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Title: Secession displayed
Description: Pro-Union cartoon containing a montage of vignettes representing the consequences of secession, particularly the denigration of American freedom. Depicts Roman soldiers representing the "Demons of Nullification, Secession, and Treason" attacking the "Temple of Freedom," the edifice adorned with the names of Revolutionary heroes and battles. The allegorical army carries a "Flag of Disunion" inscribed "Liberty! [To Extend Slavery]," swords, spears, and torches. These soldiers of "war" and "rapine" trample upon the torn Constitution and American flag. In the background, surrounding vignettes depict the bloodied, manacled "Genius of Liberty," depicted as a white woman, fallen beside "Free Speech" and the "Free Press"; the "Servile Insurrection" depicting enslaved Black men attacking white men, women, and children; the king "Military Despotism," depicted as a white man attired in a crown, brandishes manacles and bayonets to complete "the work begun by the traitors"; ghostly figures of "Departed Heroes & Sages," including Washington, Jefferson, and Adams look aghast "on the sacrilege perpetrated in the name of Liberty"; and Liberty, depicted as a white woman, weeps beside an upside down American flag and below the quote of the executed French revolutionary, Madame Roland, "O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name.", Text printed above image: "Indignantly frown upon every attempt to alien any portion of our country from the rest"--Washington., Text printed below image: The enemies of the Republic, from the Gulf, or Lower Regions, led on by the Demons of Nullification, Secession and Treason, assail the Temple of American Freedom, consecrated by the blood of the Martyrs of Liberty. Raising the Flag of Disunion, the Traitors trample on the Star-spangled Banner and the Constitution which they have sworn to defend. The Genius of Liberty is stricken down and manacled. War and Servile Insurrection prevail. Military Despotism, of necessity, succeeds, and with its chains and bayonets completes the work begun by the Traitors. The Genius of America weeps, while, above, the shades of departed Heroes and Statesmen gaze with sad astonishment on the sacrilege perpetrated in the name of Liberty! “God Save the Commonwealth.”, Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by John Barber, in the office of the Clerk of the District Court of Connecticut., Retrospective conversion record: original entry, edited., Accessioned 1981., 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.
Date: 1861
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *Political Cartoons-1861 Sec [P.8699]

Title: Columbia's noblest sons
Description: Memorial print published after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865 containing portraits, allegorical figures, vignettes, and pictorial details. Depicts Columbia, depicted as a white woman and attired in classical garb and a Phrygian cap, crowning a bust-length portrait of George Washington (left) and bust-length portrait of Lincoln (right) with laurel wreaths. Flagpole finials with flags appear as wings behind her. Documents, partially rolled, associated with Washington and Lincoln, the "Declaration of Independence 1776" and the "Emancipation Proclamation 1863," appear below the portraits of the presidents. Each president's life dates are inscribed on the edge. On the left are vignettes with scenes from the Revolution depicting the Boston Tea Party "Dec. 18th 1773"; the signing of the Declaration of Independence "July, 1776"; and the British surrender at Yorktown "Octr. 19, 1781." On the right, are vignette scenes of the Civil War depicting the bombardment of Fort Sumter "April 14th, 1861"; an encounter between an ironclad and two wooden ships ("Progress"), and Lincoln's triumphant arrival via coach with an African American driver in Richmond "6th April 1861." Latter vignette also includes an African American man cheering in the crowd. Vinery details frame the vignettes. Columbia's right foot rests on the British lion, and an American eagle emerges from behind her other leg. On the ground, near her feet, rest cannons, cannon balls, and broken shackles., Title from item., Name of publisher and date from copyright statement: Entered according to Act of Congress in year of 1865 by Henry & Wm. Voight [illegible] D[istrict of] N[ew York]., Reproduced and described in The Lincoln image, p. 194-195, 197., Gift of Gordon Wright Colket, 1970., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021.
Creator: Lang, Manson, artist
Date: 1865
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department political cartoons 1865-9 [7879.F]

Title: The triumph
Description: Print predicting the Union's triumph over the Confederacy using an allegory of "Humanitas" (i.e., Humanity) depicted as a white woman holding a child astride an eagle, reaching to save a shackled African American held on the ground by the evil "King Cotton." From a break in the clouds an apparition appears behind "Humanitas," including "Freedom" depicted as a woman wearing a crown of feathers holding a large American flag and a Liberty cap; "Christianity" depicted as a white woman holding a bible; "Justitia" depicted as a white woman holding scales; George Washington; Thomas Jefferson; and Benjamin Franklin. The oppressed enslaved person reaches up as "King Cotton," portrayed with an alligator head with a body composed of a bale of cotton with a holster of pistols, raises his hands in horror as the eagle clutches his cloak and shoots lightning bolts at his throne. To his right a column labeled "Lecompton", "Fugitive Slave," and "Missouri Compromise" is set aflame from the lightning. In the left, the "Hydra of Discord" accompanied by a hound "Fugitive Slave Law," a group of white men enslavers, and a Spaniard, who drops a package marked "Cuba $50,000,000," flee from the vision to the sea where a boat of enslaved African American men are docked. Contains eighteen lines of verse from Lord Byron's 1813 poem "The Giaour" below the image., Title from item., Date of publication supplied by Reilly., Per Reilly, published key to print exists., Copyright statement: Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1861 by M. H. Traubel, in the Clerks Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of Penna., Accessioned 1999., 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.
Date: 1861
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *political cartoons - 1862-15 [P.9654]

Title: Liberty, the fair maid of Kansas-in the hands of the "Border Ruffians."
Description: Cartoon addressing the Democratic administration's responsibility for the violence in Kansas following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Depicts Democratic leaders as violent, proslavery invaders known as "Border Ruffians." In the center, a drunken President Franklin Pierce, armed with a tomahawk, knife, pistol, and rifle, hovers over "Liberty," depicted as a white woman, and tramples the American flag draped on her shoulders. Senator Lewis Cass, armed with a tomahawk, sword, knife, and rifle, looks at Liberty with his tongue sticking out. Liberty stretches her arms out and exclaims, “O Spare Me Gentlemen, Spare Me!!” They assure her that she will not be harmed. In the right, Senator Stephen Douglas scalps a dead, white man farmer, who carries a scythe in his left hand. In the left, Secretary of State William Marcy, attired in a “fifty-cent" trouser patch (a joke used by his political enemies referring to his use of state funds to repair his pants when he served as an associate justice for the Supreme Court of New York,) empty the pockets of a slain, white man settler. Presidential candidate James Buchanan, stating "Might makes right," steals the dead man’s watch. In the left background, a white woman settler, made insane by the violence, mistakes a border ruffian for her husband as they mock her, "Ho! ho! She thinks I'm her husband, we Scalped the Cus and she like a D--m fool went Crazy on it, and now she wants me to go to heaven with her, ha! ha! ha!" In the distance are additional scenes of violence and murder., Title from item., Artist and publication information supplied by Reilly., Originally part of American political caricatures, likely a scrapbook, accessioned 1899. Collection primarily comprised of gifts from Samuel Breck, John A. McAllister, and James Rush., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., 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., Magee was a New York cartoonist and lithographer who eventually established his own lithographic firm in Philadelphia in 1850.
Creator: Magee, John L., artist
Date: [1856]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Political Cartoons - 1856-9 [5760.F.90]

Title: The people putting responsibility to the test or the downfall of the kitchen cabinet and collar presses
Description: Cartoon predicting the dire consequences to follow President Jackson's withdrawal of federal funds from the Bank of the United States. Depicts a riot in which Supreme Court Justice John Marshall warns that "the day of retribution is at hand" as anti-bank fiscal advisors Reuben Whitney and Thomas Ellicott use a rope to pull down a statue of Justice, depicted as a white woman holding scales and stepping on a snake, from a pedestal labeled "Constitution." An angry mob of white men farmers, laborers, and tradesmen carry instruments including axes, pitchforks, and shovels and papers labeled, “Broken Bank.” They fight and demand the recharter of the bank, shouting "Send back the deposites! Recharter the Bank!" and "Come back old responsibility." In the right, Jackson escapes on the back of "Jack Downing" cursing Postmaster General Kendall, "By the Eternal Major Downing; I find Ive been a mere tool to that Damn'd Amos [Kendall] and his set, the sooner I cut stick the better." In the left background, under "Senate Chamber," Henry Clay gloats to Daniel Webster and John Calhoun, "Behold Senators the fulfilment of my predictions." In the left foreground, two African American men, portrayed in racist caricature and speaking in the vernacular, predict freedom and the ascension to the throne of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, "Hurrah! for Massa Garison, den he shall be King!" A Jewish banker, portrayed in caricature, undercuts a sailor offering him a ten dollar bank note, "Mine Got that ish one of the Pet Bankhs I'll give you one Dollar for the Ten." In the right foreground, newspapers supportive of Jackson, "collar presses," symbolized as dogs with human heads labeled "Evening Post, N. York Standard, Journal of Commerce, Albany Argus," run away chained together., Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Entered according to Act of Congress in the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York by T.W. Whitley in the year 1834, and for sale at 104 Broadway., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., 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 the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., Whitley was a mid-19th-century New York landscape and figure painter who also wrote about art and drama for the New York Herald.
Creator: Whitley, T. W. (Thomas W.), artist
Date: 1834
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department Political Cartoons - 1834-7 [1884.F.3]

Title: The great November contest. Patriotism vs bummerism
Description: Racist cartoon depicting the 1868 Presidential Election as a carriage race between the "patriotic" Democrats and the "bum" Republicans who support Reconstruction. Depicts the elegant Democratic carriage with the banner "This is a White Man's Government" pulled by the horses with the heads of Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair racing passed the stalled Republican wagon steered by the asses with the heads of nominees Ulysses Grant and Schuyler Colfax. In the Democrats' carriage are four allegorical figures: Liberty, depicted as a white woman holding the Constitution and a banner which reads "Our Glorious Union Distinct, like the Billows, One, Like the Sea' This is a White Man's Government!"; Navigation, depicted as a white woman holding a miniature ship; Agriculture, depicted as a white woman holding sheaves of wheat and a scythe; and Labor, represented by a bearded white man with a hammer and flywheel. The Republican wagon passengers include radical Thaddeus Stevens, the grim reaper, and an African American man and woman couple, portrayed in racist caricature and speaking in the vernacular. Massachusetts Republican representative Benjamin F. Butler tries to push the stalled wagon passed the bones of those who paid "The Price of Nigger Freedom" and the rocks of "Ruined Commerce," "Debt," and "Negro Supremacy.", In the background, a cheering crowd brandishing American flags near the U.S. Capitol await the winning Seymour and Blair while on the building's other side a group of African American men dance. In the left foreground, Henry Ward Beecher and Horace Greeley play a shellgame looking for Grant and an African American man and woman, attired in torn and worn clothes, discuss another man returning to his former enslaver. In the right foreground, an African American man sits behind a table labeled, "Pompey Smash, Salt River Line Ticket Agent" and sells tickets to "Salt River" (i.e., political disaster) to a white man with a bag labeled, "J.G.B. Boston Carpet Bagger." Behind them, two African American men and a drunken white man holding a bottle talk about the Republican wagon., Title from item., Date from copyright statement: Entered according to an Act of Congress in the year 1868 by Bromley & Co. in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the U.S. for the southern District of New York., Originally part of American political caricatures, likely a scrapbook, accessioned 1899. Collection primarily comprised of gifts from Samuel Breck, John A. McAllister, and James Rush., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., 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.
Date: 1868
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *Political Cartoons - 1868-15 [5760.F.125]

Title: "No higher law."
Description: Antislavery print denouncing the immorality of the Fugitive Slave Law by exploiting abolitionist Senator William H. Seward's famous quote that "a higher law" than the Constitution should exist regarding slavery. Shows "King Slavery," depicted as a bearded, bare-chested, white man, attired in a crown made of finger bones and armed with pistols in his waistband. The King sits and leans upon the arm of his throne composed of the "Fugitive Slave Bill," the Bible, and human skulls as he defiantly holds a whip of chains above his head. An American flag on a pole billows behind the throne. Below the throne, Seward, depicted as a priest, looks up and raises his left hand toward the King. He stands before a cat-faced altar inscribed "Sacred to Slavery," which rests upon a book of "Law" and pours oil from a container onto the altar fire, generating clouds of smoke. In the right, three enslaved men squat with their heads bowed. Senator Daniel Webster gestures toward them and holds a paper supporting the Fugitive Slave Bill "to the fullest extent." Near them, "Freedom," depicted as a bearded, white man and attired in a robe, displays his sense of defeat by removing his crown and lowering his liberty pole. In the left, an African American man freedom seeker fends off dogs attacking him. An African American woman freedom seeker and two children flee from two white men mercenaries on horseback and run toward a white woman with outstretched arms in front of a house. In the right background, the figure of Liberty falls from her pedestal., Title from item., Place of publication inferred from the residence of the distributor., Weitenkampf suggests date of publication as 1851., Text printed on recto: Price $3 A Hundred And Six Cents Single Copy., William Harned was an abolitionist printer in New York who also published the pamphlet, "The Fugitive Slave Bill:...." in 1850. (LCP Am 1850 Fug 16809.D.1)., A.B. Maurice and F.T. Cooper's The History of the 19th century in caricature (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1904), p. 156., Lib. Company. Annual Report, 2000, p. 40-2., Purchase 1999., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., 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.
Date: [1851]
Location: Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department political cartoons - 1851 - 2W [P.9739]

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