Political Cartoon Is an Illustration

¶ … political cartoon is an illustration with text or message. There are two components of political cartoons: caricature and allusion. The caricature is a representation of a person with an overstated comic outcome. The allusion is a reference text wherein it is putted in the caricature. Tom Nast was one of the known caricaturists during the Civil War; he was the artist of Lincoln who drew most of his political cartoons especially during debates and some of his platforms and agendas.

Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States from the year 1861 until the end of his term 1865. Before Lincoln became a president, he quitted in politics but then he re-appeared when he strongly disagreed with the policy of slavery headed by Stephen A. Douglas, this policy was known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Soon, because of his sentiments he joined the Republican Party. When Douglas run for senatorial candidate, the Republican Party voted for Abraham Lincoln as the opponent of Douglas. During that election, Lincoln challenged Douglas for a debate regarding slavery, which he has strongly against it because he believed in democracy and human rights. In no time, Lincoln gained the support of the majority because of his influential speech in New York City. And in no time, he became the President of the United States. Based on the online source, http://www.cyberlearning-world.com/nhhs/html/greeley3.htm:

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln had just one goal. This idea was to preserve the Union rather than concentrate on the issue of slavery. Lincoln was prepared to take any actions to save the Union regardless of the slaves being held and laboring in the South.

A political cartoon from Lincoln's era portrays Abraham Lincoln attempting to fix a cracked wall, one half North, and the other half, South. Lincoln is trying to attach the two pieces of the wall with Union Glue. The space between the wall was quite large, representing the differences between the North and South. Lincoln could obviously not fix this situation with the Union glue, or by himself, meaning that everyone had to come together to end the war and preserve the United States.

Abraham Lincoln became a president with the aid of political cartoon ads. Lincoln used his wit to attract attention and to point out his ideas. Every time he made speeches, he see to it that people will continuously listen to him through cracking jokes with meanings that people cannot forget. And every time he cracks a joke, it was being put in campaign materials such as cartoon.

The timing of presidential campaign was bad because the political situation was terrible and civil war was about to end. There were a lot of issues to be talked about; they were in the middle of their crisis. People from all walks of life were concerned with the coming election but then because of other arising issues, they do not know whom to vote. Therefore, Lincoln came up with an idea to become unique in campaigning, he thought of a way on how he will get noticed aside from his convincing power through debates. Only a few can see and hear everything that he had said, only a few citizen attends the debate and usually only selected citizens were invited to listen to him. So he thought of political cartoon where he can post his political platform and political agenda. He knew that through this cartoons every American citizen will have a knowledge of who he is, what he wants, and his plans for the country of United States. Even those people in the different states will know who this person is. And another reason is that since the United States is so big, he cannot go to every state in just a short period of time so if he do the cartoon ads, people all over the country will get a grasp of him. Based on Smith, A. (2004):

The language of political pamphlets and cartoons has always been the raw material with which historians have examined structures of ideas and their relationship to politics. "In 1864," writes David Long, the issue of slavery "was before the voters and they overwhelmingly rejected the institution." Although, in retrospect, that appears to be self-evidently true -- Lincoln was after all running on a platform that committed him to the support of what would become the thirteenth amendment -- the evidence of the campaign literature complicates the picture considerably. The chairman of the Union party national committee, Henry J. Raymond, feared that "we have not a ghost of a chance in November" because of the "suspicion ... that ... [Lincoln] does not seek peace, that he is fighting not for the Union but for the abolition of slavery." This perception guided those in charge of the election campaign who sought to distance the president from the emancipation policy. Campaign texts rarely mentioned slavery. Instead, the focus was relentlessly negative.