From the collection of the New York Historical Society.
It is equally easy to imagine what a Daumier might have done with the material afforded by the Civil War. Some types of faces seem to defy the best efforts of the caricaturist—smooth, regular-featured faces, like that of Lord Rosebery, over which the pencil of satire seems to slip without leaving any effective mark. Other faces, strong, rugged, salient, seem to invite the caricaturist's efforts; and these were the types that predominated among the leaders of the struggle for the Union. Daumier's genius lay in his ability to caricature the human face, to seize upon a minimum of lines and points, to catch some absurd semblance to an inanimate object, some symbolic suggestion. And when once found, he would harp upon it, ringing all possible changes, keeping it insistently, mercilessly before the public. One can fancy with what avidity he would have seized upon the stolid, indomitable figure of Grant, intrenched behind his big, black, ubiquitous cigar. That cigar would have become the center of interest, the portentous symbol of Grant's dogged, taciturn persistence. Gradually that cigar would have grown and grown, its thickening smoke spreading in a dense war cloud over the whole series of cartoons, until finally it became the black, shining muzzle of a cannon, belching forth the powder and fire and ammunition that was to decide the issue of the war. What Tenniel would have done is evidenced by what he actually did in Punch. The great tragedies of those four years, Gettysburg and Bull Run and the Battle of the Wilderness, would have been pictured with the tragic dignity that stamps his famous cartoon in which he commemorated the assassination of Lincoln.
Nast's Famous Cartoon "Peace."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SOUTH SECEDES
Virginia Pausing.
In view of what might have been done, it is somewhat exasperating to look over the actual cartoons of the war as they have come down to us. Even when a clever idea was evolved none seemed to have the cleverness or the enterprise to develop it. As all the modern cartoonists realize, nothing is more effective than a well-planned series. It is like the constant dropping that wears away the stone. The most potent pictorial satire has always been the gradual elaboration of some clever idea—the periodic reappearance of the same characters in slightly modified environment, like the successive chapters of a serial story. The public learn to look forward to them, and hail each reappearance with a renewed burst of enthusiasm. The cartoonists of the Civil War do not seem to have grasped this idea. A single example will serve as an illustration. A clever cartoon, entitled "Virginia Pausing," appeared just at the time that Virginia, the last of the States to secede, joined the Confederacy. The several Southern States, represented as young rats, are gayly scampering off, in the order in which they seceded, South Carolina heading the procession. Virginia straggling in the rear finds herself under the paw of "Uncle Abe," represented as a watchful and alert old mouser, and has paused, despite herself, to consider her next step. The Union, personified as the mother rat of the brood, lies stark and stiff on her back, with the Stars and Stripes waving over her corpse, and underneath, the legend, "The Union must and shall be preserved." Now this idea of the Southern States as a brood of "Secession rats" was capable of infinite elaboration. It might have been carried on throughout the entire four years of the struggle, the procession preserving the same significant order, with South Carolina in the lead, Virginia bringing up the rear, and Lincoln, as a wise and resourceful mouser, ever in pursuit. It could have shown the rats at bay, cornered, entrapped—in short, the whole history of the war in a form of genial allegory. But if the initial cartoon, "Virginia Pausing," ever had a sequel, it perished in the general wreckage of the Confederacy.