"Columbia's Noblest Sons": Washington and Lincoln in Popular Prints

"Columbia's Noblest Sons": Washington and Lincoln in Popular PrintsAuthor(s): Harold HolzerSource: Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter, 1994), pp. 23-69Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20148903 .

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"Columbia's Noblest Sons":

Washington and Lincoln in Popular Prints

HAROLD H?LZER

"I venture to claim for Abraham Lincoln the place next to George

Washington." So wrote George S. Boutwell, the Civil War congress man from Massachusetts who went on to serve under Ulysses S.

Grant as secretary of the treasury. "Between Washington and Lin

coln," he suggested in reminiscences published in the late 1880s, "there were two full generations of men, but of them all, I see not

one who can be compared with either."1

By the time Boutwell expressed those views, few Americans could see anything to dispute his judgment. Inventive, suggestive, and

ubiquitous popular prints of the first and sixteenth presidents?

showing Washington at first inspiring Lincoln and ultimately sharing with him a unique pantheon of American glory?had by then stamped the message of their almost mystical association indelibly onto the

popular consciousness. In the revealing words of the captions to two

such prints, joint portraits of "Columbia's Noblest Sons" (as they were called in the graphic arts) became nothing less than our "Na

tional Picture."

But the evolution of these interconnected images did not spring

overnight from the universal mourning that greeted? Lincoln's as

sassination in 1865. Although eulogists then gave full expression to

the growing belief that the martyred Civil War leader had in death

gained a stature equal to that of the father of his country, pictorial evidence of the origins of the genre could be found as early as the

1860 election. There had been prophetic echoes, too, in Lincoln's own words, almost from the beginning of his political career?

cautiously at first, then with increasing conviction, signaling a belief

that by aspiring to Washington's "spotless" record, as he described

1. Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Review, 1888), 107, 616-17.

Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1994 ? 1994 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois



24 "Columbia's Noblest Sons"

it, he might in time aspire to be his historical heir. Pictures would

eventually vivify Lincoln's aspirations.

Getting right with the nation's founders was a staple of both

political rhetoric and political pictures in mid-nineteenth-century America; in fact, that aspiration had been evident early and re

peatedly enough to inspire John Adams to term it "one of the

national sins of our country. . . [the] idolatrous worship paid to the

name of George Washington by all classes and nearly all parties." Lincoln was not immune to the temptation. In his Lyceum and

Temperance addresses in Springfield, for example, he piously in

voked the first president's name, suggesting in the latter that "to

add brightness to the sun or glory to Washington, is alike impossible." But when the Kansas-Nebraska Act "aroused" Lincoln back into

the national arena after his long political hiatus, he returned with

a new sense that Washington's example did not exist merely to be

admired, but to be emulated?and when necessary, used?to ad

vantage. Debating Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, he would equate his opposition to popular sovereignty with a desire to place the

institution "where Washington . . .

placed it." At Cooper Union two

years later he repeated the same message.2 With such rhetoric on record?the Cooper Union address was

printed in newspapers and circulated in at least three pamphlet versions?it would have been natural for American printmakers to

begin visually echoing these associations once Lincoln catapulted to

national prominence in 1860. Although his nomination for president

triggered a huge public demand for his portraits, few artists im

mediately responded with Lincoln-Washington images. Only a

handful surfaced in I860.3

Lincoln's initial "appearance" with Washington came only a few

months after the convention, in the Chicago publisher Edward Men

del's crude lithograph of an 1859 photograph by Samuel Fassett of

that city. Mendel's work was quickly advertised as the "most accurate

Portrait yet published," applauded by Lincoln himself, whose letter

of praise was reprinted in full. Mendel had shrewdly sent Lincoln

2. Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol (New York: Free Press, 1987), 194; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basier,

with Marion D. Pratt and Lloyd A. Dunlap, asst. eds., 9 vols. (New Brunswick:

Rutgers University Press, 1953-55), 1:115, 279, 333, 439; 3:18-19, 527 (hereafter cited as Collected Works).

3. Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill,

1982), 73; Harold H?lzer, "Lincoln and Washington: The Printmakers Blessed Their

Union," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 5 (July 1977): 204-10.



Harold Holzer 25

a copy of the portrait, and Lincoln acknowledged it as a "truthful

Lithograph Portrait of myself"?the word truthful underlined. To

Lincoln, there may have been sufficient "truthfulness" in the flat

tering inclusion of the Washington bust to excuse all the picture's obvious artistic shortcomings.4

So far as we know, Lincoln's letter to Mendel was advertised only once, otherwise it might well have inspired rival printmakers to take

up the Washington-Lincoln genre too. Only one did so, with a

mysterious, undated campaign-era lithograph that featured Wash

ington on one side (Figure 1) and Lincoln on the other (Figure 2). Its unusual format meant that it could not be displayed without

necessarily hiding one or the other subject, suggesting that this print

may have been designed to be waved at parades and rallies, held

aloft on the end of a pole. The only other known contribution from

this period, also designed for outdoor rather than parlor display, came from the New York firm of H. H. Lloyd. Lloyd combined the

famous Gilbert Stuart Athenaeum portrait of Washington with a

Mathew Brady photograph, taken at the time Lincoln was invoking

Washington at Cooper Union, for an elaborate Lincoln-Hamlin cam

paign poster titled "The National Republican Chart"; the poster

suggested that Washington was somehow blessing both the Lincoln

Hamlin ticket and the Republican platform. This was no image

making watershed, however; the Lloyd firm used precisely the same

Washington portrait for a "National Political Chart," which gave more prominence to John Bell and Stephen A. Douglas than to

Lincoln. Only after the election did Lloyd issue a "New Political

Chart," with Lincoln standing alone, dwarfing even the emblematic

image of Washington. It was a sure sign of things to come.5

Lincoln did much to speed his own transfiguration. Once elected, he pointedly and regularly invoked the Washington name, reassuring the South, for example, that it "would be in no more danger [from

me] . . . than it was in the days of Washington." Even so, it required a major leap of faith, perhaps taste as well, to compare oneself to

4. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln: Supplement (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974), 55; Harold Holzer, "The Imagemakers: Portraits of Lincoln

in the 1860 Campaign," Chicago History 7 (Winter 1978-79): 201-6.

5. Tazewell Republican [P?kin, 111.], July 13, 1860; Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt,

and Mark E. Neely, Jr., Changing the Lincoln Image (Fort Wayne: Louis A. Warren

Lincoln Library and Museum, 1985), 34-40. Grace Bedell, the little girl who thought Lincoln's face looked so "thin" that he should grow whiskers, was inspired to make

the suggestion after seeing Lloyd's National Republican Chart on display at a local

fair; see Collected Works, 4:130.



26 'Columbia's Noblest Sons

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1. George Washington, lithographer unknown. (Courtesy of the author)



Harold Holzer 27

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2. Abraham Lincoln, lithographer unknown. (Courtesy of the author)




(much less to suggest that one faced greater challenges than) the

very founder of the nation?"the eagle, the standard, the flag," in

the words of one Washington contemporary, "the living symbol of

the Republic." Yet departing Springfield for his inauguration a few

weeks later, Lincoln told his neighbors?in words he surely knew

would be printed in newspapers throughout the nation?that he

had before him "a task greater than that which faced Washington." He ended by asking the guidance of "that Divine Being, who ever

attended him [emphasis added]," suggesting that he shared with

Washington not only a political legacy but also a special relationship with God.6

In city after city, as his train steamed eastward toward the capital that bore Washington's name, the president-elect called forth the

comforting specter of the American St. George. In Cincinnati, he

promised the South, "We mean to treat you... as Washing ton . . . treated you." And in Trenton, the day before Washington's

birthday, he discoursed nostalgically about the influence exerted on

him as a child by Weems's Life of Washington, admitting that he was

"exceedingly anxious that that thing which they struggled for. . . shall

be perpetuated." To allow the Union to disintegrate, he added once

in the White House, would violate the very legacy he had inherited.

There was neither "manhood nor honor in that," he protested, add

ing: "There is no Washington

in that." The extraordinary message

was clear: Lincoln was not only Washington's political successor, but

his spiritual heir as well.7

Once again, however, the printmakers' response to the rekindled

imagery of words proved sluggish and uninspired. Of course, public demand for Lincoln pictures had been sated by then by the plethora of campaign portraits still in circulation. As a result, only one early

wartime print took note of Lincoln's renewed Washington empha sis?and even that effort was attributable chiefly to convenience

and coincidence. A bust of Washington had been the centerpiece of

an outdated 1852 engraving depicting the leaders of antebellum

America gathered before the emblematic symbol of the first president

(Figure 3). To update "Union"?whose title seemed now particularly

appropriate even if its cast of characters no longer was?a print maker had simply dusted off the old plate, burnished out the face

of its central figure John C. Calhoun, and superimposed that of

Lincoln (Figure 4).

6. Collected Works, 4:160, 190; Schwartz, George Washington, 17.

7. Collected Works, 4:199, 236.



Harold Holzer 29

It did not seem to much matter that the resulting composite was

an anachronism; Lincoln was shown inexplicably posing alongside men who were long dead, including Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

Only a few concessions to the sea change in American politics in

the intervening decade were attempted: Robert Anderson, hero of

Fort Sumter, was inserted where former president James Buchanan

had stood in the original; General John Wool was put in place of

defeated presidential aspirant John Bell; and three Southerners, W P. Mangum of North Carolina, William R. King of Alabama, and

Howell Cobb of Georgia, were replaced, respectively, by Secretary of State William H. Seward, General Benjamin F. Butler, and the

orator Edward Everett.8

When this version, too, became outdated because Lincoln grew a

beard, yet another state of the engraving appeared. The Lincoln of

Cooper Union was "updated" through the addition of hastily drawn

whiskers, but with the implausible 1852 figures still dominating the

scene. It is difficult to imagine what Lincoln-era audiences made of

this perplexing assemblage, but surely if they purchased the print for their homes it was because Lincoln was all but wrapped around

the inspiring, nation-affirming symbol of his predecessor. And the

fact that the Lincoln updating went through two separate printings indicates its considerable appeal. Further proof can be found in

publisher William Pate's catalog of titles for 1861, in which "Union"

was prominently listed at $1 wholesale, just below four different

portraits of George Washington.9 Washington was still the predom inant American symbol, occupying

a place,

as "Union" proved, even

in those prints that did not portray him directly. But Abraham Lincoln was beginning to catch up.

For a time, Washington's resonating presence remained a staple of early Civil War iconography. It was much in evidence in early group portraits of all sixteen presidents, prints that suggested the

continuity of both the Union and the institution of the presidency in the face of secession and rebellion. Many examples, including one 1861 chromolithograph, were so hastily rushed to the market

place that their Lincolns were still clean-shaven, even though the

future president had begun sporting whiskers nearly four months

8. Harold Holzer, Gabor S. Boritt, and Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (New York: Scribner's, 1984), 8-9; Milton

Kaplan, "Heads of State," Winterthur Portfolio 6 (1970): 140-41.

9. Catalogue of Elegant National and Patriotic Steel Engravings Published by William

Pate... (N.p., ca. 1861).



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3. W. Pate's original "Union." (Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)

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before his inauguration. But it was Washington who remained the

focus, slightly larger than his successors. One typical example, the

1861 lithograph titled "Peace," produced by Middleton, Strobridge & Company, did not even grant Lincoln the respect his new office

demanded: It referred to him colloquially as "Abe. Lincoln" and all

but submerged him not only to Washington but also to symbolic scenes that represented commerce and the compatibility of slave

and free labor.

Yet another sign of Washington's uninterrupted dominance of na

tional iconography could be seen in "Family Record of American

Allegiance," an 1861 novelty item designed to accommodate private oaths of "true and faithful allegiance" to the Union (Figure 5). While

Lincoln's portrait crowned the cluster of celebrities that included

Anderson, Butler, George B. McClellan, and Winfield Scott, Wash

ington's overarching likeness loomed largest, as did the text of his

"Sentiment" reprinted on a nearby scroll. In fact, as much space was devoted to Washington's vision of "an indissoluble Union of

the States" as to the sentiments of Lincoln, Douglas, John Hancock, and Thomas Jefferson combined.

As the quotations suggest, Union and the Constitution had emerged as the common threads that bound Lincoln and Washington, helping to forge the permanent cultural affiliation that was to achieve its

greatest visual form once the Union was saved and Lincoln martyred.

But for all his earlier efforts to instill such mystic chords of memory, even to applaud the first effort to portray it, Lincoln himself ceased

calling up the ghost after Washington's Birthday in 1862, the same

year Johnson & Fry of New York issued an engraving of him gazing at a bust of Washington while clutching the Constitution and tram

pling on a document labeled "articles of secession." As for Lincoln

himself, he never publicly mentioned Washington again. By the

following year, he no longer had to do so. In the historian James M. McPherson's words, Lincoln had supplanted the first American

Revolution with a second American revolution, and its chief symbol would be himself.10

Once Lincoln changed the purpose of the Civil War from pre

serving the Union (which Washington helped forge) to eradicting the institution of slavery (which the Founders had tolerated), Wash

ington became for Lincoln?if not his image-makers?an inexpe dient and outdated symbol. But evoking comparisons between the

10. Collected Works, 5:136; James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second

American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 3-22.



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Allegiance," 1861. (Courtesy of

the Lincoln Museum)

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34 'Columbia's Noblest Sons"

two presidents remained, for graphic artists, irresistible, and for their

audiences, inescapable. Henry Ward Beecher, for one, claimed to see

early in the war that Lincoln had been "ordained" to purge the

Union "of a worse oppression" than that which confronted the

Founders. "Joined together one and inseparable," he predicted with

uncanny foresight, "we shall hereafter hear on jubilees the shouts

'Washington and Lincoln!?the Fathers.' "

Americans would not only hear such jubilees but see their pictorial equivalents as well.11

From the beginning, it helped that portraitists had been affixing

noticeably Washingtonian embellishments into the fabric of Lincoln's

image. For example, early scenes showing Lincoln mauling rails

affirmed not only his rise from poverty but also reminded voters

that the man who could so effortlessly chop wood was a worthy successor to a man who, according to legend, had hurled a coin

across a river. Myth also held that Washington could never tell a

lie, and "Honest Abe's" integrity would be vivified in many prints,

including one depicting the Greek philosopher Diogenes discarding his fabled lantern after finding at last in Lincoln the long-sought honest man.

Of course, there were image differences too, but they were point

edly ignored by America's graphic artists after Harper's Weekly charged

pictorially only two days before Lincoln's inauguration that the pres ident-elect believed?along with Se ward, Beecher, Horace Greeley, and even John Brown?that no communion was possible with slave

holders, even a slaveholder such as Washington (Figure 6). There

were other differences as well. As one period observer noted, Wash

ington "belonged to the Colonial aristocracy," whereas Lincoln was

"made of . . . homely stuff ... a man of the people." But even

prints

that shrunk the size of Mount Vernon failed to disguise Washington's wealth and social status. On the other hand, prints of Lincoln's far

humbler house in Springfield were unable to transform "the simple home of an American statesman" (as one journalist described it) into a hearthstone magnificent enough to have bred a successor to

Washington. Perhaps that explains why one printmaker decided in

1865?to use the words of today's image-making spin doctors?to

"level the playing field" by updating an old image of Henry Clay's

huge Kentucky estate, Ashland, simply retitling it "The Home of

Our Martyred President" (Figure 7). However clumsily, the publisher was in a way confirming one Lincoln eulogist's phophesy that, dif

11. New York Times, Nov. 27, 1863.



NO COMMUNION WITH SLATEHOLI>EKS. 6. "No Communion with

Slaveholders,"

from Harper's Weekly, March 2, 1861. (Courtesy of

the Library

of Congress)

? ? CJ1



7. An unknown printmaker issued this print of Henry Clay's mansion "Ashland" as "The Home of Our Martyred President." (Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)

g S* S' ? o st



Harold Holzer 37

ferences notwithstanding, "Mount Vernon and Springfield will

henceforth be kindred shrines."12

Additional disparities were ignored or overlooked. Washington, for example, was the quintessential military hero, and Lincoln very

much the civilian. Somehow, one cannot imagine Lincoln in Union

blue, although in one scene a printmaker did suggest how he might look conferring with his commanders on the battlefield.

And as Harper's Weekly had made clear, Lincoln's relationship with

black Americans was far different from Washington's, yet print makers never made an issue of the first president's sole personal blemish. Only the most sophisticated period audiences would notice

that although several prints showed grateful liberated slaves kneeling to Lincoln, blacks seen in prints kneeling to Washington were so

posed because they were his property (Figure 8). Washington owned

slaves, whereas Lincoln freed slaves, but this huge disparity was

never illustrated in prints that portrayed the two together. Wash

ington was, even in life, a figure literally placed on a pedestal by the image-makers, a status Lincoln would attain only after his death.

But all the dissimilarities between them, even if audiences ever

wholly contemplated or comprehended them, were quickly forgotten when Lincoln became the final casualty of the war to save Wash

ington's Union. Overnight, Lincoln was elevated into the realm of

martyrdom, a metamorphosis immediately visible in a rush of death bed prints that bore an eerie resemblance to those that had depicted the comparatively peaceful but equally lamented death of Wash

ington.

Then, on the Sunday after Lincoln's murder, eulogists ascended

pulpits throughout the North to compare Lincoln to Jesus, Moses, and, significantly, to an American god as well. Henry Ward Beecher

immediately predicted that Lincoln's "simple and weighty words will be gathered like those of Washington." So would his portraits. Another eulogist would even take note of the fact that a Lincoln

picture had been hung directly below Washington's for the occasion of his oration. He shared with his audience his belief that in the

"coming days their portraits shall hang side by side." Within weeks, that prophesy would be fulfilled.13

12. Schwartz, George Washington, 197; Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, March

9, 1861.

13. R. M. Whiting, ed., Our Martyred President: Lincoln Memorial Addresses (New York: Abingdon Press, 1915), 22; Schwartz, George Washington, 154. For the best

discussion of ubiquitous Washington memorial prints, see Wendy Wick, George Wash

ington: An American Icon?The Eighteenth Century Graphic Portraits (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982).



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8. Unknown printmaker's depiction of Washington with Mount Vernon slaves. (Courtesy of

the Library

of Congress)

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Harold Holzer 39

Surely it was not lost subsequently on ordinary Americans, even

those who bore witness to Lincoln's funerals only through the me

dium of popular prints, that no such catharsis had gripped the

country since the funeral of Washington had proved the first uni

versal exception to America's deeply rooted fear of hero-worship and "excessive mourning."14

Eulogists and journalists continued hammering away at the trag

edy. Only a few weeks after Lincoln was laid to rest, Charles Sumner

shared with a Boston audience his view that "the work left undone

by Washington was continued by Lincoln." And Wendell Phillips was soon predicting that "history will add. . .

[Lincoln's] name to

the bright list" of American heroes led by Washington, "that galaxy of Americans which makes our history the day star of the nations."

Printmakers may well have been inspired to visualize and market

such declarations.15

Some historians have likened the impassioned political culture of

the nineteenth century to a civil religion. In this atmosphere?quite

literally, and with astonishing speed for the period?printmakers created in popular art an exclusively American heavenly pantheon, a nondenominational civil afterworld only vaguely religious in na

ture. Within it was visualized Lincoln's apotheosis for the consolation

and patronage of his bereaved admirers. Maudlin as they may seem

today, such prints offered in their time reassuring visions of the

exaltation that Phillips had described, where it was possible to imag ine Lincoln being welcomed into immortality by Washington himself

(Figure 9). In these graphics, Washington served as the official gatekeeper of

the historical afterworld, offering a laurel wreath and extending his arms to welcome an awkwardly posed Lincoln, whom angels es

corted skyward. One such print appeared in editions large enough for parlor display and small enough for insertion into family pho tograph albums. A sure sign of its popularity was its ability to inspire

piracies, like one hastily sketched by an Ohio artist and later pub lished as a lithograph. "Heroes and Saints with fadeless stars have

crowned him," declared a Lincoln dirge that might easily have been

inspired by such a print, "and Washington's dear arms are clasped

14. Schwartz, George Washington, 99.

15. Charles Sumner, The Promises of the Declaration of Independence: Eulogy on

Abraham Lincoln (Boston: J. E. Farwell, 1865), 6; Waldo W. Braden, Building the Myth: Selected Speeches Memorializing Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,

1990), 1-2.




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9. J. A. Arthur's version of S. J. F?rris's "Washington & Lincoln

(Apotheosis)."



Harold Holzer 41

around him."16 One variation on the theme added an angel offering a palm of victory and a laurel wreath symbolizing triumph and

eternity (Figure 10). And a Philadelphia-made example, scarcely better in artistic realization, could nevertheless boast of capturing the spirit of the apotheosis in its caption: Here were "The Founder

and the Preserver of the Union," their celestial meeting verifying that the government "brought forth" by Washington had endured

under Lincoln (Figure 11). Even in those apotheosis scenes in which he did not act as heav

enly greeter, Washington was a visible figure testifying not only to

Lincoln's resurrection but also to a new theme emerging in prints, however anomalous, to unite them: freedom. In one example, the

figure of Liberty herself crowns her newest martyr, but while leaning

heavily upon a bust of Washington (Figure 12). The allegorical figure carries a capped liberty pole, the symbol of the manumission of

slaves, and at her feet are broken shackles representing emancipation

together with the Proclamation itself. Here was fresh visual evidence

that publishers had found a means of bridging the gulf that separated the two presidents on slavery. Prints could sidestep the issue and

still emphasize the theme of liberty by suggesting that, after all, the

Emancipation was a second Declaration of Independence for those

left out of the first.

In "Reward of the Just," Lincoln simply replaced Washington in

a resurrection scene (Figure 13). That curiosity piece invited viewers

to compare Lincoln with Jesus rising from the grave. In fact, its

design owed its creative debt to Washington. The clues to its origins were ample, if obscure: a shield featuring far too few stars for the

1860s; a Roman warrior's fasces, an incongruous emblem of power; an American Indian inexplicably prostate with grief; and even the

badge of the Society of the Cincinnatus draped from the open ca

tafalque?hardly Lincolnesque symbolism. The explanation was simple, if invisible: the 1865 print was copied

directly from a sixty-year-old original that had depicted the apoth eosis of Washington (Figure 14). All Philadelphia lithographer D. T.

Weist bothered to do in pirating the design was to copy the Mathew

Brady studio's 1864 "five-dollar bill" photograph of Lincoln, change the name etched onto the sarcophogaus, and superimpose the face

of Lincoln where Washington's had rested in the original, leaving other crucial but irrelevant details unaltered. The result was con

fusing, but sorting out its origins provided the surest sign yet that

16. Schwartz, George Washington, 196.




10. J. Sartain after Hermans, "Abraham Lincoln, The Martyr Victorious.'



Harold Holzer 43

P 4T1

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11. Thurston, Herline & Co., "The Founder and the Preserver of the Union

(Apotheosis)." (Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)




12. Frank Neil, "Liberty Crowning Her Martyr." (Courtesy of the Lincoln

Museum)



Harold Holzer 45

13. D. T. Weist, "In Memory of Abraham Lincoln, the Reward of the Just."

(Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)



46 "Columbia's Noblest Sons

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14. Barralet, "Apotheosis of Washington." (Courtesy of the author)



Harold Holzer 47

Lincoln was literally as well as symbolically beginning to replace

Washington as a cultural icon.

Of course, the unbridgeable generation gap dividing the first and

sixteenth presidents dictated that Washington's most appropriate

place in postassassination Lincoln prints was as inspirational idol, the role assigned him in the old Mendel campaign print. Few print

makers were bound by such conventions. And in the postassassi nation competition to market Lincoln images, some took astonishing liberties. One such print originated as an Andrew Jackson portrait.

When demand outpaced creative capacity, the head of Lincoln re

placed the original, thus creating a novel if somewhat unconvincing "new" likeness in which not only was Jackson obliterated but a

large statuette of George Washington, placed for inspirational em

phasis at Lincoln's side, actually blocked out the sight of the U.S.

Capitol as if to emphasize the unprecedented dominance of the

executive branch under Lincoln (Figure 15). The only feature that

remained wholly unchanged, except for the pose, was the label on

the document each president held in his hand. For both, appropri

ately, it read "The Union Must and Shall be Preserved."

Such decorative images-within-images appeared with particular

frequency in a genre that had been all but invented for Washington? scenes of the president with his family, which gave audiences the

assurance, however ill-founded, that great public men enjoy con

soling private lives even while grappling with crises of state. Edward

Savage and David Edwin's watershed engraving of the Washington family circle had proved irresistible. Ralph Waldo Emerson hung such a print in his dining room and confided in his diary: "I cannot

keep my eyes off of it." So far as we know, however, Lincoln's White

House dining room contained no such decoration. Nonetheless, when

Lincoln family prints began flooding the market in 1865, many featured within them emblematic pictures of Washington looming

reassuringly (Figure 16), sometimes almost threateningly (Figure 17), over Lincoln's family circle. Occasionally, they even dominated the

scene, as in D. T. Weist's family lithograph, in the form of an absurdly

large statue placed in such close proximity to Lincoln that in real

life a slight movement of his elbow would have sent it toppling off

its pedestal.17

By comparison, William Sartain's elegant mezzotint of Lincoln

together with his wife and children suggestively placed a Washington

17. Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes, eds., Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 10 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1909-14), 8:300.



48 'Columbia's Noblest Sons'

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15. This print by J. C. Buttre featured Lincoln's head on the body of Andrew Jackson. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)



Harold Holzer 49

bust near a portrait of the Lincolns' dead son Willie, an additional

suggestion that these families were somehow linked (Figure 18). Sartain further reflected the strong affection for Lincoln-Washington connections by issuing the mezzotint simultaneously with a new

print of the first first family. "Citizens will do well to secure these gems of art," the Schenectady

Gazette advised in a review praising both pictures as "the most

tasteful, appropriate and pleasing ornaments which can embellish an American parlor." Customers could not even purchase one with

out the other; the catalog offered them only as a pair, at prices

ranging from $7.25 to $20. Again, patrons were paying for reas

surance and comfort. When such Lincoln prints featured a Wash

ington icon in the near background, viewers might even infer that

Washington was practically a Lincoln ancestor?his hoary image

gracing the family parlor like an old portait of a grandfather.18 Within a generation, Lincoln would also graduate into the symbolic

category that Washington had held in the Lincoln family prints of

the 1860s: that of a parlor icon. For when James A. Garfield, too, was assassinated, the only known group portrait of his family would

show its members gathered beneath portraits of both Washington and Lincoln. Both had become what only Washington had been

before: household gods. However appealing, these family prints constituted the sole re

maining genre that limited the full equalization of the Washington and Lincoln images. In domestic Lincoln settings that included spouse and offspring, Washington could never logically be more than a

decoration. But in other designs, artists could find ways to bridge the gulf in time that separated the statesmen in order to present them, just as most Americans seemed prepared now to remember

them, literally side by side.

Lincoln achieved parity with Washington in prints like "Cham

pions of Freedom," which gave full flower to the liberty theme by

featuring evocative highlights from each leader's career (Figure 19). The message was emphasized in the words beneath each portrait. "Under this flag he led us to Independence," the Washington caption declared. "Under this flag he led us to Freedom," it said for Lincoln.

In the same vein, E. J. Post's print "The Father/The Preserver of

Our Country" presented for each an aptly chosen quote from his

final great address. "Avoid all sectional jealousies," read the haunting

18. "Lincoln and His Family..." (advertising brochure) (Rochester, N.Y.: R. H.

Curran, N.d.).



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16. Herline & Hensel, "Abraham Lincoln & His Family."

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17. Lyon & Co., "President Lincoln and Family Circle." (Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)

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18. W. Sartain, "Lincoln and His Family."

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19. Saul Levin (after Duval), "Champions of Freedom." (Courtesy of the author)

3 en




admonition from Washington's farewell speech; and "With malice

toward none, with charity for all," the ringing words from Lincoln's

second inaugural, offering pardon to those who had failed to heed

Washington's warning.

"They still live in our hearts," proclaimed "The Martyr and the

Father" (Figure 20), a print whose appeal could be confirmed in the

copy painstakingly created by an anonymous sailor in scrimshaw,

probably after taking the original print with him to sea. What the

historian Marcus Cunliffe called the doubled images of Washington and Lincoln were quickly evolving into folk art and folklore alike, but of a uniquely reverential kind. For when New York printmakers Kimmel & Forster adapted their lithography of Generals Grant and

Sherman as "The Preservers of Our Union," they made few changes for their Washington-Lincoln version, entitled "Columbia's Noblest

Sons" (Figure 21); they did, however, add a drape to the formerly bare-breasted Columbia.19

In several of the "twin" pictures, Lincoln and Washington were

completely, if unrealistically, liberated from the confinement of ad

joining cameo designs; they were placed side by side, looking almost

like contemporaries save for the different styles of hair and costume.

Placing them before a flame of liberty in one such print subtitled

"The Father and the Saviour of Our Country," Currier & Ives granted to Washington undeserved superiority of height as well as the ex

pected dominance of gesture, but otherwise suggested parity by

having the men actually shake hands in the most earthly of all

gestures of greeting (Figure 22). Rival printmaker J. C. McCurdy's

interpretation, under the same title, did make the figure of Lincoln

taller (Figure 23), a final concession that presented them once and

for all as equals before the eyes of the graphic artists and their

audiences. One scholar has suggested that such prints helped re

establish the continuum of the institution of the presidency, inter

rupted so violently by the Civil War. But in reality, the prints instead

provided the strongest evidence yet that George Washington and

Abraham Lincoln had emerged from the crisis as peerless, unique

symbols of a country made and remade in the crucible of war. Just as George Boutwell would later attest, no other presidents were

worthy of being portrayed in their considerable shadow.20

19. Marcus Cunliffe, The Doubled Images of Lincoln and Washington (Gettysburg:

Gettysburg College, 1988), 27.

20. Noble E. Cunningham, Jr., Popular Images of the Presidency: From Washington to Lincoln (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991), 128.



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20. "The Martyr and the Father: They

Still Live in Our Hearts" by an unknown printmaker.

(Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)

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21. Kimmel & Forster, "Columbia's Noblest Sons." (Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)

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Harold Holzer 57

Several of the more bizarre pairings confirmed the trend even as

they confused the issue. One prewar print of Henry Clay had already been transformed during the 1860 presidential campaign into an

almost dainty full-length portrait of Lincoln by grafting the old

Cooper Union photograph onto Clay's body, later adding a beard, to transform it into a memorial portrait. Next, a clever printmaker simply copied and inserted a full-length Lansdowne-type Washing ton portrait to forge an awkward composite. Similarly, a prewar John

C. Calhoun print was adpated into a postwar Lincoln by placing the Brady five-dollar-bill head where Calhoun's had appeared in the original. The result was a Lincoln in majestic robes, which if

decidedly unlike the original at least made the inevitable grafting with the Lansdowne Washington far more natural-looking. "The

Father, and the Saviour of Our Country" may be the quintessential

pairing: the defender and preserver of the republic as patriots and

patriarchs (Figure 24).

By the end of 1865, such prints had flooded the market. As a

result, the creative impetus for new contributions quickly faded.

Multiple copies of existing prints may have continued selling well

for years, but only one known Lincoln-Washington print bears a

copyright date later than 1865, and that one is an 1867 copy of an

image originally produced two years earlier. The novelty faded as

quickly as it began. What replaced the vogue in the years that followed echoed?

perhaps presaged?the slow but sure transposition in reputation that by the turn of the century placed Lincoln in the preeminent

position among American presidents, leaving Washington a notch below. In graphics Lincoln came to dominate Washington, too.

Early signals could be found in the variants inspired by the lith

ograph "Our Fallen Heroes," issued in 1865 to honor Lincoln and the Union military martyrs (Figure 25). With the war over and Southern markets reopened, an all-Confederate version featuring Stonewall Jackson and fellow Southern war casualties appeared in 1867. And that same year, "The Father of Our Country and the

Heroes of 1776" was copyrighted, with Washington now occupying the central place that Lincoln had held in the original conception (Figure 26). A Lincoln image had inspired a Washington image in stead of the other way around. It would not be the last time.

During Washington's undisputed dominance of American graphic arts, even Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation could inspire a print that unfairly assigned more prominence to Washington than to the

Emancipator himself. After 1865, tributes were routinely granting




22. Currier & Ives, "Washington and Lincoln, The Father and the Saviour of Our Country."



Harold Holzer 59

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23. J. C. McCurdy, "The Father and The Saviour of Our Country." (Courtesy of the author)



60 'Columbia's Noblest Sons'

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24. In order to create his version of "The Father, and the Saviour of Our

Country," James Bodtker copied a Lansdowne-type portrait of Washington and W. Pate's body of John C. Calhoun, onto which he grafted Lincoln's head.



Harold Holzer 61

Lincoln his retrospective due, like the primitive but popular callig

raphy prints, one of which used the five-dollar-bill Brady photograph to fashion a Lincoln portrait through the bold outline of the very

words of the Proclamation (Figure 27). Later, there was a near

identical design in which Washington's face emerged from the text

of the Declaration of Independence (Figure 28). It was no coinci

dence; both prints were the work of the same man, W. H. Pratt. But

significantly, the Lincoln print had preceded the Washington to the

marketplace, even though the Declaration had preceded the Eman

cipation by four score and seven years. Similarly, two years after

Gilman R. Russell, a self-described "professor of penmanship," re

produced the words of the Emancipation as the background for a

celebratory Lincoln portrait (Figure 29), precisely the same design was used for a Washington Declaration of Independence print (Figure 30).

With a Colonial revival in full flower for the 1876 Centennial,

Washington images would once again compete with, not just com

plement, those of Lincoln. Only now the Lincoln image had become

the model. And by the time a printmaker named Rae Smith produced a facsimile edition of the Declaration, it was Lincoln's portrait that

was framed in fancy scrollwork in a prominent position at the bot

tom, while Washington's was presented amid the early presidents, not even at the central point at top. It was an ironic twist on Lincoln's

fate in the early Emancipation prints.

Surely to American audiences in 1876, the Union's founder and

saviour had long been recognized as full and equal partners in the

historical pantheon. Although a French printmaker such as Lemercier

might suggest in "Fraternit? Universelle" that Washington and Lin

coln had achieved fame within a much larger elite of international

heroes and symbols (including Benjamin Franklin, Socrates, and

Gutenberg), a far more banal message long dominated at home.

There, one print ostensibly celebrating the election of Chester Alan

Arthur to the White House featured a ludicrous gathering of his

predecessors, most of whom blurred like spectral apparitions in the

background except for Lincoln and Washington, who with war hero

Grant remained front and center, slouching on their chairs as if they had just enjoyed a good smoke.21

Invoking Washington had helped the Lincoln of 1861 justify un

imaginable sacrifices yet to come; by waging war in the Washington

21. Gabor S. Boritt, Mark E. Neely, Jr., and Harold Holzer, "The European Image of Abraham Lincoln," Winterthur Portfolio 21 (Summer-Autumn 1986): 167-68.



62 "Columbia's Noblest Sons

25. Haasis & Lubrecht, "Our Fallen Heroes." (Courtesy of the Lincoln Museum)



Harold Holzer 63

fee. '***

26. Haasis & Lubrecht, "The Father of Our Country and the Heroes of 1776/

(Courtesy of the Old Print Gallery, Washington, D.C.)




27. W. H. Pratt, "Proclamation of Emancipation.'



Harold Holzer 65

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Harold Holzer 67

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Harold Holzer 69

tradition, Lincoln was rewarded with a place alongside, and even

tually above, the Founder in cultural history. Speaking at Valley Forge in 1904, Theodore Roosevelt surprised few listeners when he con

fessed that he could no longer "see how any American can think

of either of them without thinking of the other, too, because they

represent the same work."22

That is exactly what the vast array of Lincoln-Washington pairings had long suggested?not only illustrating that metamorphosis but

perhaps inspiring it as well. Images such as Louis Shober's primitive but irresistible lithograph made that shared status clear by depicting the presidents suggestively straddling the reunified American con

tinent, symbolic stacked weaponry at their feet testifying to the return

of peace (Figure 31). The print could have no more accurately re

flected national sentiment had it been created to illustrate Charles

Sumner's 1865 eulogy, in which he imagined "Washington and

Lincoln associated in the grandeur of their obsequies . . . kindred -

in service, kindred in patriotism. One sleeps in the East, and the

other sleeps in the West; and thus, in death, as in life, one is the

complement of the other." As the Shober subtitle confirmed, such

graphics compellingly invited audiences to "Behold Oh America, Your Sons, The Greatest among Men." Through deceptively simple but lovingly treasured pictures, Lincoln permanently became, in the

Reverend Henry Bellows's words, "the heir of Washington's place at the hearths and altars of the land." And the hearths themselves

became transformed into domestic altars for the icons of the nation's

father and saviour. Joint portraits of "Columbia's Noblest Sons," as

Shober's representative print affirmed in its revealing caption, be came nothing less than America's "National Picture."23

22. Cunliffe, Doubled Images, 8.

23. Sumner, Eulogy, 6; Whiting, Our Martyred President, 33, 136.



Documents

"Columbia's Noblest Sons": Washington and Lincoln in Popular Prints