Ida Tarbell, Bloomington, Illinois, August 14, 1895, Tarbell Papers, Allegheny College.
16. For an in-depth treatment of Lincoln’s use of invective and billingsgate in political speech in the early part of his career, see Burlingame, Inner World, 150–61.
17. Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 130.
18. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:509–10. Legend had it that Cass broke his sword rather than surrender it after a battle in the War of 1812. Klunder, Lewis Cass, 13.
19. Woodford, Lewis Cass, 264; Palmeri, Satire, 10, 12; Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:514.
20. Crockett, Autobiography, 71, 140.
21. Only Authentic Life, 4; Lincoln Catechism, 37–38.
22. Lincoln, Collected Works, 4:64; Winkle, Young Eagle, 91.
23. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:508.
24. Ibid., 1:509.
25. Woodford, Lewis Cass, 266.
26. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:512–14.
27. Ibid., 1:509.
28. Zall, Lincoln on Lincoln, 74–75; Poore, “Benjamin Perley Poore,” 221; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:261.
29. Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 384–85; Rugg, Abraham Lincoln, 5; Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:5–7; Hanna, Abraham among the Yankees, 73.
30. Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:146, original emphasis, 149, editorial addition in original; Caron, “Backwoods Civility,” 172.
31. Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, xvii.
32. Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:136, 144, 156; Kaplan, Lincoln, 227.
33. Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:248.
34. Ibid., 2:362.
35. Ibid., 2:467, original emphasis.
36. Ibid., 2:506.
37. Ibid., 3:20, 22, original emphasis.
38. Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:488; quoted in Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:488; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:389–90; Stern, headnote, “From Lincoln’s Opening Speech,” 475.
39. Quoted in Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:534; quoted in Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 5.
40. Brooks, “Personal Reminiscences,” 562; Bray, “Power to Hurt,” 57.
41. de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 37.
42. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, 267, 271, 255; Stampp, “Lincoln and the Secession Crisis,” 75. Lincoln’s intentions in this resupply effort have long been the source of contentious historical debate. McPherson, for one, thinks, “Although he never said explicitly what he expected them [the Confederates] to do, Lincoln had become rather disillusioned with the prospects for voluntary reconstruction and he had plenty of reason to believe that the Confederates would open fire on a peaceful resupply effort.” Battle Cry of Freedom, 272n78. McPherson’s note includes a useful synthesis of other major positions in this debate.
43. Browning, Diary, 1:476; Oliver Ellsworth to Lincoln, April 18, 1861, Abraham Lincoln Papers, original emphasis.
44. Hay, Inside Lincoln’s White House, 103; Goodwin, Team of Rivals, 566; quoted in R. B. Browne, Lincoln-Lore, 94; Chase, Salmon P. Chase Papers, 180.
3. The Rail-Splitter President
1. F. F. Browne, Every-Day Life, 329.
2. Howe, Making the American Self, 136; Hofstadter, American Political Tradition, 93.
3. Cawelti, Apostles, 9. According to Cawelti, “in the dramatic story of Abraham Lincoln’s rise from rail-splitter to President, from poverty and obscurity to savior of the union, the ideal of the self-made man found its greatest epic.” Apostles, 40.
4. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:8–9.
5. Cawelti, Apostles, 2.
6. Wilson and Davis, Herndon’s Informants, 118, 104, 106–7; Logan, “Stephen T. Logan,” 2; Wilson and Davis, Herndon’s Informants, 106–7.
7. Winkle, Young Eagle, 74–75.
8. Plummer, Lincoln’s Rail-Splitter, 42, 53; Harper, Lincoln and the Press, 49; Carwardine, Lincoln, 103. Douglas L. Wilson, in explaining Lincoln’s intense privacy, claims, “Even though they [his advisers and publicists] had made it clear that his career had a rags-to-riches character that could be politically advantageous, he was unwilling to cooperate,” and Wilson gives as evidence Lincoln’s biographical apologia, “There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me.” Lincoln’s Sword, 79. But, as argued in this chapter, Lincoln’s apparent reluctance may have been in part a folksy but astute performance of modesty that mapped to circulating images of the self-made man. Carwardine offers a similar take: “Lincoln was entirely alert to the political benefits of projecting his humble origins, but this did not mean that there was anything contrived about his interest in the common folk. He empathized with those who were, as he had been, struggling self-improvers.” Lincoln, 50. For analysis of how the Republican Party continued to connect Lincoln’s laboring past to a critique of slavery during Lincoln’s presidency, see Richardson, Greatest Nation of the Earth.
9. Lincoln, Collected Works, 4:65, 62, 63. See also Burlingame, “Writing Lincoln’s Lives”; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln 1:648; and Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, 120.
10. Howells, Life of Abraham Lincoln, 19–21.
11. Ibid., 47, 57.
12. Winkle, Young Eagle, 125.
13. Crockett, Account, 46–47. According to Richard Boyd Henry, this book is “factual, but not autobiographical—its first person narration is a sham. Here can be found the stories of Crockett’s reception in the big cities, told in a style that is a Whig ghostwriter’s imitation of Crockett’s. The congressman’s legend had preceded him, and Crockett played the role he believed was appropriate to his public image.” “Man in the Buckskin Hunting Shirt,” 11.
14. Crockett, Narrative, 16, original emphasis; Shackford, David Crockett, 12; Lincoln, Collected Works, 4:62.
15. Strange, Sketches and Eccentricities, 128.
16. Quoted in Lofaro, introduction, xxii, original emphasis.
17. Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, xvi.
18. Casper, introduction, 9; Benson, Printed Picture, 22, 50; Winship, “Manufacturing and Book Production,” 50. In lithography, artists drew directly onto a piece of limestone using a beeswax crayon
; after being treated with acid, the composition was treated with ink and water and could be used to print many copies. Benson, Printed Picture, 50.
19. Benson, Printed Picture, 24; Winship, “Manufacturing and Book Production,” 64; Press, Political Cartoon, 4; Barnhurst and Nerone, Form of News, 114.
20. Nerone, “Newspapers and the Public Sphere,” 241–42; W. F. Thompson, Image of War, 169; Bunker, From Rail-Splitter, 31.
21. W. F. Thompson, Image of War, 167; Lively, “Propaganda Techniques,” 101.
22. Bunker, From Rail-Splitter, 9.
23. Holzer, Lincoln Seen and Heard, 37.
24. “Tribune Offering,” 73; Carwardine, Lincoln, 74; W. B. Brown, “Cincinnatus Image,” 23, 26.
25. “Last Rail Split,” 61; Carwardine, Lincoln, 104.
26. “Uncle Sam.” Though scholars disagree on the exact origins of the Uncle Sam figure, it can likely be traced to the War of 1812, when Sam Wilson of Troy, New York, stamped barrels of meat to be sent to U.S. troops with “U.S.”; his workers joked that it stood for “Uncle Sam” Wilson. The Uncle Sam figure first appeared in a lithograph in 1837; by 1860 it had not yet begun to morph with the bearded image of Lincoln, as it would later during the Civil War. Lordan, Politics, Ink, 119–20.
27. Bellew, “Lincoln’s Last Warning,” 61, original emphasis.
28. “Good Gracious, Abraham Lincoln!” 16; Lordan, Politics, Ink, 18.
29. Baker, “Rail Splitter at Work Repairing the Union.”
30. “Job for the New Cabinet Maker,” 5.
31. “Cooperation,” 1.
32. Workingman’s Reasons, 1–2, original emphasis.
33. Lowell, Works, 208.
34. Stowe, Men of Our Times, 13, original emphasis.
35. Hurz, “Log Cabin Built,” 1.
36. Quoted in John L. Scripps to William H. Herndon, Chicago, June 24, 1865, in Wilson and Davis, Herndon’s Informants, 57. Fehrenbacher and Fehrenbacher, Recollected Words, 395–96.
4. “Abraham Africanus the First”: The Limits of Preemptive Self-Satire
1. Nast, “President Lincoln’s Inaugural,” 320.
2. Tebbel, Media in America, 189, 195–96. The term “Copperhead” is an epithet—in wide use by 1862—referring to Peace Democrats during the Civil War. Though Republicans used it because it described a poisonous snake, some Democrats embraced the term. A penny is also called a “copperhead,” and Peace Democrats argued that because pennies then depicted Lady Liberty, Copperheads were resisting the president’s assault on civil liberties and the Constitution. Weber, “Lincoln’s Critics,” 33.
3. Wyllie, Self-Made Man in America, 117; Alger, Abraham Lincoln, 78; Cawelti, Apostles, 2–3.
4. Norton, review, 4.
5. Fehrenbacher, “Anti-Lincoln Tradition,” 8–9. See also Holzer, “Confederate Caricature,” and Abbott, “President Lincoln,” 307.
6. Quoted in Channing, Crisis of Fear, 230.
7. “Masks and Faces,” 8. For more on Southern Illustrated News, see Holzer, “Confederate Caricature,” 28.
8. Volck, “Lincoln Signing.”
9. “Abduction,” 4; Holzer, “Confederate Caricature,” 28; “Southern Punch,” n.p.
10. Lincoln Catechism, 3; Abraham Africanus I, 9, 41, 26–27, 31, 6–7, 20, 22, original emphasis.
11. Freedberg, Power of Images, 257.
12. Lincoln, Collected Works, 3:535–36, 538.
13. Quoted in Fite, Presidential Campaign of 1860, 210.
14. Adderup, Lincolniana, 8.
15. G. W. Harris, Sut Lovingood Travels, 21–22, 28, 35–36.
16. Hall, Reflections, 3; C. H. Smith, Bill Arp, 24; Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:498.
17. God Bless Abraham Lincoln, 4, 14.
18. See M. T. Smith, “Beast Unleashed,” 248–76.
19. God Bless Abraham Lincoln, 14–16.
20. Adderup, Lincolniana, back matter; Lincoln Catechism, 3–5, 12, 37.
21. Lincoln Catechism, 38.
22. God Bless Abraham Lincoln, 15.
23. Strother, Lincoln as monkey. Holzer assesses Confederate caricature in illustrated weeklies and vanity presses, “At best, they were crudely drawn and uninventive. At worst, they were so bitter that they went beyond satire; they became merely illustrated invective.” “Confederate Caricature,” 29. I agree with this evaluation and would extend it to written satires, as well.
24. Holzer, Boritt, and Neely, Lincoln Image, 116, 126–27; Neely, Holzer, and Boritt, Confederate Image, 51. These authors offer a useful comparison of influence of Adalbert Volck and Thomas Nast: “Whereas Nast’s sketches were regularly engraved for the popular Northern weeklies, Volck’s works enjoyed no comparable mass circulation, and as far as is known, no circulation in the Confederacy until the war was over.” Neely, Holzer, and Boritt, Confederate Image, 44. Incidentally, Volck seems to have at least partially recanted his anti-Lincoln illustrations. In a 1905 letter to the Library of Congress, he says that he felt “the greatest regret ever to have aimed ridicule at that good and great Lincoln,” though, as Neely, Holzer, and Boritt note, in the same letter he also says, “Outside of that the pictures represent events as truthfully as my close connections with the South enabled me to get at them.” He later presented a carved shield to the Confederate Museum in Richmond in 1909, so the sincerity of his apology is debatable. Confederate Image, 54.
25. Holzer, Mirror Image, 24; Tebbel, Media in America, 184; Holzer, “Confederate Caricature,” 24, 26.
26. Quoted in Christie, “Civil War Humor,” 103; C. H. Smith, Bill Arp, 5–6.
27. Abbott, “President Lincoln,” 314.
28. Adderup, Lincolniana, back matter.
29. Plummer, Lincoln’s Rail-Splitter, 52.
30. As Jane W. Stedman relates, the humor periodical London Punch’s “greatest source of language humor was American English, which Punch’s editors regarded as a different and subversive tongue.” “American English,” 171–72.
31. “President Lincoln’s Inaugural Speech,” 237.
32. “The War in America,” Comic News, July 23, 1864, 29, and August 27, 1864, 93, quoted in Bunker, “Comic News,” 64.
33. Tenniel, “Great ‘Cannon Game,’” 191, original emphasis.
34. Old Abe’s Jokes, 28–29.
35. Lowell, Works, 192.
36. Bunker, Rail-Splitter, 3.
37. Morgan, “Pull Devil—Pull Baker,” 159.
38. Morgan, “Vampire,” 221; Morgan, “In for His Second Innings,” 240.
39. Maurer, “Punch,” 4, 27, 28.
40. Neely, Holzer, and. Boritt, Confederate Image, 5; Bunker, “Comic News,” 54; quoted in Russell, My Diary, 401.
41. Bunker, “Comic News,” 87; Morgan, American War, n.p.
42. Tenniel, “Britannia Sympathises with Columbia,” 183. According to Tenniel’s New York Times obituary of February 27, 1914, under the headline “Tenniel, Cartoonist, Dead: Famous Punch Artist, Who Caricatured Lincoln, Was Aged 94,” Shirley Brooks wrote the poem. According to Holzer, the poem was written by Tom Taylor, who wrote the play that Lincoln was watching when he was shot. Holzer, Lincoln Seen, 125.
43. “Abraham Lincoln, Foully Assassinated,” 2.
5. “A Hoosier Michael Angelo”: The Politics of Lincoln’s Physical Appearance in Popular Media
1. Carpenter, Six Months, 148–49; Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 57.
2. Pratt, Concerning Mr. Lincoln, 19–20.
3. Two important exceptions include Harold Holzer and Gary L. Bunker. Holzer complains of a critical legacy that continually sees “Lincoln as the undeserving victim of the most brutal pictorial assault in the long history of relationships between artists and leaders.” He offers several commonsense correctives, including his observations that Lincoln was the leading cartoon target of the time precisely because he was its “leading personality” and that “he was treated no more harshly than any of his rivals for the presidency, nor as brutally during his term of office than any previous, controversial occ
upant of the White House.” Lincoln Seen, 105–6. In historicizing the new maturity of the illustrated comic periodical in 1860, Bunker asserts the centrality of political cartoons to Lincoln’s electoral successes: “This new watershed of political caricature was fortuitous for Abraham Lincoln, for it helped to transform his status from dark horse candidate to president of the United States.” From Rail-Splitter, 31.
4. Carwardine, Lincoln, 50. Michael Woods discusses Lincoln’s physical regularities while speculating as to whether he may have had the genetic disorder Marfan syndrome. “Lincoln’s Health Draws Scrutiny,” 25. But several experts have considered and dismissed this possibility. See, for instance, Boritt and Borit, “Lincoln and the Marfan Syndrome,” and Lattimer, “Danger in Claiming.”
5. Only Authentic Life, 1, 14.
6. Democratic Campaign Songster, 12, 4.
7. Whitman, “Walt Whitman,” 82.
8. Whipple, Story-Life of Lincoln, 316; Norman B. Judd to Abraham Lincoln, June 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln Papers.
9. Holzer, Borritt, and Neely, Lincoln Image, 67; Horan, Mathew Brady, 31. One scholar of photography explains the power of this photograph: “Most people had never seen Lincoln, but rumors of his ugliness were rife during the presidential campaign. . . . Brady distracted attention from Lincoln’s gangliness by directing light to his face. He posed the future president in a statesmanlike attitude and took care that he curled his fingers (especially of his right hand), so that they would not appear overly long and large.” Marien, Photography, 95.
10. “Editor’s Drawer,” 1866, 405.
11. Quoted in Carwardine, Lincoln, 72; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:657–58.
12. Lincoln, Collected Works, 3:512. Other scholars have mentioned Lincoln’s strategic self-mockery. Benjamin Thomas comments, “He had no illusions about his personal appearance and joked about it so often that there is reason to believe that he deliberately tried to capitalize upon his homeliness.” “Lincoln’s Humor,” 12. Carwardine maintains, “Lincoln certainly described himself as ugly and used his appearance as a weapon against himself, for humorous effect.” Lincoln, 50.
13. Carwardine, Lincoln, 50–51; Conwell, Why Lincoln Laughed, 21. Lincoln had a “new suit of clothes” for the Cooper Union speech, but it “had become badly creased from packing.” Stern, headnote, “Address,” 568–69.
The National Joker Page 17