1862

The "Sensation" Struggle in America. Punch, Volume 42, June 7, 1862, p. 227

The word "Sensation" as used at time of the Civil War connoted a thrilling experience or violent, emotional feeling; it was also used to describe a person or event that excited such a response. The term was even applied to literary works: a "sensation drama" was a play of the type that would later be known as melodrama. Tenniel's composition recalls just such a "sensational" work of art: Charles Deas' (1818-1867) painting The Death Struggle, ca. 1845, which depicts a white pioneer and an American Indian warrior, both armed with knives, locked in fatal combat at the brink of a cliff. While it is doubtful that Tenniel would ever have seen the original painting, it may have been familiar to him through engraved reproductions.

The Northern brother, identified by his stars-and-stripes clothing, loses his balance as the rotten branch of the "Union" tree to which he clings breaks under the strain. Both he and his Southern brother, attired in a stars-and-bars uniform, are so consumed with hatred for each other that they seem oblivious to the yawning chasm of mutual bankruptcy into which they are about to fall.

Charles Deas. The Death Struggle, ca. 1845. Oil on canvas. Shelburne Museum, Vermont.