The Promissory Note.
The really clever cartoons of this period are so few in number, and stand out so prominently from a mass of second-rate material, that there is real danger of attaching undue importance to them. Such a plate as "The Southern Confederacy a Fact! Acknowledged by a Mighty Prince and Faithful Ally," which was issued by a Philadelphia publisher in 1861, although crudely drawn, is one of the very few that show the influence of the early English school. It represents the Devil and his assembled Cabinet in solemn conclave, receiving the envoys of the Southern Confederacy. The latter includes, among others, Jeff Davis, General Beauregard, and a personification of "Mr. Mob Law, Chief Justice." They are bearers of credentials setting forth the fundamental principles of the government, as "Treason, Rebellion, Murder, Robbery, Incendiarism, Theft, etc." Satan, interested in spite of himself, is murmuring to his companions, "I am afraid in Rascality they will beat us."
The Great Tight Rope Feat.
At the Throttle.
An effective allegorical cartoon, which appeared at a time when the cause of the Union seemed almost hopeless, pictures Justice on the rock of the Constitution dressed in the Stars and Stripes and waving an American flag toward a happier scene, where the sun of Universal Freedom is brightly shining. Behind her are hideous scenes of disorder and national disaster. A loathsome serpent, of which the head is called "Peace Compromise," the body, "Mason and Dixon's Line," and the tail "Copperhead," is crawling up the rock seeking to destroy her. In one of its coils it is crushing out the lives of a number of black women and children. In one corner of the cartoon the figure of a winged Satan is hovering gleefully over a mob which is hanging a negro to a lamp-post—an allusion to the Draft Riots in New York. Some of the mob are bearing banners with the words "Black Men have no Rights." In the shadowy background of the picture a slaveholder is lashing his slave, tied to a post, with a whip called "Lawful Stimulant." An unctuous capitalist is talking with a group of Secessionists, seated on a rock called "State Rights." In contrast with the dark picture on which Justice has turned her back is the bright vista of the future, "The Union as it will be," into which she is looking. There we see a broad river and a prosperous city. A negress, free and happy, is sewing by her cabin door, her child reading a book upon her knee.