Lincoln Pilloried in the Press

Lincoln was country through and through as we will note in other blog postings, and that fact could no more be denied than a trumpet player can make a mistake that won’t be heard. Indeed, that image of the country bumpkin led to Lincoln being pilloried repeatedly in the press.

Perhaps the most searing journalistic indictment came in the form of a cartoon late in the Civil War showing two figures. One was a long-limbed disheveled figure – think Woody Woodpecker - looking confused and completely out of his depth and ig-nor-rant meant to represent Lincoln; the other a bottomless-sad but angry woman meant to represent the United States. The woman figure says, “Where are my 500,000 sons?” and the Lincoln figure, ever the jokester, says,  “I, ah, why, that reminds me of a story.”