Political Cartoons Surrounding Abraham Lincoln

The civil war marked a period in time when the country was in turmoil. Lincoln's main goal was to preserve the Union. The country that once was however, had split into two. The Confederacy, consisting of Southern most states, and the Union consisting of Northern most states. The South feared that slavery would be abolished and then the farmers would not be able to compete with the slowly industrializing North. During the war, the Confederacy lacked money, forcing the government to issue 1 billion dollars in inflationary paper money, ultimately decreasing the value of the Confederate dollar. The Confederacy also had 1 million troops at its peak. The Union used strategies such as a naval blockade of Southern ports, taking control of the Mississippi River, and to raise an army of 500,000 to take over their capital, Richmond. The civil war was fought in 10,000 places and took the lives of 3 million people, 2% of the population at the time. In the cartoon above, Lincoln and the vice president are attempting to fix the United States. The caption calls repairing the Union "rail splitting" because of how much chaos the country went through to become a nation again.

At the start of the Civil War, slavery was not the chief reason violence began. As the war progressed however, the fact of the issue was that slavery needed to be ended to bring the country back together. In July 1962 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Using his powers commander in chief of the armed forces, he freed all the slave in the states at war with the United States (the Confederacy). Lincoln called the plan a "military necessity" , and the document is monumental to our freedom today. This committed the United States to ending slavery in the whole country, and with that every Union advance, the slaves would become free. The cartoon above shows the difficulty that some northerners had with training the African-American troops. Not all northerners thought highly of African-Americans and for that reason the Union soldiers did not take them seriously. By observing the caricatured faces of the African-Americans, one can imply the stupidity and lower status that was still thought to be intertwined into their culture, even though they had become free.

One of the greatest presidents our country has had was assassinated on April 14, 1865. While watching a play at the Ford's theater in Washington with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth shot the then president point blank range in the neck. The president died 3 days later. The country was stunned and infuriated the north. Lincoln's leadership will never be forgotten as well as his clear judgment which truly reflects what American is founded on.