1861
The American Difficulty.
Punch, Volume 40, May 11, 1861, p. 193
Tenniel's first cartoon to feature Abraham Lincoln appears opposite verses reacting to the fall of Fort Sumter. This representation, showing a clean-shaven President, is clearly derived from months-old photographs (possibly including Mathew Brady's widely-reproduced "Cooper Union" portrait of 1860) or engraved illustrations in American newspapers. Lincoln had begun growing a beard shortly after his electoral victory in November, 1860, and his inaugural portraits from the following March document it as already well-established.
The nervous-looking Lincoln is shown posed in a rocking chair before one of the White House's fire grates (incongruously using the national flag as a seat cushion). He is surrounded by a cloud of sooty smoke billowing from the poorly-vented fire, in which tiny black stick figures swarm like imps. In a rather forced example of word play, the caption has him lamenting that it would be "a nice White House . . . if it were not for the Blacks." Whatever the protestations of Unionist and States' Rights partisans alike, Tenniel and his British audience clearly perceived that the issue of African slavery was at the root of the erupting conflict.
 Mathew Brady. Abraham Lincoln |
 Mathew Brady. |