Abe Lincoln mutters in an aside, "Darned if he ain't scored ag'in! I wish I could make a few winning hazards for a change."
An accompanying article entitled "The Great American Billiard Match" is amusing enough when read to-day in the light of the great "winning hazards" that were to be made by Abe within less than sixty days.
"Considerable excitement," it runs, "has been caused in sporting circles by this long protracted match, which, owing to the style of play adopted by the parties, appears to make but very little progress toward a finish. The largeness of the stakes depending on the contest might be supposed to make the players careful in their strokes, but few expected that the game would last so long as it has done, and no one now dare prophesy when it will be finished. It having been resolved to play the cannon game, some anxiety at first was not unreasonably felt among the backers of Jeff Davis, the crack player for the South; but the knowing ones, who knew their man, made no attempt to hedge, notwithstanding what was said about his being out of play and, in the cannon game especially, somewhat overmatched. It is needless to remark here that the first strokes which he made quite justified their confidence, and, indeed, throughout the game he has done nothing yet to shake it, so that if he have but a fair amount of luck, his backers feel assured that he won't easily be beaten, and an extra fluke or two might make him win the match.
"As for old Abe Lincoln, the champion player of the North, his backers, we believe, are as confident as ever that he is the best man, although at times his play has not appeared to prove it. There is no doubt that he has more strength at his command, but strength is of small use without knowing how to use it. Abe Lincoln may have skill, but he has not yet shown much of it; and certainly he more than once has shown himself outgeneralled. His backers say he purposely is playing a slow game, just to draw out his opponent and see what he can do. In ninety days, they say, he is cocksure of a victory, but this is an old boast, and nobody except themselves now places any faith in it. Abe's famous Bull Run stroke was a bad start to begin with, and his Charleston break has ended in his having to screw back, and thus slip into balk to save himself from mischief.
How the game will end we won't pretend to prophesy. There are plenty of good judges, who still appear inclined to bet in favor of the South and longish odds are offered that the game will be a drawn one. Abe's attempt to pot the niggers some put down as a foul stroke, but whether foul or not, it added little to his score. Upon the whole we think his play has not been much admired, although his backers have been vehement in superlatively praising it. There is more sympathy for the South, as being the weaker side—a fact which Jeff's supporters indignantly deny, and which certainly the North has not done much as yet toward proving. Without ourselves inclining one way or the other, we may express a neutral hope that the best player may win; and we certainly shall echo the desire of all who watch the game if we add that the sooner it is now played out the better."
The boasted "neutrality" was put to a rather severe test when, in less than "ninety days," the victory of which Abe's backers were "cock sure" proved a double barrelled one at Vicksburg, in Mississippi, and at Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania. The news of these tremendous events set all the Federal States of America shouting with triumph on the succeeding Fourth of July. There were no international cables in those days. Consequently it was not until two weeks later that the news reached England.
In the interim, on that very July 4, certain Northern Americans in London, all unconscious of what had happened, celebrated their national anniversary almost in earshot of the Punch office to the great disgust of the gentlemen on its staff.
"There is something peculiarly graceful," [snarls Punch in the issue for July 18th], "in celebrating Independence Day in London. 'The Britishers whipped all the world and we whipped the Britishers,' used to be the established formula of Yankee self-glorification. It is the Yankees' belief that they accomplished their secession from England by simple conquest; triumphant superiority in arms. To hold the anniversary of successful insurrection, not to say rebellion, in the very den of the British lion, treading on his tail and gently poking him with a playful boot tip, is to compliment that noble animal with credit for some magnanimity. The British residents in Paris would hardly have the confiding generosity and the taste in like manner to celebrate the return day of the Battle of Waterloo in the French capital.
"We pause here to ask whether the Confederates do not, as they reasonably may, repeat the Yankee boast above quoted with brag additional? Have they not begun to say, 'The Britishers whipped all the world, the Yankees whipped the Britishers and we whipped the Yankees'? Not yet, perhaps. Averse to indulgence in premature exultation, they may reserve that saying for Independence Day No. 2."