Description

This etching is a political cartoon by Adalbert Volck, a Southern sympathizer living in Baltimore, Maryland, during the United States Civil War. This cartoon, one of the Confederate War Etchings series, depicts President Abraham Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation from a Confederate point of view. Volck drew Lincoln with his foot resting on a bound copy of the United States Constitution while writing on a table with Negro heads with rams horns and cloven feet on the table legs. Satan is holding the inkwell on the table. The chair in which Lincoln sits has the head of an ass as the chair back. Several other items shown on the wall and behind Lincoln express the Southern viewpoint concerning the war and emancipation. The number 25 appears faintly above the top left corner of the image. Original etching one of thirty published in Volck's "Confederate War Etchings." Part of the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection, courtesy of the Indiana State Museum