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, is the most elaborate etching in the series. It shows the public men of the North worshipping, as an idol, a negro on the Chicago platform, the corner of which is a carved head of President Abraham Lincoln. A white man is offered as a sacrifice to the idol. Henry Ward Beecher holds the bloody sacrificial knife just to the left of the platform. Charles Sumner holds a torch. Horace Greeley swings a censer which emits snakes. Several Union generals, Governor Andrew, Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Secretary of War Stanton, and others appear as worshippers. The number 1 appears 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