File:The history of the nineteenth century in caricature (1904) (14783526125).jpg

Identifier: historyofninetee01maur (find matches)
Title: The history of the nineteenth century in caricature
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Maurice, Arthur Bartlett, 1873-1946 Cooper, Frederic Taber, 1864-1937, joint author
Subjects: History, Modern Nineteenth century Caricature
Publisher: New York : Dodd, Mead
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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ving American who might haveproduced work of a high order was Thomas Nast; butalthough Nasts pencil was dedicated to the cause of theUnion from the beginning to the end, in the series of power-ful emblematic pictures that appeared in Harper s Weekly,his work as a caricaturist did not begin until the close of thewar. It is interesting to conjecture what the great masters ofcaricature would have made of such an opportunity. Theissues of the war were so clear-cut, their ethical significance somomentous, that an American Gillray, a Unionist Gillray,would have found material for a series of cartoons ofeloquent and grewsome power. It is easy to imagine whatform they would have taken: an Uncle Sam, writhing in.agony, his limbs shackled with the chains of slavery, his lipsgagged with the Fugitive Slave Law, slowly being sawnasunder, while Abolition and Secession guide the oppositeends of the saw, or else the American Eagle being worriedand torn limb from limb by Southern bloodhounds and stung
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CENTURY IN CARICATURE 163 by copperheads, while the British Lion and the rest of theEuropean menagerie look on, wistfully licking their chopsand with difficulty restraining themselves from participatingin the feast. Such a cartoonist would have found a mine ofsuggestion in Uncle Toms Cabin ; he would have crowdedhis plates with Legrees and Topsies, Uncle Toms and Sambosand Quimbos, fearful and wonderful to look upon, brutal,distorted, and unforgettable. It is equally easy to imagine what a Daumier might havedone with the material afforded by the Civil War. Sometypes 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 leavingany effective mark. Other faces, strong, rugged, salient,seem to invite the caricaturists efforts; and these were thetypes that predominated among the leaders of the strugglefor the Union. Daumiers genius lay in his ability to carica-ture the hu

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