>> From the library of
Congress in Washington D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> My name is Martha Kennedy.
I'm a curator in the
Printed Photographs Division
and it's my pleasure to welcome you
to the 2014 Swann Fellows
lecture today.
This program is sponsored by the
Swann Foundation for caricature
and cartoon and the Prints
and Photographs Division.
The Swann Foundation is one of
the few that provides support
for scholarly graduate research in
the field of caricature and cartoon
through annually awarded
fellowships.
It has been an important part
of the library's graphic
arts program since 1977.
The foundation underwrites a broad
array of initiatives relating
to caricature and cartoon; these
include preservation and procession
of the library's collections
of comic art,
development of these collections,
related public programming,
and many of the exhibitions
in the graphic arts gallery
in the Jefferson Building.
Today's speaker, Erin Corales-Diaz
is a PhD candidate in art history
at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
where she has been focusing on
the art of the American Civil War
and Reconstruction period.
Her dissertation entitled
"Remembering the Veteran Disability,
Trauma and the American
Civil War 1861
to 1915" examines the complex ways
that American artists have attempted
to interpret war-induced
disability after the Civil War.
Erin recently completed
a fellowship Joe
and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow at
the Smithsonian American Art Museum
and has received other
impressive awards.
It has been a pleasure to assist her
during her residency in the library
in exploring research materials in
the Printed Photographs Division
and it's been enlightening
to gain a sense
of how labor intensive her
research process has had to be.
Her lecture today is titled,
"Empty Sleeves and Bloody Shirts;
Disabled Civil War Veterans
and Presidential Campaigns
1864 through 1880."
Please join me in welcoming Erin.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Thank you
Martha for that kind introduction
and I'd also like to extend my
thanks to the Swann Foundation
and the rest of the Prints
and Photographs Department
for granting me this opportunity
to share my work with all today.
Abraham Lincoln once referred
to the cartoonist Thomas Nast
as the war's best recruiting agent.
Upon Ulysses S. Grant's
re-election to presidency in 1872,
Mark Twain told Nast "You more
than any other man have won a
prodigious victory for Grant,
I mean rather for civilization
and progress."
The ability of Nast illustrations
to sway public opinion recalls
Angelina Grimke's off quoted words
that images are powerful appeals.
The paper war during the
presidential election,
a flurry of cartoons and
caricatures that satirized
or supported the candidates
drew upon an array of motifs
and iconography to convey
their ideological sediments.
A Nast 1864 print compromise
with the south we see one
such motif repeated with vigor
throughout the next several
presidential elections;
the disabled veteran.
This image of a hotty Jefferson
Davis in confederate uniform
and a surrendering union amputee
shaking hands over the grave
of union heroes while Columbia
weeps sparked a fury of support
for Lincoln over the
democratic candidate who strove
for a compromised peace, yet
Nast was not the only cartoonist
to employ the maimed body of the
veteran as a campaign strategy.
Artists and print makers such as
Joseph E. Baker courier knives
and John McDermott also embrace
the figure of the veteran
as part of their visual methods.
These cartoonists, I argue,
embrace the figure of the veteran
as a contested site or competing
political ideologies and discourses
of power were played out in
presidential elections during
and after the American Civil War.
In so doing, Nast and
other artists visually
and politically manipulated
the former soldier's maimed
and broken body to advance
partisan arguments on behalf
of their chosen candidate.
The aftermath of the war left
nearly 60,000 men on both sides
with some form of amputation
leaving these once whole bodied men
as fragments of the former selves.
Artists adopted the
veteran's lost limb, crutch,
or prosthetic as a symbol of the war
effort and reflected ideal heroism
and patriotism, yet
the reintegration
of wounded men's spurred
anxiety amongst civilians
as disability was synonymous
with social failure,
emasculation, and marginalization.
The former soldiers found themselves
occupying a liminal position
between the war hero and social
other; a perspective encapsulated
in this drawing by Alfred Waud
called an "A Street Contrast".
Here Waud juxtaposes an abled
bodied war hero with a pair
of amputee soldiers
occupying a street corner
with their organ grinder.
As a visual medium cartoons are
defined by their objectification,
as it requires a translation
of real world people and events
such as what you see
here in this drawing
into legible shorthand typically
as caricatures or symbols
which heighten the veterans
alien otherness even
if the artistic intent claims
to celebrate the soldier.
It is precisely this ambiguity
that made the disabled veteran
such a compelling and problematic
figure for political cartoons.
The war's increasingly
high casualties
in early 1864 clouded Lincoln
and the union's expectations
for its swift victory.
As prospects for preserving
the union
and abolishing slavery dwindled,
the cost of war appeared
to have been in vain.
Boston lawyer William H. Gardner
III recounted such dismay,
"My confidence is terribly
shaken so is everybody's,
things have never looked so
black to me as at this moment."
With the nation tired of
war, Lincoln feared defeat
in the upcoming election against his
democratic opponent a mood resident
in the cartoon "Abraham's Dream"
where he is expelled by Columbia
on the White House steps.
Anxieties over the future
of the nation electrified the
1864 presidential campaign
and provided ample fodder
for visual propaganda.
Artists sharpened their pencils
to comment upon current
events plotting lines
between the candidates and
their moral beliefs on the page.
Coinciding with the emergence
of the pictorial press
and inexpensive mass printing,
political cartoonists participated
in the election with the new found
power in the form of public opinion.
In citing voters to make a
difference through humor and wit,
the political cartoon found
new ground during the Civil War
and set the foundation for its
modern pictorial equivalence.
A mid succession of
defeats on the battle field,
the opposing party honed its
platform to promote peace
and vilify the ongoing war
efforts represented here
in an anti-Lincoln
satirical cartoon from 1863.
The peace democrats or copperheads
a colloquial moniker referring
to both the venomous snake and the
likeness of liberty on the head
of the penny were not
strictly southern sympathizers,
but believed that it
was unconstitutional
to prevent the south from
succeeding from the union.
Furthermore, the copperheads blamed
the abolitionists for igniting a war
as they felt emancipation
was not worth the effort
of a sexual conflict.
A democratic broadside highlighted
the party's platform arguing
that if one voted for Lincoln and
the Republican Party "You will bring
on negro equality, more debt,
harder times, and another draft,
universal anarchy and
ultimate ruin."
The democrats countered this
promising to re-establish the union
in an honorable, permanent
and happy peace.
By August 1864, the democrats
had selected the former commander
of the Army of the
Potomac George B. McClellan
at their Chicago convention, as
the party's presidential nominee,
a move they thought would appeal
to soldiers and earn their votes.
For the soldiers who
fought, were wounded,
and saw commerce die however,
negotiating the terms of peace
with the confederacy was
an unsettling proposition
because it would effectively
render their services
and sacrifices invalid.
One soldier at the Armory
Square Hospital declared
"I have lost one leg, but I would
lose another too before I would ask
for any peace except by
conquering the rebellion."
The union soldiers needed a
voice and Thomas Nast provided
that with his sensational
compromise with the south.
When the printed puritan
Harper's Weekly it aroused
such public fervor the magazine
sold out and the publisher needed
to issue another run and Nast's
timing could not have been more
impeccable, not only did
he strike a critical blow
to the democrats during the
first few months of the election,
but soon after Harper's released
the issue, word came to Washington
that general William T. Sherman
had landed a victory in Atlanta.
Suddenly, the republicans had
a chance to reelect Lincoln.
The triumphal success of compromise
with the south speaks not only
to Nast's ability to convey a
motion, but also the introduction
of pivotal figures
namely the amputee veteran
which would soon become a
mainstay in his visual repertoire.
In compromise with the south, Nast
opted for arched, single page view
so as to highlight the central
figures of Jefferson Davis,
the faceless union veteran
and Columbia the personification
of America.
Davis steps on a grave marked "In
memory of our Union Heroes who fell
in a useless war" and breaks
the sword of northern power,
let's see we're right there.
His pistol and sword hang
suggestively from his CSA belt
and he clasps a cat o' nine
tails that runs parallel
to his outstretched arm
dangling over the grave.
Nast suggests that to
engage in peace negotiations
with south would be to embrace
a type of manhood associated
with chattel slavery and violence.
In contrast, the body of the
union soldier bears the effects
of the South's weapons.
His left arm is bandaged and
he has suffered and amputation
at his right thigh, a dangerous
and often failed procedure.
His entire body posture with his
slumped shoulders and refusal
to meet the confederate's
gaze can be interpreted
as despondent and humiliated.
Curiously, Nast appears
to have given the soldier
an improbable long peg leg,
but upon closer inspection,
is actually the shaft
of a second crutch.
So, this reiterates there
and that's the crutch.
It's such an optical illusion is
a deliberate act by the artist
to accentuate the soldier's
bodily loss rather
than remaking his body whole.
The antiquated prosthetic recalls
the [inaudible] artificial limb
program for wounded veterans
and a lack of anatomical,
acceptable anatomical
alternatives or resources
for recent veterans and amputees.
Peg legs, as in this 1820's British
print have long been regarded
as symbols of charity
and social failure.
The inability to work on account
of a war injury prompted fears
for both soldiers and the
civilians that would need
to support their welfare.
Participation in the
workforce equated
to fulfilling prewar
societal conceptions
about manhood and normalcy.
In this way, the peg leg embodies
fears about emasculation especially
when contrasted to the physical
prowess of the confederate soldier
and his phallic implements.
Nast's refusal to mask the union
soldier's disability forces the
viewer to contend with their
socioeconomic anxieties
over war induced injuries and ponder
the postwar fate of union veterans.
Using the disabled body
as an emotional conduit Nast
channels the veteran's dual nature
as a war hero and social
other into a rallying cry
of support for the union.
The background approaches
apocalyptic proportions
with buildings rubble and
piles of faceless corpses.
A falling beam and
partially collapsed wall
that lies beside the veteran
indicates fallen support
for the north and ineffective
systems
for the disabled veterans the
war, so this particular beam here.
In the middle ground, a member
of the U.S. colored troops
and his family have been forced into
bondage, as you see right there,
and the soldier's supplicant posture
recalls the well-known powerful
abolitionist symbol "Am I
not a man and a brother."
Beyond the African
American family grouping,
barely visible amongst the
chaos hangs a lynched figure
which you can see,
whoops, right there.
Not only would emancipation fail
with the democratic victory,
but Nast implies that such a triumph
would fuel increased violence
towards African Americans
an ominous foreshadowing
of what would occur
during reconstruction.
Nast would later revisit the
question of freedom and race
in his depicted engraving
"Pardon and Franchise"
where he contrast the
re-entitlement of rights
to former confederate leaders
and a disenfranchised amputee
African American veteran.
Returning to compromise the south,
Nast included tattered union flags
and inserts, in the
inserts framing the scene
and a confederate flag on the right.
The South's stainless banner
reads as a list of war crimes
from bayoneting the wounded
and starving union prisoners
which recalls Nast's
earlier engraving from 1863,
"Southern Chivalry" where
he opted to illustrate
in graphic detail the bloody
senseless murders of union prisoners
and contraband teamsters.
Even though the union side was
a series of victories that lead
to emancipation, the
flag flies upside
down in a universal
symbol of distress.
Nast presents a scathe rebuttal
of the democrat's peace party
in a single powerful image
that summarizes how the compromise
would entail northern submission
in a one-sided victory.
The popularity of compromise
with the south gave
the work a second life
when the Republican
Party asked to use it
in campaigning reputedly
printing a million copies.
These two republican
broadsides from Indiana
and Ohio geographical
regions particularly strong
with copperhead support indicate
how Nast's print was incorporated
into campaign material.
The broadside list underneath the
image of the conditions of peace
from the Richmond Enquirer
including "As surely
as we completely ruin their armies
and without that is not peace,
no truths at all so surely showing
they can pay for our war debts,
though we ring it out
of their hearts."
This rendering of what peace
would truly entail coupled
with Nast's emotionally persuasive
illustration offered a highly
effective campaign tool
that assisted Lincoln
in winning his reelection.
While the success of compromise
with the south relied on its ability
to cross geographic and class lines
through inexpensive mass printing
and distribution to
diverse audiences,
other artists attempted
alternative approaches
to quail the increasing
tied of defeatism.
A team of Philadelphia based
republicans included a small
limerick book "Ye Book
of Copperheads" in 1863.
Each page features an illustration,
a short verse, and a quotation
from Shakespeare and on the
second page, an amputee soldier
with a peg leg faced a
trio of copperhead snakes;
the verse reads " A soldier
came back from the war with many
and honorable scar, but the
copperheads cried, served you right
if you died in this
cursed abolitionist war."
Unlike Nast's intricate
detail in realistic design,
the artist for "Ye Book
of Copperheads" opted
for a simplified style indicative of
quickly produced wood cut engravings
with minimal, but heavy
outlines and cross-edge shading.
Such a schematic cartoon produced
a focused message well suited
to an illustrated book where the
reader encounters several images
in succession.
As the soldier stares undeterred
at the twisting circuitous bodies
of copperheads snakes his
honorable scar reminds the reader
of his heroic courage and sacrifice,
yet the peace democrats according
to the test below, are apathetic
towards the veteran's bodily loss
and even his life.
The artist drew upon other
[inaudible] of the veteran
to make the political point that in
fighting for the wrong cause life
and limb would be lost in vain.
Initially, "Ye Book of Copperheads"
was a Grassroots publication a
localized attack on
anti-Lincoln sediments
that were gaining strength
in Philadelphia.
A broadside from the city declared
Pennsylvania a border state
and promised invasion, anarchy, and
despotism if McClellan were elected.
As a result, the popularity of
the book with its witty rhymes
and simple graphics prompted the
publisher to issue a new addition
in 1864 to coincide with the
Lincoln and McClellan campaign,
presidential campaign while "Ye Book
Copperheads" may not have had the
same level of publicity
as Nast's "Compromise
with the South" it did have one
important reader, the president.
One of the authors recounted
the story in his memoir stating
"When Lincoln died, two
books were found in his desk.
One was "Letters of
Petroleum-V-Nasby" by Dr. R. Locke
and my book of "Copperheads" which
was later sent me to see in return.
It was much thumbed showing
it had been thoroughly read
by father Abraham."
His antidote suggests the
persuasiveness and impact
of political cartoons during
the Civil War, especially those
that contain representations
of disabled soldiers.
Of course, the democrats
had selected McClellan
to be their presidential nominee
largely on his military service
and positive reputation in the army.
Joseph E. Baker's "How Free
Ballot is Protected" is one
of the few existing pro-democrat
cartoons and notably one
that showcases an amputee veteran.
At the voting booth, a disabled
soldier missing an eye, a leg,
and part of an arm holds out
his ticket for McClellan,
a racially caricatured African
American soldier points his bayonet
at the veteran declaring
in derogatory slang,
that he refuses to
allow him to vote.
The soldier replies, "I'm an
American citizen and I did not think
that I had fought and bled
for this, alas my country."
His rhetoric mirrors the same
claims made by the Republican Party
in attempting to find
an attribute meaning
to bodily loss incurred during the
war and two men behind him tally
up the votes and their speech
bubbles indicates a reluctance
to intrude on the altercation
on the foreground.
"How Free Ballot is
Protected" references reports
of republican's engaging in
electoral fraud and obstruction
of votes, but Baker also
indicates his party's concerns
that emancipation would bring about
a loss of white male supremacy.
In the space of the cartoon,
Baker illustrates this anxiety
by rendering the disabled
soldier powerless
against the able bodied
African American contraband.
Contrary to republican
examples of one legged veterans,
Baker depicts his former
soldier with an excess of ruins,
a one eyed double amputee.
His melodramatic states insights
sympathy for the veteran an appeal
to voters to maintain
his status as a war hero,
yet his extreme corporeal
loss also signified
to the democrats the dismemberment
of the body politic upon Lincoln's
reelection through the severing
of inalienable rights
and ethical blindness.
Unfortunately for McClellan he
failed to see how his association
with the Democrats peace platform
would alienate his former soldiers.
Courier Knives explored
McClellan's divided position
in the political Siamese twins where
the general is anatomically tied
to the peace democrats, there.
As McClellan listens to
his political advisors,
one wounded soldier
declares "Goodbye little Mac
if that's your company,
uncle Abe gets my vote."
Similar sediments were voiced in
the Armory Square Hospital Gazette
where one former democratic soldier
noted that the rebels cheered
for two hours after learning of
McClellan's nomination prompting him
to consider casting
a vote for old Abe.
Soldiers clambered to vote either
by absentee ballots if they were
on the battle field or that
hobbled on their crutches
to the voting booths as illustrated
here in a page from Frank Leslie's.
Ultimately Lincoln's
victory resulted
from a successfully run campaign
that rendered the democrats
as traitors in part due to the
efforts of political cartoonists.
Not only was the Lincoln-McClellan
presidential campaign representative
of how a [inaudible] popular culture
would henceforth become a permanent
fixture in modern American politics.
It also introduced the
disabled civil war veteran
as a new social type
in the body politic.
During the 1864 election, soldier's
war wounds challenged closure
offering a visible reminder
of the government's
failure to prevent conflict.
Within the space of the cartoon,
the disabled veteran's position
as war hero becomes contingent
on the public casting the
right vote for president.
To elect a leader would negate
their sacrifices and injuries,
would forfeit the veteran's
right to be a military hero
and cast them instead as a
disabled pauper or worse a traitor.
Such fluid transitions
between dueling ways
to construct social identity
indicate the instability
of the veteran's position
and of the meanings attached
to their bodies were
far from static.
While the war was over, the plate
of the wounded veterans persisted
and Nast revisited the topic while
ridiculing Lincoln's successor
Andrew Johnson.
In his 1866 cartoon "Andy's Trip"
which consists of 20 vignettes
and extracts from Johnson's speeches
that demonstrate his
ineffective leadership
and critical prospective
towards the south.
So to the left of the central
tondo caricaturing Johnson
as a pious saint Nast declares
that Andy forgot or soldiers
and sailors interspersed between
related vignettes, so right here.
The first scene, which I know
these are sort of hard to see,
but for in it is, as with most
of Nast's illustrations it is
in the marginalia that find some
of his more violent and
provocative imagery.
The first scene shows the dying
and prostrate wounded reaching
out for an unattainable
flag, right there.
While below in the second panel,
crouch emaciated union prisoners
of war and the next scene depicts
the interior of the hospital
with soldiers displaying
various degrees of disability
from a head wound to
a double amputee.
The final panel relating to
the veterans offers a glimpse
into local politics where a one
legged amputee casts his vote
for the soldier's friend or the
republic pin incumbent general,
republican and incumbent governor
of New York Reuben Fenton.
In "Andy's Trip" Nast's referenced
the soldier's lost lives and limbs
to criticize Johnson's failed
reconstruction policies;
a political maneuver of
flaunting the memories
of war before the public later
known as "waving the bloody shirts."
Johnson the incumbent president
had alienated the majority
of his Democratic Party and
failed to obtain the nomination
to run for a second term.
In the 1868 and 1872 presidential
elections, found cartoonists
and demagogue politicians alike
waving the bloody shirt in an effort
to elect general Ulysses S.
Grant against his opponents.
A fraction of the Republican
Party had become disillusioned
with Grant's first term
as president to split,
to form the liberal
Republican Party;
the advocated ending reconstruction
by removing continued military
presence in the south a policy
that led the Democratic Party
to endorse the Liberals
nominee Horace Greeley.
Previously Greeley had been a
staunch abolitionist as the editor
of the New York Tribune,
but now he was in league
with the same political
party that sought
to preserve the South's peculiar
institution an ironic twist not lost
on republican political
cartoonists such as Nast.
He refused to see the opposition
as anything but a regression
into immoral social values of
racism and violence evident
in his unflattering portrayal
of Greeley's association
with the southern democrats
in "Let us Clasp Hands
Over the Bloody Chasm."
Grant's reelection campaign in 1872
against Greeley found cartoonist
utilizing the established visual
rhetoric from previous elections and
embodied war memories in the form
of disabled veterans;
one such illustration
"Bringing the Thing Home"
from Harper's Weekly encapsulates
Nast's incendiary approach towards
Greeley and his proposals
for reconstruction.
Nast places the setting in
the south among a ruined
and rebel stream landscape;
Greeley stands slightly to the left
with his hands clasped around
his rotund belly as he looks
over his shoulder at a dilapidated
house and its destitute inhabitants.
The papers in his overcoat refer to
his position as a newspaper editor
and one page reads as the
title to a full memoir,
"What I know about warfare by H.G."
The latter, a reference to Greeley's
1861 experimental scientific
publication "What I know of Farming"
was part of an ongoing joke by Nast
in which he ridiculed Greeley for
assuming authority and expertise
in a variety of different areas.
At the right, a mother and her
children huddle around the remains
of their house while an
adolescent looks outside
at two amputee confederate veterans;
one veteran adverts his eyes
from the scene and the
other looks at the child
with his eyes ablaze while he takes
off his hat in a gesture of sorrow.
To emphasize the South's misery,
Nast includes a sketchily drawn
scene over Greeley's shoulder,
right here which beside a lone
standing chimney which evocative
of the photographs taken by George
Bernard during Sherman's march
to the south; a small kneeling
figure raises his arms in anguish.
Underneath the [inaudible]
are Greeley's scathing words
anticipating the devastation
and agony southerners would
experience Post-Civil War.
One of Nast's most
effective satirical cartoons
"Bringing the Thing Home" strokes
the influence both northern
and southern voters through
depicting the war's ruin nation
of body, hearth and environment.
The 1872 election was
the first instance
where all former confederate
states readmitted back
into the union challenging
the political landscape.
As Grant's first presidential
term had be saddled with fraud
and corruption, his campaign for
reelection required assistance
by cartoonists like
Nast to encourage voters
and to ridicule the opposition.
I would argue that "Bringing
the Thing Home" is a subversion
compromise with the south; a
reworking of his popular cartoon
for a new audience
and campaign approach.
Nast's catastrophic
landscape in 1864,
distinctly references the
destruction of northern industry
and burning southern cities,
whereas "Bringing the Thing Home"
is decidedly southern reveling
in the aftermath of blazing
destruction and instead
of an African American family
disenfranchised and enslaved;
at the right, we have a southern
mother and her children subjected
to abject poverty and homelessness.
The south debilitated and reduced
to fragments, suffers on the part
of the failure of reconstruction and
continues to exist in a state of war
under the gleeful eye of
politicians like Greeley,
but in comparing compromise
with the south
to "Bringing the Thing Home"
we find the amputee veteran
in identical poses with only their
uniform switched from union to CSA,
where his willingness
disheartened for entering
into a unequal compromise,
the other is forlorn
for his eradication of his home.
This is the first known instance
of a confederate amputee
veteran being utilized
to support national
reconciliation and is indicative
of a new political arena.
The broken body of the
veteran becomes part
of a sympathetic maneuver to
recognize the South's distress
as part of a shared experience.
The corporeal and environmental
ruins embody the dual nature of war,
of destruction and creation.
Nast indicates that the South's
fragmentation should be felt
nationally and can be rebuilt
into a modern democratic nation,
a policy Greeley and his liberal
Republican Party sought to prevent.
It is Nast, or it is Grant
Nast says that has the power
to finish reconstructing not only
the south, but the union as a whole.
The cartoon had a wide reaching
geographic influence as evident
in this pro-Grant window display
from Wisconsin tucked behind
an array of small potatoes
which you can see right
there and a large one labeled
"Grant" is a fragment of
"Bringing the Thing Home' cut
to showcase Greeley and the amputee
veterans, so it appears right there;
more powerful than the reduced
circumstance of the southern home,
the maimed veteran's body
represented the broken south
and the south responded
positively to Nast's cartoon
and it was reprinted on a cover
of a north Carolinian newspaper.
The popularity of "Bringing the
Thing Home" prompted the Republican
Party to once again use Nast's
cartoon in its campaign posters.
On the front of this 1872 Broadside
list Greeley's amnesty record
which provides extracts
from Greeley's speeches
and editorials recounting
his inability
to grant the south clemency.
On the back was Nast's
engraving with slight changes
in the text instructing the
viewer to look on this picture
and expanded the tagline to
read "Bringing the Thing Home"
or reasons why the south
should vote for Greeley.
As with compromise with the south,
Nast appealed to public sentiments
over an equality and political
neglect by waving the bloody shirt,
or in this case, the empty
pant leg which resonated
with traumatic memories of war.
Nast attempted a different tactic
in his "Who are the Haters?"
in an attempt to win
Grant the veteran's vote.
Despite the low profile of
former soldiers and organizations
like the Grand Army of the
Republic and repeated neglect
on their affairs in
the political front,
veterans still represented a
large body of potential voters.
In the lower right hand
corner, Nast provides a clue
as to the historical
context of this cartoon;
the words "Pittsburg
Pennsylvania, right there.
During the months leading up to the
election, the republicans managed
to schedule a parade and a
convention for the pro-Grant Boys
in Blue an organization of union
veterans two days before Greeley
visited the city.
The veterans endorsed Grant
as a candidate of liberalism
and progress demonstrated by
their montage of signs reading
"As we fought, so will
we vote for the union
and equality before
the law for all men."
Towards to the front of the
parade are two disabled veterans;
one with an amputated leg
is unable to hold up a sign
as his hands clasp the crutches that
he needs for stability and mobility,
yet despite his condition,
he participates in the event
and another veteran with an
empty sleeve pinned to his chest,
right there, marked as
a badge of honor carries
in his only hand a large illustrated
banner evoking the spirit
of reconciliation,
part of the test reads
"The veterans weep,
but do not hate."
The empty sleeve veteran despite
his injury, bares no ill will
against his southern brethren and he
exhibits the epitome of compassion
and heroism upheld by the
Republican Party for if the veterans
who sacrificed their bodies
on behalf of the greater good
of the nation can learn to forgive
past grievances, then as Nast asks,
"Who are the haters, but
Greeley and his supporters."
There were certainly anti-Grant
cartoons that mocked his drunkenness
and corrupt administration, but
neither the opposing parties
in the 1864 or the 1872 campaigns
utilized the disabled veteran
as Nast did for the republicans.
During the war, both political
parties vied for control
over the veteran's injuries,
but after the conflict
his diminished appearance
in anti-republican cartoons
is something of a puzzle.
Why did the democrats and liberal
republicans not exploit body
of the veteran to proclaim
the injustices
under the current administration
or to validate the republican's
harsh treatment of the south?
The party's policy position
encourages escapism from the war
and reconstruction by
accepting the new amendments
and advocating self-government
in the south.
A lingering reminder of the war
in the shape of an empty pant leg
or sleeve had little propagandistic
value to a party that sought
to forget the trauma of war and
their political commitments.
Anti-Grant cartoonists avoided
representing the disabled veteran
in their campaigns, as any reference
to the conflict would
have reminded voters
that it was Grant who won the war.
During the first two presidential
elections after the Civil War,
the political connotations
embodied in the figure
of the disabled veteran
underwent a prominent shift;
no longer did the amputee veterans
solely signify the union's corporeal
sacrifices, but could
represent the war's casualties
as a whole union and confederate.
Post war, the south needed to
be brought back into the union
and cartoonists modified their
previous usage of disabled veterans
to include both sides
as heroic figures.
In "Bringing the Thing Home" Nast
could draw upon the suffering
of a confederate amputee veteran
to convey the South's heroic
bodily loss to northern audiences
and to convince those
viewers of the need to vote
for a presidential candidate who
evoked compassion and humanity
on the towards the losing side,
and is "Who are the Haters?"
offers a point of view
from the northern veterans
who have not forgotten the
rebellion, but are willing
to forgive for the
sake of the union.
Yet given the veteran's duel nature
lingering underneath the stoic
façade are metaphors or
fragmentation and alien otherness.
As indicated in the 1864 election,
the amputated body
represented a severed nation,
but its persistent partial states
spoke to the continuing failures
to reconstruct the south and
rebuild the nation's body.
The veteran's fractured state also
alluded to the permanent effects
of war, of a body marked for life
as a disabled outsider and the sign
of the country's obligation
to its former soldiers.
During the 1876 presidential
election, the visual presence
of Civil War veterans and political
cartoons dwindled; however,
the former soldiers were mobilizing
into a political machine focused
on pension reform, and remembrance
of their efforts during wartime.
Under President Hayes
administration,
disabled veterans received lump
sums under the 1879 arrears act,
but almost half of all
requests were denied,
a statistic that led critics
to claim policy fraud.
As a result, the 1880
presidential election was marked
by renewed concerns for the
plight of the Civil War veteran.
Both presidential candidates, the
republican nominee James A. Garfield
and the democratic nominee general
Hancock had Civil War military
records and attempted to sway
veteran voters through platforms
on their services during
wartime and for pension reform.
Hancock, the hero of Gettysburg
benefited from his military service
and reputation by recruiting
a national association
of Hancock veterans which
canvassed soldier's organizations
and the democratic south.
The association published a
periodical "The Hancock Veteran"
which featured a full
page engraving of Hancock
on an 1863 photograph while he
was in recovery from a war wound.
While the publication circulated
mainly among union veterans,
one former confederate
soldier repeatedly wrote
to the Hancock Veteran "We are
willing now to fight for the union."
Since the 1868 election,
republicans assured party loyalty
by waving the bloody shirt
using the war as a strategy
to criticize their opponents
for undermining the meaning
of the conflict and to remind
voters of who quailed the rebellion.
Garfield encouraged former
soldiers to vote as you shot
and cultivated the GAR whose power
and influence grew
during the campaign.
With such renewed interest
in veterans
and the war's lasting impact,
cartoonists looked once again
to the disabled veteran type.
One cartoon created by an unknown
artist explored the democrat's
attempts to win the veteran's vote;
how Hancock will not get the
soldier's vote positions Hancock
in the center of the scene engaging
with the one legged
GAR member pointing
to the democratic headquarters
and a couple of men behind him.
The former soldier glances behind
Hancock to see two unsavory figures,
a former confederate soldier
and a northern democrat.
The soldier replies
"No thank you general,
I prefer to pick my acquaintances
and I advise you to do the same."
The cartoon's message sites
the political Siamese twins
from the 1864 campaign.
Regardless of how the party might
strategize to win over the veterans
by nominating a well-liked
Civil War general,
the democrats were
still firmly associated
with violence and the confederacy.
The artist's decision to depict a
union veteran with one leg reveals
that the veteran's broken body
continued to carry the memory
of the war, a shadowy ghost that
the democrats could not shake
from their platform.
The juxtaposition between
abled bodied
and disabled men also subverts
preconceived ideals regarding bodily
symmetry and moral character.
For in this instance, the figure
who showcases true patriotism
and a principle of nature is
the amputee veteran rather
than his whole corporeal
counterparts.
Here bodily difference that would
normally convey negative portrayals
of the dependent or weak social
other becomes a stoic figure
in the scene.
This cartoon indicates
a significant change
in social attitudes towards
the disabled veteran a shift
that would continue to grow
in momentum throughout the next few
presidential elections culminating
in the reform Disability and
Dependent Pension Act in 1890.
Political cartoons refusal to
neglect and remind the public
of this plight and sacrifice brought
about an increasing awareness
of his current social status.
His lingering symbolic presence
forced the viewing public to contend
with the difficult and
troubling memories of war
and to recognize the need
for a continued commitment
to the nation's veterans long
after the signing and [inaudible].
Notably very few of the images
of disabled veterans depict him
with a prosthetic beyond a crutch
or a cane despite federal
programming in place.
The reoccurring refusal
on behalf of the artist
to remake the veteran's body with
artificial limbs reveals a desire
to keep the veteran disabled,
for a whole body would imply a
perfect union and his fragmented,
maimed state had more political
use broken than it did repaired.
Artificial limbs erased the evidence
of war eliminating the
traumatic reminders
that political parties drew
upon for demagogue rhetoric.
Veteran's progress into able
bodiedness threatened the political
institution established
upon bodily hierarchies.
Political cartoonists found the
broken body of the veteran useful
as a vehicle of partisan argument,
thus that continuously
reinvigorated the figure,
and in so doing kept alive a
cultural discourse of fragmentation
and division that undercut
the idea of reunification.
In the space of the
political cartoon,
the veteran's body was
called out of retirement
to once again serve its
country and face battle
against opposing ideologies.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
[ Background Sounds ]
>> Thank you very much Erin.
She's willing to take
some questions.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Please.
>> And if you ask a question
remember you're being filmed
and you're consenting.
Thank you.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Amy.
>> Thanks for that talk.
It was so rich.
So, I [inaudible] when you put a,
with you comparison or argument
around "Bringing the
Thing Home" [inaudible].
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Ah hum.
>> And seeing both of those on
the screen together was horrible,
and also when you think about the
differences of the visual languages
that in the space of the 12 years
of the timeline span it seems
like Nast's language has changed
from something more nomenclature
to something more schematic
[inaudible].
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Ah hum.
>> So [inaudible] more [inaudible].
So, if that was the
[inaudible question]?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: That's a
great question Amy and I'm glad
that you noticed that shift,
cause Nast certainly evolves
and changes his artistic
and visual style over time
and with compromise it's really more
like a sentimental political cartoon
than anything and so
then when we get
to "Bringing the Thing Home" it
really does become more strongly
almost caricatured in a sense with
Greeley and it does become sort
of stronger satirical of work,
and so yeah it is a very conscious
difference that he really sort
of abandons that earlier sentimental
style towards this more sort
of direct and easily readable sort
of satirical very strongly rendered
cartoon and that's typically,
that will be his sort of
strong style that he does
for like the Tammany Hall campaigns
and so forth that he does, so yeah.
Thank you.
>> Ah hum.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Yes.
>> What kind of compensation
was given to the amputees both
in the north and the south?
Erin Corales-Diaz: Hum.
>> You know, were they pitied?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Ah hum.
>> Or were they, was there
jealousy that they received such.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Interesting.
>> Compensation?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Yeah,
well that's a great question.
The south did not receive
any sort of federal funding
because they were seen, you know,
as the traitors of the union
so those veterans didn't
receive anything,
now individual states would offer
funds and certainly some states,
and I know with North Carolina
that they brought in manufactures
to make artificial limbs strictly
for the confederate veterans,
and the north, in the
north it changes;
over time the compensation
it grows, it grows
and you would essentially have
enough money to get a limb;
however you would probably
have to be near a city
and they would provide
transportation for that veteran
to get into the city for a fitting,
but you would really only have
enough money to get one limb
for the majority of your life
which is really not enough
if you're using it frequently.
Now granted too, a lot of these
limbs were highly painful still
and so sometimes, you know, the
veterans didn't always use those
and there are interesting, there
also interesting cases as to
when the veterans themselves
decide to wear their prosthetics
and when they decide not to wear
their prosthetics so you might find
in some photographs in
the confederate veteran,
which is you know, pretty well
known periodical that a majority
of the confederate veteran
soldiers, they would be filmed
with their sleeve or
their empty pant leg
and in some cases you'd find it
more frequently in northern veterans
that they would wear prosthetics
for formal portraits and so forth.
So it's an interesting
sort of divide.
Yeah.
>> How did the monies compare
to a veteran without amputation
to a veteran with amputation?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Um, definitely
if you had lost a limb you
would receive more money
and there certain rates depending
upon how much of the limb you lost,
also equated to how
much money you'd get.
So they did, they put a
monetary value on the limb, so.
>> Do you know what those were?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: No, off the
top of my head I'm so sorry, but.
[ Inaudible Response ]
Erin Corales-Diaz: Yeah.
Yes.
>> The veterans were also given
pension who were injured in the war
and because of those injuries were
disabled, but they may not have.
>>Erin Corales-Diaz: Yes, yes
and that is something that.
>> The effects of illness then also.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Right exactly.
So there's a wide range of how
you would define disability
and how then someone was able to get
a pension based upon that disability
and that's something that really
comes out in these pension reforms,
because it was really, really
hard immediately after the war
to get a pension particularly if you
were someone who received a wound
that was not an amputation,
since the amputation was the most
visibly seen form of a disability,
but as, particularly by the 1890
Pension Reform Act you will find
veterans receiving frequently
many, many more perks and I've gone
through and I've read a
number of the pension letters
from individual veterans and
they certainly talk about plenty
of other disabilities and wounds
besides their amputation, so.
Yeah. Katie.
>> I'm wondering about
compromise with the south.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Yeah.
>> Could you consider that
all the visual similarity
between the composition of
that picture and figures
in it as mourning picture?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Oh.
>> Which I don't know much about.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Right.
>> The [inaubible]
of the 19th century.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Right.
>> But, they're to me the
women's position grieving over.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Hum.
>> The [inaudible] and those
mourning picture do also have a kind
of patriotic resonance so
to put an unborn baby put
under [inaudible] like that.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Right.
>> And, you know, which is
much earlier [inaudible],
but I'm wondering if you
think there might have been
with that the veterans
still in the 1860's?
Erin Corales-Diaz: Yeah.
I think you're spot on, it's
something I hadn't considered,
but now that you've mentioned
it I certainly see it,
that there is a certain language
that is depicted in compromise
with the south that does
resonate with some mourning works,
so it's something to consider
so thanks for pointing
that out Katie, that's great.
Martha.
>> Yes. That was a wonderful talk.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Thank you.
>> I was just curious
in your readings
on correspondence from [inaudible].
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Ah hum.
>> My question is about
their pensions as well.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Ah hum.
>> Whether, I mean this is
probably not [inaudible] but.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Ah hum.
>> Were there ever any
reactions to imagery of?
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Hum.
>> I, I mean that's
probably a little difficult.
>> Erin Corales-Diaz: Well,
so there's one really interesting
occurrence that's pretty rare
and I was really happy to
find this in the archives,
in another chapter I talk about the,
it's a six volume text "The Medical
and Surgical History of the War
of the Rebellion" and has some,
happens to have a number
of really wonderful
yet gruesome chromolithographs
of individual veterans
and because they are labeled and
they've got their identities,
I decided it's really
important for me to go and look
at their military service records
and then follow up and look
at their pension records, and
on one of them I happen to open
up the guy's pension
record and low and behold,
there is the chromolithograph of
him that was done, and in fact,
the assistant surgeon general sent
that particular chromolithograph
to the pension agent saying, yes,
this particular individual is
who he says he says he is and he did
in fact lose this arm and he does
in fact deserve a pension.
I was astounded to actually
find this in the archives,
it's the very first time that
I've seen a chromolithograph sort
of being used to support
a veteran's pension claim.
Some doctors would send photographs
along too, but I don't have any sort
of reaction in their accounts
about particular sort
of cartoons say, yeah.
Yeah.
[ Silence ]
[ Laughter ]
>> Thank you so much
for the [inaudible].
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.