EARLY AMERICAN CARICATURE.
Benjamin Franklin was the first American caricaturist. That propensity
of his to use pictures whenever he desired to affect strongly the public
mind was an inheritance from the period when only a very small portion
of the people could read any other than pictorial language. Among the
relics of his race preserved in Boston there is an illustrated handbill
issued by his English uncle Benjamin, after whom he was named, which
must have been a familiar object to him from the eighth year of his age.
Uncle Benjamin, a London dyer when James II. fled from England, wishing
to strengthen the impression made by his printed offer to "dye into
colors" cloth, silk, and India calico, placed at the head of his bill a
rude wood-cut of an East Indian queen taking a walk, attended by two
servants, one bearing her train and the other holding over her an
umbrella. At the door of his shop, too, in Princes Street, near
Leicester Fields, a figure of an Indian queen appealed to the passer-by.
Such was the custom of the time. The diffusion of knowledge lessened the
importance of pictorial representation; but the mere date of Franklin's
birth--1706--explains in some degree his habitual resort to it. Nearly
all the ancient books were illustrated in some way, and nearly every
ancient building appears to have had its "sign." When Franklin was a boy
in Boston a gilt Bible would have directed him where to buy his books,
if he had had any money to buy them with. A gilt sheaf probably notified
him where to get those three historic rolls with which he made his entry
into Philadelphia. The figure of a mermaid invited the thirsty wayfarer
to beer, and an anchor informed sailors where sea-stores were to be had.
The royal lion and unicorn, carved in wood or stone, marked public
edifices. Over the door of his father's shop, where soap and candles
were sold, he saw a blue ball, which still exists, bearing the legible
date 1698. Why a blue ball? He was just the boy to ask the question. A
lad who could not accept grace before meat without wishing to know why
it were not better to say grace once for all over the barrel of pork,
would be likely to inquire what a blue ball had in common with soap and
candles. His excellent but not gifted sire probably informed him that
the blue ball was a relic of the time when he had carried on the
business of a dyer, and that he had continued to use it for his new
vocation because he "had it in the house." Benjamin, the gifted, was the
boy to be dissatisfied with this explanation, and to suggest devices
more in harmony with the industry carried on within, so that the very
incongruity of his father's sign may have quickened his sense of
pictorial effect.
Franklin lived long, figured in a great variety of scenes, accomplished
many notable things, and exhibited versatility of talent--man of
business, inventor, statesman, diplomatist, philosopher; and in each of
these characters he was a leader among leaders; but the ruling habit of
his mind, his _forte_, the talent that he most loved to exercise and
most relished in others, was humor. He began as a humorist, and he ended
as a humorist. The first piece of his ever printed and the last piece he
ever wrote were both satirical: the first, the reckless satire of a
saucy apprentice against the magnates of his town; the last, the
good-tempered satire of a richly gifted, benevolent soul, cognizant of
human weakness, but not despising it, and intent only upon opening the
public mind to unwelcome truth--as a mother makes a child laugh before
inserting the medicine spoon. So dominant was this propensity in his
youthful days, that if he had lived in a place where it had been
possible to subsist by its exercise, there had been danger of his
becoming a professional humorist, merging all the powers of his
incomparable intellect in that one gift.
Imagine Boston in 1722, when this remarkable apprentice began to laugh,
and to make others laugh, at the oppressive solemnities around him and
above him. Then, as now, it was a population industrious and moral,
extremely addicted to routine, habitually frugal, but capable of
magnificent generosity, bold in business enterprises, valiant in battle,
but in all the high matters averse to innovation. Then, as now, the
clergy, a few important families, and Harvard College composed the
ruling influence, against which it was martyrdom to contend. But then,
as now, there were a few audacious spirits who rebelled against these
united powers, and carried their opposition very far, sometimes to a
wild excess, and thus kept this noblest of towns from sinking into an
inane respectability. The good, frugal, steady-going, tax-paying
citizen, who lays in his coal in June and buys a whole pig in December,
would subdue the world to a vast monotonous prosperity, crushing,
intolerable, if there were no one to keep him and the public in mind
that, admirable as he is, he does not exhaust the possibilities of human
nature. When we examine the portraits of the noted men of New England of
the first century and a half after the settlement, we observe in them
all a certain expression of _acquiescence_. There is no audacity in
them. They look like men who could come home from fighting the French in
Canada, or from chasing the whale among the icebergs of Labrador, to be
scared by the menaces of a pontiff like Cotton Mather. They look like
men who would take it seriously, and not laugh at all, when Cotton
Mather denounced the Franklins, for poking fun at him in their
newspaper, as guilty of wickedness without a parallel. "Some good men,"
said he, "are afraid it may provoke Heaven to deal with this place as
never any place has yet been dealt withal."
Never was a community in such sore need of caricature and burlesque as
when James Franklin set up in Boston, in 1721, the first "sensational
newspaper" of America, the _Courant_, to which his brother Benjamin and
the other rebels and come-outers of Boston contributed. The Mathers, as
human beings and citizens of New England, were estimable and even
admirable; but the interests of human nature demand the suppression of
pontiffs. These Mathers, though naturally benevolent, and not wanting in
natural modesty, had attained to such a degree of pontifical arrogance
as to think _Boston_ in deadly peril because a knot of young fellows in
a printing-office aimed satirical paragraphs at them. Increase Mather
called upon the Government to "suppress such a cursed libel," lest "some
awful judgment should come upon the land, and the wrath of God should
rise, and there should be no remedy." It is for such men that burlesque
was made, and the Franklins supplied it in abundance. The _Courant_
ridiculed them even when they were gloriously in the right. They were
enlightened enough and brave enough to recommend inoculation, then just
brought from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The young doctors who
wrote for the paper assailed the new system, apparently for no other
reason than because Increase and Cotton Mather were its chief defenders.
When Benjamin, at the age of sixteen, began to contribute to his
brother's paper, he aimed at higher game even than the town pontiffs. He
dared to lampoon Harvard College itself, the temple of learning where
the clergy were formed, whose precincts he had hoped to tread, his
father having dedicated this tenth son to the Church. He may have had
his own father in mind when he wrote, in one of his early numbers, that
every "peasant" who had the means proposed to send one of his children
to this famous place; and as most of them consulted their purses rather
than their children's capacities, the greater number of those who went
thither were little better than blockheads and dunces. When he came to
speak of the theological department of the college, he drew a pen
caricature, having then no skill with the pencil: "The business of those
who were employed in the temple of theology being laborious and painful,
I wondered exceedingly to see so many go toward it; but while I was
pondering this matter in my mind, I spied _Pecunia_ behind a curtain,
beckoning to them with her hand." He draws another when he says that the
only remarkable thing he saw in this temple was one Plagius hard at work
copying an eloquent passage from Tillotson's works to embellish his own.
This saucy boy, who had his "Hudibras" at his tongue's end, carried the
satirical spirit with him to church on Sundays, and tried some of the
brethren whom he saw there by the Hudibrastic standard. Even after his
brother James had been in prison for his editorial conduct, Benjamin,
who had been left in charge of the paper, drew with his subeditorial pen
a caricature of a "Religious Knave, of all Knaves the Worst:" A most
strict Sabbatarian, an exact observer not of the day only, but of the
evening before and the evening after it; at church conspicuously devout
and attentive, even ridiculously so, with his distorted countenance and
awkward gesticulation. But try and nail him to a bargain! He will
dissemble and lie, snuffle and whiffle, overreach and defraud, cut down
a laborer's wages, and keep the bargain in the letter while violating
its spirit. "Don't tell me," he cries; "a bargain is a bargain. You
should have looked to that before. I can't help it now." Such was the
religious knave invented by the author of "Hudibras," and borrowed by
this Boston apprentice, who had, in all probability, never seen a
character that could have fairly suggested the burlesque.
The authorities rose upon these two audacious brothers, and indicated
how much need there was of such a sheet in Boston by ordering James
Franklin to print it no more. They contrived to carry it on a while in
Benjamin's name; but that sagacious youth was not long in discovering
that the Mathers and their adherents were too strong for him, and he
took an early opportunity of removing to a place established on the
principle of doing without pontiffs. But during his long, illustrious
career in Philadelphia as editor and public man he constantly acted in
the spirit of one of the last passages he wrote before leaving Boston:
"Pieces of pleasantry and mirth have a secret charm in them to allay the
heats and tumults of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless
resentments. They have a strange power in them to hush disorders of the
soul and reduce us to a serene and placid state of mind." He was the
father of our humorous literature. If, at the present moment, America is
contributing more to the innocent hilarity of mankind than other
nations, it is greatly due to the happy influence of this benign and
liberal humorist upon the national character. "Poor Richard," be it
observed, was the great comic almanac of the country for twenty-five
years, and it was Franklin who infused the element of burlesque into
American journalism. He could not advertise a stolen prayer-book without
inserting a joke to give the advertisement wings: "The person who took
it is desired to open it and read the Eighth Commandment, and afterward
return it into the same pew again; upon which no further notice will be
taken."
This propensity was the more precious because it was his destiny to take
a leading part in many controversies which would have become bitter
beyond endurance but for "the strange power" of his "pieces of
pleasantry and mirth" to "hush disorders of the soul." He employed both
pen and pencil in bringing his excellent sense to bear upon the public
mind. What but Franklin's inexhaustible tact and good-humor could have
kept the peace in Pennsylvania between the non-combatant Quakers and the
militant Christians during the long period when the province was
threatened from the sea by hostile fleets and on land by savage Indians?
Besides rousing the combatant citizens to action, he made them willing
to fight for men who would not fight for themselves, and brought over to
his side a large number of the younger and more pliant Quakers. Even in
that early time (1747), while bears still swam the Delaware, he
contrived to get a picture drawn and engraved to enforce the lessons of
his first pamphlet, calling on the Pennsylvanians to prepare for
defense. He may have engraved it himself, for he had a dexterous hand,
and had long before made little pictures out of type-metal to accompany
advertisements. Hercules sits upon a cloud, with one hand resting upon
his club. Three horses vainly strive to draw a heavy wagon from the
mire. The wagoner kneels, lifts his hands, and implores the aid of
Hercules's mighty arm. In the background are trees and houses, and under
the picture are Latin words signifying, "Not by offerings nor by
womanish prayers is the help of gods obtained." In the text, too, when
he essays the difficult task of reconciling the combatants to fighting
for the non-combatants, he becomes pictorial, though he does not use the
graver. "What!" he cries, "not defend your wives, your helpless
children, your aged parents, because the Quakers have conscientious
scruples about fighting!" Then he adds the burlesque picture: "Till of
late I could scarce believe the story of him who refused to pump in a
sinking ship because one on board whom he hated would be saved by it as
well as himself."
[Illustration: JOIN or DIE
A Common Newspaper Heading in 1776; devised by Franklin in May, 1754, at
the Beginning of the French War.]
At the beginning of the contest which in Europe was the Seven Years'
War, but in America a ten years' war, Franklin's pen and pencil were
both employed in urging a cordial union of the colonies against the foe.
His device of a snake severed into as many pieces as there were
colonies, with the motto, "_Join or Die_," survived the occasion that
called it forth, and became a common newspaper and handbill heading in
1776. It was he, also, as tradition reports, who exhibited to the
unbelieving farmers of Pennsylvania the effect of gypsum, by writing
with that fertilizer in large letters upon a field the words "_This has
been plastered_." The brilliant green of the grass which had been
stimulated by the plaster soon made the words legible to the passer-by.
During his first residence in London as the representative of
Pennsylvania he became intimately acquainted with the great artist from
whom excellence in the humorous art of England dates--William Hogarth.
The last letter that the dying Hogarth received was from Benjamin
Franklin. "Receiving an agreeable letter," says Nichols, "from the
American, Dr. Franklin, he drew up a rough draught of an answer to it."
Three hours after, Hogarth was no more.
A few of Franklin's devices for the coins and paper money of the young
republic have been preserved. He wished that every coin and every note
should say something wise or cheerful to their endless succession of
possessors and scrutinizers. Collectors show the Franklin cent of 1787,
with its circle of thirteen links and its central words, "_We are one_"
and outside of these, "_United States_." On the other side of the coin
there is a noonday sun blazing down upon a dial, with the motto, "_Mind
your Business_." He made the date say something more to the reader than
the number of the year, by appending to it the word "_Fugio_" (I fly).
Another cent has a central sun circled by thirteen stars and the words
"_Nova Constellatio_." He suggested "_Pay as you go_" for a coin motto.
Some of his designs for the Continental paper money were ingenious and
effective. Upon one dingy little note, issued during the storm and
stress of the Revolution, we see a roughly executed picture of a shower
of rain falling upon a newly settled country, with a word of good cheer
under it, "_Serenabit_" (It will clear). Upon another there is a picture
of a beaver gnawing a huge oak, and the word "_Perseverando_." On
another there is a crown resting upon a pedestal, and the words "_Si
recte facias_" (If you do uprightly). There is one which represents a
hawk and stork fighting, with the motto "_Exitus in dubio est_" (The
event is in doubt); and another which shows a hand plucking branches
from a tea-plant, with the motto "_Sustain or Abstain_."
The famous scalp hoax devised by Franklin during the Revolutionary war,
for the purpose of bringing the execration of civilized mankind upon the
employment of Indians by the English generals, was vividly pictorial.
Upon his private printing-press in Paris he and his grandson struck off
a leaf of an imaginary newspaper, which he called a "Supplement to the
Boston _Independent Chronicle_." For this he wrote a letter purporting
to be from "Captain Gerrish, of the New England Militia," accompanying
eight packages of "scalps of our unhappy country folks," which he had
captured on a raid into the Indian country. The captain sent with the
scalps an inventory of them, supposed to be drawn up by one James
Crawford, a trader, for the information of the Governor of Canada.
Neither Swift nor De Foe ever surpassed the ingenious naturalness of
this fictitious inventory. It was indeed _too_ natural, for it was
generally accepted as a genuine document, and would even now deceive
almost any one who should come upon it unawares. Who could suspect that
these "eight packs of scalps, cured, dried, hooped, and painted, with
all the Indian triumphal marks" upon them, had never existed except in
the imagination of a merry old plenipotentiary in Paris? There were
"forty-three scalps of Congress soldiers, stretched on black hoops four
inches diameter, the inside of the skin painted red, with a small black
spot to denote their being killed with bullets;" and there were
"sixty-two farmers, killed in their houses, marked with a hoe, a black
circle all around to denote their being surprised in the night." Other
farmers' scalps were marked with "a little red foot," to show that they
stood upon their defense; and others with "a little yellow flame," to
show that they had been burned alive. To one scalp a band was fastened,
"supposed to be that of a rebel clergyman." Then there were eighty-eight
scalps of women, and "some hundreds of boys and girls." The package last
described was "a box of birch-bark containing twenty-nine little
infants' scalps of various sizes, small white hoops, white ground, no
tears, and only a little black knife in the middle to show they were
ripped out of their mothers' bellies." The trader dwells upon the fact
that most of the farmers were young or middle-aged, "there being _but_
sixty-seven _very_ gray heads among them; which makes the service more
essential." Every detail of this supplement was worked out with infinite
ingenuity, even to the editor's postscript, which stated that the scalps
had just reached Boston, where thousands of people were flocking to see
them.
Franklin was more than a humorist; he was an artist in humor. In other
words, he not only had a lively sense of the absurd and the ludicrous,
but he knew how to exhibit them to others with the utmost power and
finish. His grandson, who lived with him in Paris during the
Revolutionary period, a very good draughtsman, used to illustrate his
humorous papers, and between them they produced highly entertaining
things, only a few of which have been gathered. The Abbe Morellet, one
of the gay circle who enjoyed them, remarks that in his sportive moods
Franklin was "Socrates mounted on a stick, playing with his children."
To this day, however, there are millions who regard that vast and
somewhat disorderly genius, who was one of the least sordid and most
generous of all recorded men, as the mere type of penny prudence. Even
so variously informed a person as the author of "A Short History of the
English People," published in 1875, speaks of the "close-fisted
Franklin."
It is in vain that we seek for specimens of colonial caricature outside
of the Franklin circle. Satirical pictures were doubtless produced in
great numbers, and a few may have been published; but caricature is a
thing of the moment, and usually perishes with the moment, unless it is
incorporated with a periodical. Almost all the intellectual product of
the colonial period that was not theological has some relation to the
wise and jovial Franklin, the incomparable American, the father of his
country's intellectual life, whether manifested in literature,
burlesque, politics, invention, or science.
[Illustration: Boston Massacre Coffins; Boston, March, 1774. (From
"American Historical Record.")]
The Boston massacre, as it was called, which was commemorated by the
device of a row of coffins, often employed before and since, might have
been more properly styled a street brawl, if the mere presence of
British troops in Boston in 1774 had not been an outrage of
international dimensions. The four victims, Samuel Gray, Samuel
Maverick, James Cauldwell, and Crispus Attucks, were borne to the grave
by all that was most distinguished in the province, and the whole people
seemed to have either followed or witnessed the procession. Amidst the
frenzy of the time, these coffin-lids served to express and relieve the
popular feeling. The subsequent acquittal of the innocent soldiers, who
had shown more forbearance than armed men usually do when taunted and
assailed by an unarmed crowd, remains one of the most honorable of the
early records of Boston.
There were attempts at caricature during the later years of the
Revolutionary war. From 1778, when inflated paper, French francs,
British gold, and Hessian thalers had given the business centres of the
country a short, fallacious prosperity, there was gayety enough in
Philadelphia and Boston. There were balls and parties, and sending to
France for articles of luxury, and profusion of all kinds--as there was
in the late war, and as there must be in all wars which are not paid for
till the war is over. There are indications in the old books that the
burlesquing pencil was a familiar instrument then among the merry lads
of the cities and towns. But their efforts, after having answered their
momentary purpose, perished.
And the habit of burlesque survived the war. There are few persons, even
among the zealous fraternity of collectors, who are aware that a New
York dramatist, in the year 1788, endeavored to burlesque, in a regular
five-act comedy, the violent debates which distracted all circles while
the acceptance of the new Constitution was the question of questions. A
copy or two of this comedy, called "The Politician Outwitted," have been
preserved. In lieu of the lost pictures, take this brief scene, which
exhibits a violent squabble between an inveterate opponent of the
Constitution and a burning patriot who supports it. They enter, in
proper comedy fashion, after they are in full quarrel.
"_Enter_ OLD LOVEYET _and_ TRUEMAN.
"_Loveyet._ I tell you, it is the most infernal scheme that ever
was devised.
"_Trueman._ And I tell you, sir, that your argument is heterodox,
sophistical, and most preposterously illogical.
"_Loveyet._ I insist upon it, sir, you know nothing at all about
the matter! And give me leave to tell you, sir--
"_Trueman._ What! Give you leave to tell me I know nothing at all
about the matter? I shall do no such thing, sir. I'm not to be
governed by your _ipse dixit_.
"_Loveyet._ I desire none of your musty Latin, for I don't
understand it, not I.
"_Trueman._ O the ignorance of the age! To oppose a plan of
government like the new Constitution! _Like_ it, did I say? There
never _was_ one like it. Neither Minos, Solon, Lycurgus, nor
Romulus ever fabricated so wise a system. Why, it is a political
phenomenon, a prodigy of legislative wisdom, the fame of which
will soon extend ultramundane, and astonish the nations of the
world with its transcendent excellence. To what a sublime height
will the superb edifice attain!
"_Loveyet._ Your aspiring edifice shall never be erected in this
State, sir.
"_Trueman._ Mr. Loveyet, you will not listen to reason. Only
calmly attend one moment.
[_Reads._] 'We, the people of the United States, in order to form
a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide--'
"_Loveyet._ I tell you I won't hear it.
"_Trueman._ Mark all that. [_Reads._] 'Section the First. All
legislative power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of
the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of
Representatives.' Very judicious and salutary, upon my erudition!
'Section the Second--'
"_Loveyet._ I'll hear no more of your sections."
[Illustration: A Militia Drill in Massachusetts in 1832.]
They continue the debate until both disputants are in the white heat of
passion. Old Mr. Loveyet rushes away at last to break off the match
between his daughter and Trueman's son, and Trueman retorts by calling
his fiery antagonist "a conceited sot." This comedy is poor stuff, but
it suffices to reveal the existence of the spirit of caricature among us
at that early day, when New York was a clean, cobble-stoned,
Dutch-looking town of thirty thousand inhabitants, one of whom, a boy
five years of age, was named Washington Irving.
General Washington was inaugurated President at the same city in the
following year. How often has the world been assured that no dissentient
voice was heard on that occasion! The arrival of the general in New York
was a pageant which the entire population is supposed to have most
heartily approved; and a very pleasing spectacle it must have been, as
seen from the end of the island--the vessels decked with flags and
streamers, and the President's stately barge, rowed by thirteen pilots
in white uniforms, advancing toward the city, surrounded and followed by
a cloud of small boats, to the thunder of great guns. But even then, it
seems, there were a few who looked askance. At least one caricature
appeared. "All the world here," wrote John Armstrong to the unreconciled
General Gates, "are busy in collecting flowers and sweets of every kind
to amuse and delight the President." People were asking one another, he
adds, by what awe-inspiring title the President should be called, even
plain Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, regarding "His Excellency" as
beneath the grandeur of the office. "Yet," says Armstrong, "in the midst
of this admiration there are skeptics who doubt its propriety, and wits
who amuse themselves at its extravagance. The first will grumble and the
last will laugh, and the President should be prepared to meet the
attacks of both with firmness and good nature. A caricature has already
appeared, called 'The Entry,' full of very disloyal and profane
allusions." It was by no means a good-natured picture. General
Washington was represented riding upon an ass, and held in the arms of
his favorite man Billy, once huntsman, then valet and factotum; Colonel
David Humphreys, the general's aid and secretary, led the ass, singing
hosannas and birthday odes, one couplet of which was legible:
"The glorious time has come to pass
When David shall conduct an ass."
This effort was more ill-natured than brilliant; but the reader who
examines the fugitive publications of that period will often feel that
the adulation of the President was such as to provoke and justify severe
caricature. That adulation was as excessive as it was ill executed; and
part of the office of caricature is to remind Philip that he is a man.
The numberless "verses," "odes," "tributes," "stanzas," "lines," and
"sonnets" addressed to President Washington lie entombed in the dingy
leaves of the old newspapers; but a few of the epigrams which they
provoked have been disinterred, and even some of the caricatures are
described in the letters of the time. Neither the verses nor the
pictures are at all remarkable. Probably the best caricature that
appeared during the administration of General Washington was suggested
by the removal of the national capital from New York to Philadelphia.
Senator Robert Morris, being a Philadelphian, and having large
possessions in Philadelphia, was popularly supposed to have procured the
passage of the measure, and accordingly the portly Senator is seen in
the picture carrying off upon his broad shoulders the Federal Hall, the
windows of which are crowded with members of both Houses, some
commending, others cursing this novel method of removal. In the distance
is seen the old Paulus Hook ferry-house, at what is now Jersey City, on
the roof of which is the devil beckoning to the heavy-laden Morris, and
crying to him, "This way, Bobby." The removal of the capital was a
fruitful theme for the humorists of the day. Even then "New York
politicians" had an ill name, and Congress was deemed well out of their
reach.
But those were the halcyon days of the untried administration; to which
indeed there was as yet nothing that could be called an Opposition. The
entire nation, with here and there an individual exception, was in full
accord with the feeling expressed in Benjamin Russell's allegory that
went "the round of the press" in 1789 and 1790:
"THE FEDERAL SHIP.
[Illustration: A ship.]
"Just _launched_ on the _Ocean of Empire_, the Ship COLUMBIA,
GEORGE WASHINGTON, Commander, which, after being thirteen years
in _dock_, is at length well _manned_, and in very good
condition. The Ship is a _first rate_--has a good _bottom_, which
all the Builders have pronounced _sound_ and _good_. Some
objection has been made to parts of the _tackling_, or _running
rigging_, which, it is supposed, will be _altered_, when they
shall be found to be incommodious, as the Ship is able to make
very good _headway_ with them as they are. A _jury_ of
_Carpenters_ have this matter now under consideration. The
_Captain_ and _First Mate_ are universally esteemed by all the
Owners--Eleven[40] in number--and she has been _insured_, under
their direction, to make a good _mooring_ in the _harbor_ of
Public Prosperity and Felicity--whitherto she is bound. The
Owners can furnish, besides the Ship's Company, the following
materials:--_New-Hampshire_, the Masts and Spars;
_Massachusetts_, Timber for the Hull, Fish, &c.; _Connecticut_,
Beef and Pork; _New-York_, Porter and other Cabin stores;
_New-Jersey_, the Cordage; _Pennsylvania_, Flour and
Bread;--_Delaware_, the Colors, and Clothing for the Crew;
_Maryland_, the Iron work and small Anchors; _Virginia_, Tobacco
and the Sheet Anchor; _South-Carolina_, Rice; and _Georgia_,
Powder and small Provisions. Thus found, may this _good Ship_ put
to sea, and the prayer of all is, that GOD _may preserve her, and
bring her in safety to her desired haven_."
[Footnote 40: Only eleven States had accepted the Constitution when this
was written.]
The Government had not been long domiciled in the City of Brotherly Love
before parties became defined and party spirit acrimonious. The popular
heart and hope and imagination were all on the side of revolutionized
France in her unequal struggle with the allied kings. Conservative and
"safe" men were more and more drawn into sympathy with the powers that
were striving to maintain the established order, chief of which was
Great Britain. President Washington, in maintaining the just balance
between the two contending principles and powers, could not but give
some dissatisfaction to both political parties, and, most of all, to the
one in the warmest sympathy with France. In the dearth of pictorical
relics of that period, I insert the parody of the Athanasian creed
annexed, from the _National Gazette_ of Philadelphia, edited by Freneau,
and maintained by the friends of Jefferson and Madison:
"A NEW POLITICAL CREED FOR THE USE OF WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.
"Whoever would live peaceably in Philadelphia, above all things
it is necessary that he hold the Federal faith--and the Federal
faith is this, that there are two governing powers in this
country, both equal, and yet one superior: which faith except
every one keep undefiledly, without doubt he shall be abused
everlastingly.
"The Briton is superior to the American, and the American is
inferior to the Briton: and yet they are equal, and the Briton
shall govern the American.
"The Briton, while here, is commanded to obey the American, and
yet the American ought to obey the Briton.
"And yet they ought not both to be obedient, but only one to be
obedient. For there is one dominion nominal of the American, and
another dominion real of the Briton.
"And yet there are not two dominions, but only one dominion.
"For like as we are compelled by the British constitution book to
acknowledge that _subjects_ must submit themselves to their
monarchs, and be obedient to them in all things:
"So we are forbid by our Federal executive to say that we are at
all influenced by our treaty with France, or to pay regard to
what it enforceth:
"The American was created for the Briton, and the Briton for the
American:
"And yet the American shall be a slave to the Briton, and the
Briton the tyrant of the American.
"And Britons are of three denominations, and yet only of one
soul, nature, and subsistency:
"The Irishman of infinite impudence:
"The Scotchman of cunning most inscrutable:
"And the Englishman of impertinence altogether insupportable:
"The only true and honorable gentlemen of this our blessed
country.
"He, therefore, that would live in quiet, must thus think of the
Briton and the American.
"It is furthermore necessary that every _good_ American should
believe in the infallibility of the executive, when its
proclamations are echoed by Britons:
"For the true faith is, that we believe and confess that the
Government is fallible and infallible:
"Fallible in its republican nature, and infallible in its
monarchical tendency, erring in its state of individuality, and
unerring in its Federal complexity.
"So that though it be both fallible and infallible, yet it is not
twain, but one government only, as having consolidated all state
dominion, in order to rule with sway uncontrolled.
"This is the true Federal faith, which except a man believe and
practice faithfully, beyond all doubt he shall be cursed
perpetually."
A rude but very curious specimen of the caricature of the early time is
given on the next page of the collision on the floor of the House of
Representatives between Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold, both
representatives from Connecticut. Lyon, a native of Ireland, was an
ardent Republican, who played a conspicuous part in politics during the
final struggle between the Republicans and the Federalists. Roger
Griswold, on the contrary, a member of an old and distinguished
Connecticut family, a graduate of its ancient college, and a member of
its really illustrious bar, was a pronounced Federalist. He was also a
gentleman who had no natural relish for a strong-minded, unlettered
emigrant who founded a town in his new country, built mills and
foundries, invented processes, established a newspaper, and was elected
to Congress. If Hamilton and Griswold and the other extreme Federalists
had had their way in this country, there would have been no Matthew
Lyons among us to create a new world for mankind, and begin the
development of a better political system. Nor, indeed, was Matthew Lyon
sufficiently tolerant of the old and tried methods that had become
inadequate. He was not likely, either--at the age of fifty-two, standing
upon the summit of a very successful career, which was wholly his own
work--to regard as equal to himself a man of thirty-six, who seemed to
owe his importance chiefly to his lineage. So here was a broad basis for
an antipathy which the strife of politics could easily aggravate into an
aversion extreme and fiery--fiery, at least, on the part of the
Irishman.
[Illustration: Fight in Congress between Lyon and Griswold, February
15th, 1798.
"He in a trice struck Griswold thrice
Upon his head, enraged, sir;
Who seized the tongs to ease his wrongs,
And Griswold thus engaged, sir."]
Imagine this process complete, and the House, on the last day of the
year 1798, in languid session, balloting. The two members were standing
near one another outside the bar, when Griswold made taunting allusion
to an old "campaign story" of Matthew Lyon's having been sentenced to
wear a wooden sword for cowardice in the field. Lyon, in a fury, spit in
Griswold's face. Instantly the House was in an uproar; and although the
impetuous Lyon apologized to the House, he only escaped expulsion, after
eleven days' debate, through the constitutional requirement of a
two-thirds vote. This affair called forth a caricature in which the
Irish member was depicted as a lion standing on his hind-legs wearing a
wooden sword, while Griswold, handkerchief in hand, exclaims, "What a
beastly action!"
The vote for expulsion--52 to 44--did not satisfy Mr. Griswold. Four
days after the vote occurred the outrageous scene rudely delineated in
the picture already mentioned. Griswold, armed with what the Republican
editor called "a stout hickory club," and the Federalist editor a
"hickory stick," assaulted Lyon while he was sitting at his desk,
striking him on the head and shoulders several times before he could
extricate himself. But at last Lyon got upon his feet, and, seizing the
tongs, rushed upon the enemy. This is the moment selected by the artist.
They soon after closed and fell to the floor, where they enjoyed a good
"rough-and-tumble" fight, until members pulled them apart. A few minutes
after they chanced to meet again at the "water table," near one of the
doors. Lyon was now provided with a stick, but Griswold had none. "Their
eyes no sooner met," says the Federalist reporter, "than Mr. Lyon sprung
to attack Mr. Griswold." A member handed Griswold a stick, and there was
a fair prospect of another fight, when the Speaker interfered with so
much energy that the antagonists were again torn apart. The battle was
not renewed on the floor of Congress.
But it was continued elsewhere. Under that amazing sedition law of the
Federalists, Lyon was tried a few months after for saying in his
newspaper that President Adams had an "unbounded thirst for ridiculous
pomp," had turned men out of office for their opinions, and had written
"a bullying message" upon the French imbroglio of 1798. He was found
guilty, sentenced to pay a fine of a thousand dollars, besides the heavy
costs of the prosecution, to be imprisoned four months, and to continue
in confinement until the fine was paid. Of course the people of his
district stood by him, and, while he was in prison, re-elected him to
Congress by a great majority; and his fine was repaid to his heirs in
1840 by Congress, with forty-two years' interest. These events made a
prodigious stir in their time. Matthew Lyon's presence in the House of
Representatives, his demeanor there, and his triumphal return from
prison to Congress, were the first distinct notification to parties
interested that the sceptre was passing from the Few to the Many.
The satire and burlesque of the Jeffersonian period, from 1798 to 1809,
were abundant in quantity, if not of shining excellence. To the reader
of the present day all savors of burlesque in the political utterances
of that time, so preposterously violent were partisans on both sides. It
is impossible to take a serious view of the case of an editor who could
make it a matter of boasting that he had opposed the Republican measures
for eight years "without a single exception." The press, indeed, had
then no independent life; it was the minion and slave of party. It is
only in our own day that the press begins to exist for its own sake, and
descant with reasonable freedom on topics other than the Importance of
Early Rising and the Customs of the Chinese. The reader would neither be
edified nor amused by seeing Mr. Jefferson kneeling before a stumpy
pillar labeled "Altar of Gallic Despotism," upon which are Paine's "Age
of Reason" and the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvetius, with the
demon of the French Revolution crouching behind it, and the American
eagle soaring aloft, bearing in its talons the Constitution and the
independence of the United States. Pictures of that nature, of great
size, crowded with objects, emblems, and sentences--an elaborate
blending of burlesque, allegory, and enigma--were so much valued by that
generation that some of them were engraved upon copper.
On the day of the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson as President of the
United States, March 4th, 1801, a parody appeared in the _Centinel_ of
Boston, a Federalist paper of great note in its time, which may serve
our purpose here:
Monumental Inscription.
"_That life is long which answers Life's great end._"
Yesterday expired, deeply regretted by millions of grateful Americans,
and by all good men,
THE FEDERAL ADMINISTRATION OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES:
animated by
A WASHINGTON, AN ADAMS, A HAMILTON, KNOX, PICKERING, WOLCOTT,
M'HENRY, MARSHALL, STODDERT, AND DEXTER.
AEt. 12 years.
Its death was occasioned by the secret arts and open violence
of foreign and domestic demagogues:
Notwithstanding its whole life was
devoted to the performance of every duty to promote
the Union, Credit, Peace, Prosperity, Honor,
and Felicity of its Country.
At its birth, it found the Union of the States dissolving like a rope
of snow;
It hath left it stronger than the threefold cord.
It found the United States bankrupts in estate and reputation;
It hath left them unbounded in credit, and respected throughout the
world.
It found the Treasuries of the United States and Individual States empty;
It hath left them full and overflowing.
It found all the evidences of public debts worthless as rags;
It hath left them more valuable than gold and silver.
It found the United States at war with the Indian nations;
It hath concluded peace with them all.
It found the aboriginals of the soil inveterate enemies of the whites;
It hath exercised toward them justice and generosity, and hath left them
fast friends.
It found Great Britain in possession of all the frontier posts;
It hath demanded their surrender, and it leaves them in the possession of
the United States.
It found the American sea-coast utterly defenseless;
It hath left it fortified.
It found our arsenals empty, and magazines decaying;
It hath left them full of ammunition and warlike implements.
It found our country dependent on foreign nations for engines of defense;
It hath left manufactories of cannon and musquets in full work.
It found the American Nation at war with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli;
It hath made peace with them all.
It found American freemen in Turkish slavery, where they had languished
in chains for years;
It hath ransomed them and set them free.
It found the war-worn, invalid soldier starving from want; or, like
Belisarius, begging his refuse-meat from door to door;
It hath left ample provision for the regular payment of his pension.
It found the commerce of our country confined almost to coasting craft;
It hath left it whitening every sea with its canvas, and cheering every
clime with its stars.
It found our mechanics and manufacturers idle in the streets for want of
employ;
It hath left them full of business, prosperous, contented, and happy.
It found the yeomanry of the country oppressed with unequal taxes; their
farms, houses, and barns decaying; their cattle selling at the
sign-posts; and they driven to desperation and rebellion;
It hath left their coffers in cash, their houses in repair, their barns
full, their farms overstocked, and their produce commanding ready
money and a high price.
In short, it found them poor, indigent malcontents;
It hath left them wealthy friends to order and good government.
It found the United States deeply in debt to France and Holland;
It hath paid all the demands of the former, and the principal part of
the latter.
It found the country in a ruinous alliance with France;
It hath honorably dissolved the connection, and set us free.
It found the United States without a swivel on float for their defense;
It hath left a Navy--composed of 34 ships of war, mounting 918 guns,
and manned by 7350 gallant tars.
It found the exports of our country a mere song in value;
It hath left them worth above seventy millions of dollars per annum.
In one word, it found America disunited, poor, insolvent, weak,
discontented, and wretched;
It hath left her united, wealthy, respectable, strong, happy, and
prosperous.
Let the faithful historian, in after-times, say these things of its
successor, if he can.
And yet, notwithstanding all these services and blessings, there are
found many, very many, weak, degenerate sons, who, lost to virtue,
to gratitude, and patriotism, openly exult that this Administration
is no more, and that the "Sun of Federalism is set forever."
"_Oh shame, where is thy blush?_"
AS ONE TRIBUTE OF GRATITUDE IN THESE TIMES, THIS MONUMENT OF THE TALENTS
AND SERVICES OF THE DECEASED IS RAISED BY
The Centinel.
_March 4th, 1801._
[Illustration: The Gerry-Mander. (Boston, 1811.)]
The victorious Republicans, if less skillful than their adversaries in
the burlesque arts, had their own methods of parrying and returning such
assaults as this. At an earlier period in Mr. Jefferson's ascendency,
the politicians, borrowing the idea from Catholic times, employed
stuffed figures and burlesque processions in lieu of caricature. While
the people were still in warm sympathy with the French Revolution,
William Smith, a Representative in Congress from South Carolina, gave
deep offense to many of his constituents by opposing certain resolutions
offered by "Citizen Madison" expressive of that sympathy. There was no
burlesque artist then in South Carolina, but the Democrats of Charleston
contrived, notwithstanding, to caricature the offender and "his infernal
junto." A platform was erected in an open place in Charleston, upon
which was exhibited to a noisy crowd, from early in the morning until
three in the afternoon, a rare assemblage of figures: A woman
representing the Genius of Britain inviting the recreant Representatives
to share the wages of her iniquity; William Smith advancing toward her
with eager steps, his right hand stretched out to receive his portion,
in his left holding a paper upon which was written "_Six per cents_,"
and wearing upon his breast another with "L40,000 _in the Funds_;"
Benedict Arnold with his hand full of checks and bills; Fisher Ames
labeled "L400,000 _in the Funds_;" the devil and "Young Pitt" goading on
the reprobate Americans. In front of the stage was a gallows for the due
hanging and burning of these figures when the crowd were tired of gazing
upon them. Each of the characters was provided with a label exhibiting
an appropriate sentiment. The odious Smith was made to confess that his
sentence was just: "The love of gold, a foreign education, and foreign
connections damn me." "Young Pitt" owned to having let loose the
Algerines upon the Americans, and Fisher Ames confessed that from the
time when he began life as a horse-jockey his "_Ames_ had been
villainy."
It is an objection to this kind of caricature that the weather may
interfere with its proper presentation. A shower of rain obliterated
most of those labels, and left the figures themselves in a reduced and
draggled condition. But, according to the local historian, the
exhibition was continued, "to the great mirth and entertainment of the
boys, who would not quit the field until a total demolition of the
figures took place," nor "before they had taken down the breeches of the
effigy of the Representative of this State and given him repeated
castigations." In the evening the colors of Great Britain were dipped in
oil and _French_ brandy, and burned at the same fire which had consumed
the effigies.
Later in the Jeffersonian period, the burlesque procession--_caricature
vivante_--was occasionally employed by the New England Federalists to
excite popular disapproval of the embargo which suspended foreign
commerce. Elderly gentlemen in Newburyport remember hearing their
fathers describe the battered old hulk of a vessel, with rotten rigging
and tattered sails, manned by ragged and cadaverous sailors, that was
drawn in such a procession in 1808, the year of the Presidential
election. There are even a few old people who remember seeing the
procession, for in those healthy old coast towns the generations are
linked together, and the whole history of New England is sometimes
represented in the group round the post-office of a fine summer morning.
The odd-looking picture of the Gerry-mander, on the previous page,
belongs to the same period, and preserves a record not creditable to
party politicians. Democratic leaders in Massachusetts, in order to
secure the election of two Senators of their party, redistricted the
State with absurd disregard of geographical facts. The _Centinel_
exhibited the fraud by means of a colored map, which the artist, Gilbert
Stuart, by a few touches, converted into the immortal Gerry-mander.
Governor Gerry, though not the author of the scheme, nor an approver of
it, justly shares the discredit of a measure which he might have vetoed,
but did not.
The war of 1812 yields its quota of caricature to the collector's
port-folio. "John Bull making a New Batch of Ships to send to the Lakes"
is an obvious imitation of Gillray's masterpiece of Bonaparte baking a
new batch of kings. The contribution levied upon Alexandria, and the
retreat of a party of English troops from Baltimore, furnish subjects to
a draughtsman who had more patriotic feeling than artistic invention.
His "John Bull" is a stout man, with a bull's head and a long sword, who
utters pompous words. "I must have all your flour, all your tobacco, all
your ships, all your merchandise--every thing except your _Porter_ and
_Perry_. Keep them out of sight; I have had enough of _them_ already."
No doubt this was comforting to the patriotic mind while it was
lamenting a Capitol burned and a President in flight.