Online Exhibition: Civil War
2011 is the 150th anniversary, the sesquicentennial, of the beginning of the Civil War, still the deadliest war in American history.
The first state to secede from the Union was South Carolina. Significantly, this was not the first time that the people of South Carolina had discussed secession. During the debate over tariffs in the 1830s, South Carolina seriously considered secession. Fortunately, John C. Calhoun helped to solve the problem and South Carolina remained in the Union. But on December 20th, 1860, South Carolina held a secession convention in Charleston. The debate was quick and short. Representatives voted unanimously, 169 to 0 for secession. The rupture of the Union had finally occurred, and the secession of South Carolina opened the floodgates as four more states from the Deep South quickly joined her.
Source: eHistory at The Ohio State University
Link to the full article: http://ehistory.osu.edu/uscw/features/articles/articleview.cfm?aid=34
A political cartoon depicting a Confederate general and an official with a downcast face moving Treasury material; including bricks of gold, each with the name of a Confederate state, from a dilapidated building with a sign over head "Sheriff's Sale" and "To let. Apply Lincoln & Co.", hauling a cart marked "C.S.A." pulled by starved dogs, and with two African Americans and others looking on.
An excerpt from "Copperheads" by Delores Archaimbault and Terry A. Barnhart
Copperhead was a pejorative epithet applied to Northern members of the Democratic party, also known as Peace Democrats, who criticized the presidential administration of Abraham Lincoln for its war policies and who sought an armistice with the Confederacy. A loosely-affiliated group, the Copperheads expressed their views on the war in the press, at political conventions, and in state legislatures. Their views struck a responsive chord among like-minded Democrats in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in the period 1862 to 1864, while their Republican opponents considered their ideas and alleged actions as nothing less than treason. Not all those known as Copperheads supported the doctrine of secession, but as a group they found common cause in their objections to the actions of the Lincoln administration.
Source: "Copperheads" by Delores Archaimbault and Terry A. Barnhart, Northern Illinois University
Link to the full article: http://www.lib.niu.edu/1996/iht319615.html
Excerpts from "Cartoons and Caricatures of the Civil War" by GARY E. WAIT
Successfully renominated, Lincoln found himself opposed by the man whom he had dismissed from the head of the Union army, George B. McClellan . Caricatured for its 'peace-at-any-price' platform, the Democratic campaign was reduced by both Harper's and Leslie's to the level of a circus act in which the standard-bearer is engaged in attempting various impossible political feats.
Despite opposition from the Copperheads and their Tammany allies, Lincoln had triumphed in November, and by early in 1865, with Wilmington, the last gap in the blockade, closed by the navy, and with Virginia and the deep south securely under Union control, the wreck of the Confederacy seemed near.
Source: "Cartoons and Caricatures of the Civil War" by GARY E. WAIT, Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, April 1997,Cartoon Wait
Link to the full article: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Library_Bulletin/Apr1997/Wait.html
Illustration from Harper's Weekly, October 15, 1864
Political cartoon shows presidential candidate George McClellan, in a general’s uniform, making the comment, “I am happy to say that—the record of my public life was kept in view.” (This is a quote from his letter of acceptance of the nomination.) He is seated on the Democratic donkey, who is reciting from the Democratic Party platform, “An immediate cessation of hostilities.”
From School Library Journal
-A valuable collection of Northern and Southern political cartoons that effectively conveys some of the political, economic, and moral issues surrounding the war. The cartoons illustrate perfectly what is most fascinating about our Victorian predecessors: they seem so familiar to us, and yet are so foreign at the same time. A helpful foreword addresses the racist nature of many of the drawings. The cartoons are presented by the year in which they were printed, along with usually helpful explanations that shed light on allusions that may escape late 20th-century sensibilities, e.g., why Lincoln is often portrayed in Scotch-plaid capes in Southern cartoons. Northern works predominate because of the paucity of Southern publishers and resources. This sometimes amusing but more often disturbing book will add to readers' understanding of the Civil War.-Rebecca L. Wells, UMI, Alexandria, VA
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