The National Joker

by Thompson, Todd Nathan;

  “Jeff Davis’s November Nightmare” from the December 3, 1864, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper applies similar visual language but imagines the Confederate perspective on Lincoln’s reelection (fig. 5.10). By placing Lincoln on an aged Jefferson Davis’s bed (possibly his deathbed) as a manifestation of Davis’s “nightmare,” the cartoon captures the South’s disappointment at Lincoln’s reelection, which meant that the war would likely continue until the rebellion was crushed. A decrepit Davis asks, “Is that You, still there LONG ABE?” Lincoln, responds, “Yes! And I’m going to be FOUR YEARS LONGER.” The text operates through a simple pun on “long,” which in reference to Lincoln came to mean both size and duration in office. Lincoln here is again drawn as very “long”—he and his folded-up legs barely fit on Davis—and, as the dialogue informs us, getting longer, apparently so long as to be able to reach into Davis’s dreams.39

  Finally, “The Tallest Ruler on the Globe,” in Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun in April 1865, just before Lincoln’s assassination, also makes Lincoln’s height into a metaphor for his greatness as a leader (fig. 5.11). In this very busy cartoon, Lincoln, wearing a wreath to symbolize peace, appears at his inauguration, welcomed by all the symbols of patriotism: Columbia, the American eagle, flags, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman and Admiral David Farragut march in the background with trophies representing their conquests. The attendant figures are other world leaders, who are represented as much smaller, dwarfed by Lincoln’s greatness. The caption describes the scene: “The tallest ruler on the globe is Inaugurated at Washington—the lesser luminaries of Europe assisting deferentially.” These “lesser luminaries” all rave about Lincoln’s size. Napoleon III says, “Shade of MON UNCLES! How he has GROWN!” while Britannia claims, “Goodness me! Yes! and he keeps on GROWING!” and a sultan invokes Allah and says, “May his shadow never be less.”40 As in other cartoons of 1864 and 1865, Lincoln’s size had increased in the nation’s and other nations’ eyes, becoming a physical manifestation of his excellence. This image shows that even before his assassination, Lincoln had already become a larger-than-life icon, a symbol of the perseverance of the Union.

  “A Phenomenon of Portraiture”: Complimentary Caricature

  The comic press itself joked about the fluidity of Lincoln’s image during the 1860 and 1864 presidential campaigns. William Newman’s “A Phenomenon of Portraiture,” published in Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun on December 15, 1860, is a kind of metacartoon that reflects on the activity of caricature and its political influence (fig. 5.12). The series of images imagines portraits of Lincoln transforming with his improving political fortunes. The accompanying text explains the transformation. At left, he “looks hideous—cadaverous—repulsive”; at center, “As his chances improve so do his looks. He is now tolerable”; at right, “Being chosen, he grows quite handsome—even angelic.”41 Of course, such an alteration raises a potentially unanswerable chicken-and-egg question. That is, did Lincoln’s visage become tolerable and “even angelic” only after his political fortunes improved, or did the changing depictions of Lincoln in some way affect those fortunes? The cartoon speaks to the malleability of the images of public figures in caricature and implies, whether intentionally or not, the power of the comic press in creating and continuously updating those images. It also attests to the ways in which caricature—combined with the momentum of the Republican campaign—may have enhanced Lincoln’s image over time instead of debasing it.

  This is antithetical to the way in which caricature is normally assumed to function. Because caricaturists exaggerate and deform their subjects, most critics see caricature as an always-aggressive gesture with an always-punitive result. One scholar considers how caricature’s “debunking” may help make public figures seem more approachable and “human”; but, he warns, “This must be weighed against the loss of prestige. The gain of humanness may contribute to the positive image of a figure but detract in other and more crucial political areas.”42 As the above examples reveal, Lincoln was able to avoid this attendant “loss of prestige” when caricatured. This is mainly because Lincoln’s reputation, as he shaped it from his earliest days in politics, in no way rested upon the notion of prestige. In his political self-fashioning, Lincoln consistently abdicated prestige in himself and attacked it in others in order to visually and verbally associate himself with the voting masses.

  Considering how Lincoln’s self-satire and self-presentation may have guided, influenced, or altered the meaning of caricatures challenges the common critical assumption that caricature is an inherently negative gesture. Sometimes, in fact, caricatured pictures of a subject’s physical eccentricities can have a positive effect on the subject’s image. Lincoln is a perfect example of this. Physical qualities that should be seen as negatives—Lincoln’s homely face, his ill-fitting clothes, his rough-hewn self-presentation, and especially his remarkable height—were often rendered in Lincoln caricatures as, at worst, innocuous and, at best, advantageous. Lincoln the satirist-satirized abetted this reversal of the standard iconography of caricature through good-humored self-mockery and a modest demeanor that redefined his humble origins and unusual physical appearance as appropriately “presidential.” As A. Ward Jr. put it on the front page of the August 1864 campaign newspaper Father Abraham, “A. L. is the cheef among the 43 thousan, and the 1 altogether luvly. As Pres I am bound to admit that he’s Gorjeous.”43

  Notes

  Introduction: Abraham Lincoln and the American Satiric Tradition

  1. Bellew, “National Joker,” 16.

  2. I borrow Stephen Greenblatt’s term “self-fashioning” to emphasize the extent to which Lincoln participated in the creation and dissemination of his public image as a “control mechanism” and to highlight the centrality of such self-presentation in popular media to the contemporary and historical perpetuation of Lincoln’s image. Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, 3.

  3. Winter, “Laughing Doves,” 1578. See also Blair, Horse Sense, and Rourke, American Humor.

  4. “Yankee Humor,” 330.

  5. Vinton, “Who Are Our American Humorists?” 1159; Trent, “Retrospect of American Humor,” 32–46; J. C. Harris, “Humor in America,” 46–49; “English Satire,” 1; “Political Satire and Satirists,” 621.

  6. Hannay, Satire and Satirists, ix.

  7. J. C. Harris, “Humor in America,” 46.

  8. Edward Rosenheim Jr. offers a similar view of satire in a 1964 forum in the now-defunct Satire Newsletter.

  Of satiric works, it seems to me, we can always say two things: (1) their achievement may be described as an attack (or criticism or exposure or ridicule or spoof), and (2) the attack proceeds by methods which are manifestly not those of direct, literal communication (and thus involves what has been variously described as obliquity, indirection, irony, invention, distortion, etc., etc.). This seems to me the most basic statement of what the writings that most of us call satire have in common. And I do not think that such writings must necessarily involve a positive exhortation to do or believe what is right or even a direct statement of affirmative principles or norms. (“Norms, Moral and Other,” 22)

  9. Charles E. Schutz precedes me in labeling Lincoln as a “satyr-statesman, for whom a gentle form of satire is essential to life and politics. The political comedy of Abraham Lincoln is a comedy of politics, and Abraham Lincoln, the humorist, is the supreme politician; each is but the reverse of the other.” Political Humor, 143. On Franklin as “Homespun,” see T. Thompson, “Invectives.”

  10. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 226–27; Blair, Horse Sense, vi, 5.

  11. Elliott, Power of Satire, 98; Jameson, Fables of Aggression, 138.

  12. Dustin Griffin, for example, claims that “satirists’ concerns are more literary than political” because, in his view, satirists are not committed to a clear set of ideological or political principles. As a result, Griffin ends up following New Critics in a
sserting that satire cannot “alter the attitudes of its readers” but, instead, more often “reinforces existing attitudes.” Satire, 150, 154, 155.

  13. Burke, Grammar of Motives, 514, 512.

  14. Burke, “Why Satire,” 317.

  15. Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, xii; Carwardine, Lincoln, 49; Tandy, Crackerbox, ix.

  16. This characterization of American satire corresponds to Mikhail Bakhtin’s assertion that Socrates’s “dialogic means of seeking truth is counterposed to official monologism, which pretends to possess a ready-made truth, and it is also counterposed to the naïve self-confidence of those people who think that they know something, that is, who think that they possess certain truths.” Problems, 110, original emphasis. Bakhtin’s work on the dialogic nature of utterances has been attractive to recent theorists of satire. See Griffin, Satire; Palmeri, Satire; Johnson, Satire, 16–17.

  17. Schutz, Political Humor, 152; Nicolay, Personal Traits, 359. Such satiric leveling is akin to Bakhtin’s concept of “carnival laughter” in Renaissance Europe, wherein a “temporary suspension, both ideal and real, of hierarchical rank” allowed for free expression and radical social leveling. Rabelais, 11, 2, 10. On the concept of the carnival as a descriptor of nineteenth-century political and social relationships, see Reynolds, Beneath the American Renaissance, 444.

  18. J. C. Harris, “Humor in America,” 48–49.

  19. See Thomas, “Lincoln’s Humor”; Bray, “Power to Hurt,” 39–58; Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing; Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy; Zall, Lincoln on Lincoln.

  20. See Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln; Carwardine, Lincoln; Kaplan, Lincoln; Blegen, Lincoln’s Imagery; D. L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword; D. L. Wilson, Lincoln before Washington; McPherson, “How Lincoln Won,” 87–102; Bray, Reading with Lincoln.

  21. See Harper, Lincoln and the Press; Bunker, From Rail-Splitter to Icon; Bunker, “Old Abe”; Bunker, “Comic News”; Holzer, Mirror Image; Holzer, Lincoln Seen; Holzer, Boritt, and Neely, Lincoln Image; Neely, Holzer, and Boritt, Confederate Image.

  1. “This Reminds Me of a Little Joke”: From Humor to Satire

  1. Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 3.

  2. “President and the Office-Seekers,” 87; Emerson, “Plain Man,” 32; Raymond, Life and Public Services, 720; Burt, “Lincoln on His Own Story-Telling,” 502; Depew, “Chauncey Depew,” 427–28; Nathaniel Grigsby quoted in Wilson and Davis, Herndon’s Informants, 114–15; D. L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 147, original emphasis.

  3. Rosenheim, “Norms, Moral and Other,” 22.

  4. Griffin, Satire, 120–32, original emphasis.

  5. Bray, Reading with Lincoln, 19–23, 87–88; McPherson, “How Lincoln Won,” 89; Kaplan, Lincoln, 64, 66; Berkelman, “Lincoln’s Interest in Shakespeare,” 303.

  6. Berkelman, “Lincoln’s Interest in Shakespeare,” 310; Kaplan, Lincoln, 66. Bray points out that Lincoln most likely read one of several editions of Aesop’s fables printed in Philadelphia by R. Aitken, which began with the first American edition in 1777. These versions also included other sources and extensive morals. Bray, Reading with Lincoln, 20.

  7. Quoted in Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 28; Ye Book of Copperheads, 5.

  8. Speed, Reminiscences, 31–32; Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 68. Bray counts three recorded uses of Aesop’s fables by Lincoln. Reading with Lincoln, 21.

  9. Lincoln, Collected Works, 2:467, original emphasis.

  10. Kaplan, Lincoln, 273.

  11. Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:460.

  12. J. H. Cheney, quoted in Stevens, Reporter’s Lincoln, 53; Hambrecht manuscripts; Bray, “What Abraham Lincoln Read,” 58, 71.

  13. Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 26–27; Dahlgren, Memoir, 370.

  14. Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 66; Minier, “Geo. W. Minier,” 189–90; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:431; Ivan Doig, “Genial White House Host,” 311. Lincoln owned a copy of the Letters of Jack Downing and, according to Robert B. Rutledge’s testimony, “took great pleasure in reading” it. Rutledge to Herndon, Oskaloosa, November 30, 1866, in Herndon’s Informants, 427.

  15. Lincoln, Collected Works, 3:279.

  16. Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:445.

  17. Lincoln, Collected Works, 3:298.

  18. “Humors of the Day,” 339; “Crooked,” 355; Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 51.

  19. Stewart, “Joseph Glover Baldwin,” 230, 379. Bray, on the other hand, sees the case that Lincoln owned and loved Baldwin as somewhat “weaker.” Reading with Lincoln, 194.

  20. Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 91; “Editor’s Drawer,” 1867, 537–38; Carpenter, “Anecdotes.”

  21. Herndon and Weik, Herndon’s Lincoln, 62n; G. W. Harris, Sut Lovingood, 48–59; Cook, “Camp Meetings,” 61–62; quoted in Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 46.

  22. Silver, Minstrelsy and Murder, 22; Paxton, Stray Yankee in Texas, 113–14, original emphasis. Walter Blair, in particular, has emphasized this connection: “Lawyers, in particular, cherished good stories in which the vernacular figured prominently.” Native American Humor, 72–73.

  23. Justus, introduction, 7.

  24. Piacentino, “Intersecting Paths,” 15; Justus, introduction, 1–10; Justus, Fetching the Old Southwest, 47–73, 66–67; D. L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 143.

  25. Silver, Minstrelsy and Murder, 18; Justus, introduction, 7; Caron, “Backwoods Civility,” 163, 182.

  26. On Silence Dogood as a persona, see T. Thompson, “Representative Nobodies,” 456–63.

  27. Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:114; Carwardine, Lincoln, 16–18.

  28. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:293n4, 295–96.

  29. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:297, 295. Lincoln had previously played with Democratic accusations of Whig pretentiousness, for instance, a January 1835 editorial that, according to Lincoln biographer Michael Burlingame, can probably be attributed to Lincoln, claims, “The thing was funny, and we Aristocrats enjoyed it ‘hugely.’” Abraham Lincoln, 1:96.

  30. Lincoln, Collected Works, 1:291–92n2, 300n4; D. L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 34. Kaplan describes the situation as the “sort of mutually exciting political activity that had provided the context for the start of their courtship during the 1840 presidential campaign.” Lincoln, 140.

  31. Huntzicker, Popular Press, 108; D. L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword, 33; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:95, 96, 107.

  32. See Bray, Reading with Lincoln, 201; Hambrecht Manuscripts. Kaplan comments that, as president, Lincoln was “rarely without a volume of the mid-nineteenth-century dialect humor he favored for comic relief, whether for nighttime reading or for reciting at lugubrious cabinet meetings.” Lincoln, 346.

  33. Welles, Diary, 333. For a synthesis of accounts of Lincoln’s use of humor for therapeutic relief from the cares of his responsibilities, see Bray, Reading with Lincoln, 201–2.

  34. Brooks, “Personal Reminiscences of Lincoln,” 564–65; Harper, Lincoln and the Press, 187; Rice, Reminiscences, 448–49, original emphasis.

  35. Conwell, Why Lincoln Laughed, 118–19; Carwardine, Lincoln, 48.

  36. R. B. Browne, Lincoln-Lore, xi; Holzer, Lincoln Seen, 107.

  37. “Great and Astonishing Trick,” 16; Bellew, “National Joker,” 16; Baker, “Columbia Demands Her Children!”

  38. Howard, “I Knew Him.”

  39. “Hey, Uncle Abe”; Abraham Africanus, 30.

  40. C. H. Smith, Bill Arp, 23, 26.

  41. Quoted in Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 27.

  42. “Reprinted Letter,” 2.

  43. “Frank Leslie to the Budgetarians,” 1; Conwell, Why Lincoln Laughed, 122.

  44. Old Abe’s Jokes, 35, 104. Zall describes Old Abe’s Jokes as a “cesspool of apocrypha, with clippings from the popular press . . . that defy authentication.” Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 33.

  45. Bellew, “This Reminds Me of a Little Joke,” 608.

  46. As one scholar of Civil War cartoons puts it, “any symbol, for the detached observer, is in itself without tendency. This observation is borne o
ut by the fact that cartoonists working for opposed factions may employ the same symbols. . . . The symbols become charged when the cartoonist employs them in an appeal to the passions and sentiments of his contemporary culture. Then the reader perceives immediately which symbols the propagandist intends to be positive and which negative, which symbols are to be praised and which damned.” Lively, “Propaganda Techniques,” 101.

  47. Zall, Abe Lincoln Laughing, 2. For a synopsis of the approach and politics of Frank Leslie’s Budget of Fun, see West, “Budget of Fun.”

  48. Old Abe’s Jokes, 94; Adderup, Lincolniana, 54; Old Abe’s Joker, 21.

  49. New York Post, February 17, 1864, 1; New York Herald, February 19, 1864, 5.

  50. Old Abe’s Joker, preface, n.p.

  51. Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change, 79; Lincoln, Collected Works, 8:393; Lentricchia, Criticism and Social Change, 81.

  52. Carwardine, Lincoln, 269; Hay, At Lincoln’s Side, 51; Halpine, Life and Adventures, 55, 61. According to Bray, Lincoln may have owned a copy of Halpine’s book. “What Abraham Lincoln Read,” 53.

  53. Hay, At Lincoln’s Side, 241, original emphasis, 68–69; Zall, Abe Lincoln’s Legacy, 29.

  54. Brooks, “Personal Reminiscences,” 567; Lincoln, Collected Works, 8:154–55, original emphasis; Harper, Lincoln and the Press, 182.

  55. Lincoln, Collected Works, 8:333. Lincoln had long used this rhetorical formulation to attack slavery. See, for example, Collected Works, 1:411–12, 2:405, 3:204–5. For a thorough account of how Lincoln used writing—and meticulous drafting—to shape and test his thinking, see D. L. Wilson, Lincoln’s Sword.