Looking at Lincoln: Political Cartoons of the Civil War Era Cost: free with regular admission Ages: all The Emancipation Proclimation transformed the Civil War from a war to save the Union into a war to preserve the Union and to end slavery. Today most historians agree that slavery was the fundamental cause of the Civil War and that emancipation was central to its outcome.
How did Americans living in the mid-19th century see the causes of the war? How did they judge Lincoln and his role in the abolition of slavery? What can the popular press in the Union reveal about challenges for Lincoln, the war president war president who led the nation in the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment? The Emancipation Proclimation is the benchmark by which both contemporaries and subsequent generations have judged the depth of Lincoln's dedication to end slavery and create equal rights for African American soldiers. The proclimation is by intent a dry legal document. However, images, especially cartoons, are a valuable resource for Americans who want to investigate Lincoln in the context of his times.
In an age before radio, television and the Internet, many Americans received news and expressed their opinions about politicians and Presidents through newspapers. Political cartoons appeared in newspapers and were sold individually as prints in shops on street corners and by mail. These cartoons are vivid, sharp and offensive to our eyes. But, they invite us to put aside 21st-century assumptions and look at events through the eyes of people living in the era. Artists and citizens who created these images lived in a century in which racism was deeply ingrained in American life. Even ardent abolitionists who fought to end slavery often took little account of its implication for race relations. At the beginning of the 21st-century, as Americans continue to debate the legacy of slavery, these cartoons provide a historical point of reference for current events.
