Details
Contributor Gibson & Co. (Cincinnati, Ohio), printer.
Title Jeff. Davis in prison. [graphic].
Publisher Cincinnati : Gibson & Co
Date 1865
Physical Description 1 print : lithograph; sheet 31 x 41 cm (12.25 x 16.25 in.)
Description Anti-Davis cartoon invoking the travesties at Confederate war prisons to satirize the incarcerated former Confederate president as a pompous, sniveling ingrate. Shows Davis, attired in a suit, and his feet shackled, in his cell, in front of a table containing his modest meal and complaining to the prison doctor. He bemoans his being unaccustomed to such living and that "you must order some more healthy food, or I shall starve to death." The doctor responds it is "good healthy food, such as our soldiers are fed on" and that their recent achievements prove it is "tolerably healthy." In the left, an older African American man cook, portrayed in racist caricature, announces in the vernacular "Massa Jeff! de dinner is ready." Two Union soldiers retort and reply "It's unhealthy is it! You didn't think that a pint of cornmeal was unhealthy when we were at Andersonville." The other angrily remembers "Rotten sowbelly and mouldy hard tacks was considered 'healthy food' when I was in "Libby" and Belle Island.
Notes Title from item.
Date from copyright statement: Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1865 by Gibson & Co. in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of Ohio.
Purchase 2008.
RVCDC
Description revised 2021.
Access points revised 2021.
Digitized by Alexander Street Press for Images of the American Civil War.
Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Subject Davis, Jefferson, 1808-1889 -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African American cooks -- Caricatures and cartoons.
African American men -- Caricatures and cartoons.
Food -- United States.
Physicians.
Prisoners -- United States.
Prisons -- United States.
Racism in popular culture.
Soldiers -- Union.
Geographic subject Fort Monroe (Va.)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Atrocities.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Detention facilities.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Military personnel -- Union.
Genre Lithographs -- 1860-1870.
Political cartoons -- 1860-1870.
Location Library Company of Philadelphia| Print Department| political cartoons - 1865-Jef [P.2008.5.1]
Accession number P.2008.5.1