The Chicago Platform, What is it, Peace or War
Excerpts from "Cartoons and Caricatures of the Civil War" by GARY E. WAIT
Successfully renominated, Lincoln found himself opposed by the man whom he had dismissed from the head of the Union army, George B. McClellan . Caricatured for its 'peace-at-any-price' platform, the Democratic campaign was reduced by both Harper's and Leslie's to the level of a circus act in which the standard-bearer is engaged in attempting various impossible political feats.
Despite opposition from the Copperheads and their Tammany allies, Lincoln had triumphed in November, and by early in 1865, with Wilmington, the last gap in the blockade, closed by the navy, and with Virginia and the deep south securely under Union control, the wreck of the Confederacy seemed near.
Source: "Cartoons and Caricatures of the Civil War" by GARY E. WAIT, Dartmouth College Library Bulletin, April 1997,Cartoon Wait
Link to the full article: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Library_Bulletin/Apr1997/Wait.html
Record Details
Title: The Chicago Platform, What is it, Peace or War
Notes:
Presidental candidates: Ingersoll, Reed, Vallandigham, Pendleton, McClellan, Wood, and Seymour
Political cartoon depicting Presidential candidates attempting to support a failing wooden platform, where on the broken planks of wood captions read: "Peace Plank", "Anything or Nothing", "Armistice." , "Secession", "Union", "Disunion".
View full details.
