CHAPTER XIX
THE FOUR-YEARS' STRUGGLE
"Why don't You take it?"
Many of the best cartoons of the period revolve around the rivalry between General McClellan and General Grant, and the incidents of the McClellan-Lincoln campaign of 1864. "The Old Bull-dog on the Right Track" is one of the best products of the war cartoonists. It represents Grant as a thoroughbred bulldog, seated in dogged tenacity of purpose on the "Weldon Railroad," and preparing to fight it out on that line, if it takes all summer. At the end of the line is a kennel, labeled "Richmond," and occupied by a pack of lean, cowardly hounds, Lee, Davis, and Beauregard among the number, who are yelping: "You aint got the kennel yet, old fellow!" A bellicose little dwarf, McClellan, is advising the bulldog's master: "Uncle Abraham, don't you think you had better call the old dog off now? I'm afraid he'll hurt these other dogs, if he catches hold of them!" To which President Lincoln serenely rejoins: "Why, little Mac, that's the same pack of curs that chased you aboard of the gunboat two years ago. They are pretty nearly used up now, and I think it's best to go in and finish them."
The Old Bull Dog on the Right Track.
From the collection of the New York Historical Society.
The conservative policy which marked the military career of General McClellan and his candidacy for the Presidency in 1864 is ridiculed in a cartoon entitled "Little Mac, in His Great Two-Horse Act, in the Presidential Canvass of 1864." Here McClellan is pictured as a circus rider about to come to grief, owing to the unwillingness of his two steeds to pull together in harmony. A fiery and stalwart horse represents "war"; while peace is depicted as a worthless and broken-down hack. Little Mac is saying, "Curse them balky horses—I can't manage the Act nohow. One threw me in Virginia, and the other is bound the wrong way." In the background is the figure of Lincoln attired as a clown. "You tried to ride them two horses on the Peninsula for two years, Mac," he calls out, "but it wouldn't work."