The National Joker

by Thompson, Todd Nathan;

  14. Only Authentic Life, 14–15.

  15. Holzer, Boritt, and Neely, Lincoln Image, xviii.

  16. Huntzicker, Popular Press, 108; Brooks, “Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln,” 15.4:562.

  17. Bartlett, Life and Public Services, 107.

  18. Quoted in Holzer, Lincoln Seen, 128, 107.

  19. Harrison, Cartoon, 68.

  20. Holzer cautions about reading too far into Lincoln’s attitudes about political cartoons: “We have no idea how Lincoln reacted to humorous prints. . . . Nor is there any surviving evidence of how fellow Americans of Lincoln’s era responded to these pictures. The galling absence of such documentation makes any examination of their impact on the Lincoln image at best speculative.” Lincoln Seen, 104.

  21. Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:149–50. Earlier in the speech, Lincoln had set up this punch line by referring to a “biographical sketch” of Pierce “in which he is represented, at the age of seventeen, to have spelled ‘but’ for his father, who was unable to spell it for himself” and in which a U.S.-Mexico War story was told picturing Pierce “as cutting at the enemy’s flying cannon balls with his sword in the battles of Mexico, and calling out, ‘Boys there’s a game of ball for you;’ and finally that he added enough to a balance due him to raise the whole to three hundred dollars, and treated his men.” Collected Works, 2:148.

  22. Bellew, “‘A Rail’ Old Western Gentleman,” 14–15; quoted in Plummer, Lincoln’s Rail-Splitter, 52.

  23. A. Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas, 364–65; quoted in Plummer, Lincoln’s Rail-Splitter, 53.

  24. Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:506.

  25. “Honest Old Abe,” 1; West, “Phunny Phellow,” n.p.

  26. Benedict, “Wide Awake” Poem, 8, 10, original emphasis.

  27. “‘Boy’ Lost!”

  28. Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:249; quoted in J. K. Morehead, interview with John G. Nicolay, May 12 and 13, 1880, in Burlingame, Oral History, 41.

  29. Cohen, “Manly Sport,” n.p.; “Political Race.” Bunker lists numerous 1860 cartoons showing Douglas as embattled and Lincoln as capturing initiative. From Rail-Splitter, 66.

  30. “Lincoln, Douglas, and the Rail-Fence Handicap”; Cohen, “Manly Sport,” n.p.

  31. Harrison, Cartoon, 61.

  32. Dawley, President Lincoln Campaign Songster, 14; Nast, “May the Best Man Win,” 8–9.

  33. Bunker states that in 1864 “the visual and verbal creations of illustrated periodicals were integral parts of Lincoln’s political machine.” From Rail-Splitter, 322–23.

  34. Bellew, “Presidential Cobblers and Wire-Pullers,” 297.

  35. “May the Best Man Win,” 8–9; Bellew, “Good Uncle and the Naughty Boy,” 16.

  36. W. F. Thompson, Image of War, 174; Bellew, “This Reminds Me,” 608.

  37. Bellew, “Long Abraham Lincoln,” 768; Press, Political Cartoon, 19.

  38. “With All Thy Faults,” 8–9.

  39. “Jeff Davis’s November Nightmare,” 176.

  40. Newman, “Tallest Ruler on the Globe.” See also Bunker, “Old Abe,” 37–41.

  41. Newman, “Phenomenon of Portraiture,” 8.

  42. Streicher, “On a Theory,” 440.

  43. Ward, “A. Ward, Jr. on the Presidency,” 1. On the importance of small-town papers supporting Lincoln in 1864, see Carwardine, Lincoln, 295.

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