1862

Lincoln's Two Difficulties. Punch, Volume 43, August 23, 1862, p. 77

Lincoln, standing between a wizened treasury official to his right and a supercilious military officer on his left, digests the unpleasant news that the Union has run out of both money and men for the war effort. The President's puzzled expression and shrugged shoulders underscore his perplexity. While the "tax man" appears to be merely a generic elderly functionary, the army officer may be based on portraits of General George B. McClellan, commander of the Union Army of the Potomac. "Little Mac," who was nearly a foot shorter than Lincoln, believed himself far more qualified to be the Federal commander-in-chief; some of McClellan's supporters (with his evident encouragement) lauded him as a "second Napoleon." McClellan spent months drilling his troops to perfection, but then seemed hesitant to commit them to battle. Tenniel's officer is posed in an extreme caricature of a military salute: his puffed chest, arched back, and raised right arm provide an ironic counterpart to the line of Lincoln's rumpled left sleeve.

In the early months of 1862, the Confederacy, even to many of its most ardent supporters, had seemed doomed to defeat. In the Western campaign, the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson had forced the Rebels to evacuate their major supply center at Nashville, and to abandon critical strongholds along the Mississippi valley. In April, a Confederate attack at Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing) had ended in bloody repulse. In May, McClellan's long-awaited Peninsular Campaign slowly advanced to within a few miles of the Southern capital at Richmond. Perhaps overconfident of victory, the North suspended its recruiting efforts, even as the Confederacy was forced to adopt the first military draft in American history.

A nearly-empty Federal treasury was one reason the North held back on additional enlistments. The able Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, had begun to implement a variety of long-term strategies for funding the war -- including raising tariffs, printing Federal paper money (the first so-called "greenbacks"), selling war bonds, and levying the first national income tax -- but it would take many months for these measures to raise significant revenue. Tenniel conveniently ignores the fact that Southern finances were in far worse shape (and would continue to collapse under inflationary pressures as the war dragged on).

June of 1862 saw a complete reversal of fortune on the battlefield. The Seven Days Battle around Richmond, resulting in nearly 30,000 casualties on both sides combined, forced McClellan to abandon his costly Peninsular Campaign. "Little Mac," erroneously believing that his forces had been outnumbered, publicly blamed Lincoln for not having sent him sufficient reinforcements. In the Shenandoah Valley, legendary Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson pinned down much larger Union forces in a series of brilliant tactical maneuvers. Faced with these reverses, Lincoln once more called upon the Northern states for an additional 300,000 volunteers, these men to serve for three years.

By the end of summer, it seemed to European observers that the Confederacy was clearly on the way to winning its independence on the battlefield. Faced with mounting losses and an empty treasury, the North, they believed, would soon have to give up its costly attempt to subdue the South. Tenniel's cartoon echoes the sentiments expressed in a London Times editorial of the previous month, which had observed:

Maj. General George B. McClellan, Commander, Army of the Potomac.

George Brinton McClellan in "Napoleonic" pose.