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Abraham Lincoln Civil War Caricature

"MRS. NORTH AND HER ATTORNEY"
September 24, 1864

  ‘‘You see, Mr. Lincoln, we have failed utterly in our course of action. I want peace, and so, if you cannot effect an amicable arrangement I must put the case in other hands.”

This interesting caricature pictures Abraham Lincoln as an attorney with law books, documents and a map of the Unites States of America on the wall. The message of the cartoon is that public sentiment was in favor of the Democratic Party platform which called for peace even at the price of conceding the continuation of slavery. As Wilson below and history instruct, the Punch editors were wrong and Lincoln won the Presidential election shortly after this cartoon was published.

Lincoln In Caricature by Rufus Rockwell Wilson

 The cartoon, Mrs. North and Her Attorney, appeared in London Punch on September 24, 1864. It shows President Lincoln crouched at his desk and nervously gnawing a goose quill, while a veiled woman sitting at his side says:

  ‘‘You see, Mr. Lincoln, we have failed utterly in our course of action. I want peace, and so, if you cannot effect an amicable arrangement I must put the case in other hands.”

A large section of British opinion had not yet taken into account the force and direction of the tide then running in Mr. Lincoln’s favor in the Northern States and thus Punch, one of its mouthpieces, voiced the belief, still held by many in England, that his defeat at the approaching election was a foregone conclusion. None are so blind as those who refuse to see. A short seven weeks later Mr. Lincoln triumphed at the polls, and before another half year had run its course Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox.

This is one of the few caricatures of Abraham Lincoln as President that pictures him as an attorney, his former profession before becoming President of the United States. This would be an ideal gift for an attorney, law student or Lincoln collector.

Price: $85

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