President Lincoln was pictured as Brutus, while the ghost of Caesar, which appeared in the tent of the American Brutus during the dark hours of the night, was represented in the shape of a husky and anything but ghost-like African, whose complexion would tend to make the blackest tar look like skimmed milk in comparison. This was the text below the cartoon: (From the American Edition of Shakespeare.) The Tent of Brutus (Lincoln). Night. Enter the Ghost of Caesar.
BRUTUS: “Wall, now! Do tell! Who’s you?”
CAESAR: “I am dy ebil genus, Massa Linking. Dis child am awful impressional!”
“Punch’s” cartoons were decidedly unfriendly in tone toward President Lincoln, some of them being not only objectionable in the display of bad taste, but offensive and vulgar. It is true that after the assassination of the President, “Punch,” in illustrations, paid marked and deserved tribute to the memory of the Great Emancipator, but it had little that was good to say of him while he was among the living and engaged in carrying out the great work for which he was destined to win eternal fame.
HOW STANTON GOT INTO THE CABINET.
President Lincoln, well aware of Stanton’s unfriendliness, was surprised when Secretary of the Treasury Chase told him that Stanton had expressed the opinion that the arrest of the Confederate Commissioners, Mason and Slidell, was legal and justified by international law. The President asked Secretary Chase to invite Stanton to the White House, and Stanton came. Mr. Lincoln thanked him for the opinion he had expressed, and asked him to put it in writing.
Stanton complied, the President read it carefully, and, after putting it away, astounded Stanton by offering him the portfolio of War. Stanton was a Democrat, had been one of the President’s most persistent vilifiers, and could not realize, at first, that Lincoln meant what he said. He managed, however to say:
“I am both surprised and embarrassed, Mr. President, and would ask a couple of days to consider this most important matter.”
Lincoln fully understood what was going on in Stanton’s mind, and then said: