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Plate Number Twelve—This cartoon, "The Latest from America," published in Punch on July 26, 1862, aims to make light of the war news sent out from New York at that time. The President is represented as a bartender, standing behind a bar on which are bottles inscribed "Bunkum," "Bosh" and "Brag," and shifting a concoction labelled "The New York Press" from the glass of Victory to that of Defeat.
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Plate Number Thirteen—This cartoon, "The Overdue Bill," published in Punch, on September 27, 1862, has for its motive the Union's crying need of men and money. The President is shown seated at a desk, with hands, as usual, thrust into his pockets, glancing discomfitedly at a paper inscribed "I promise to subdue the South in ninety days—A. Lincoln," held out to him by a Confederate soldier, who says "Your ninety days' promissory note isn't taken up yet, sirree!" It would have been more fitting to have made Seward the central figure in this cartoon, for it was Lincoln's Secretary of State, and not the President himself, who was loudest in proclaiming that the war would end in three months. It is worth recording that Seward when questioned in after years by a friend as to the reasons which prompted this famous prediction of his, at first declined to give an answer, but finally said that he believed at the time that if the South did not give in within ninety days the North would.
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Plate Number Fourteen—This cartoon, "What will He do with Them?" published in Vanity Fair, on October 4, 1862, heralds the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation, the President being pictured as a vagrom bird-peddler, whom an absence of customers impels to the remark: "Darn these here black-birds. If nobody won't buy'em I'll have to open the cages and let'em fly." This design recalls an historic Cabinet meeting held on the Saturday following the battle of Antietam, which cut short Lee's invasion of the North and compelled him to recross the Potomac. The members of the Cabinet were summoned, on this occasion, not to give advice but to hear a decision. The President told them that the hour for delay had passed, and that the time had come to make the emancipation of the slaves the declared policy of the Administration. Public sentiment would now sustain it. A strong and outspoken popular voice demanded it, and the demand came from the best friends of the government. "And I have promised my God that I would do it," added the President, reverently and in a low voice. "Did I understand you correctly, Mr. President?" asked Secretary Chase, who had heard but indistinctly the low-voiced utterance. "I made a solemn vow, before God," was the answer, "that if General Lee should be driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves." And he did.