Raynor HCA 2014-04
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/1/2014
Uncolored Currier & Ives, “The Rail Candidate,” 18” x 13,” moderate soiling, minor edge chips, 2” closed tear on left margin. This important political cartoon comments on the anti- slavery plank of the 1860 Republican platform. Abraham Lincoln is shown being carried uncomfortably in the middle of a split wooden rail, an allusion to both the platform and to Lincoln's backwood's origins. Supporting the left end of the rail is a black man in simple working clothes who states, "Dis Nigger strong and willin' but its awful hard work to carry Old Massa Abe on nothing but dis ere rail!!" Holding the right end of the rail is well-dressed newspaper editor and strong Lincoln supporter Horace Greeley (identified by a copy of his NEW YORK TRIBUNE in his coat pocket). Greeley tells Lincoln, "We can prove that you have split rails & that will ensure your election to the Presidency." Lincoln replies, "It is true I have split rails, but I begin to feel as if this rail would split me, it's the hardest stick I ever straddled." A finely drawn and insightful political cartoon from the 1860 election.
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