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“The Coming Man’s Presidential Career—a la Blondin”
Motto.--Don't Give up the Ship.
For
the cartoonist, the divisive issue of slavery is a weight on the
shoulders of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican presidential nominee in
1860, which has to be balanced by adherence to the U.S. Constitution, or
all will topple into the deadly whirlpool below. Lincoln
mimics the exploits of Charles
Blondin (Jean François Gravelet, 1824-1897), a French-born acrobat
who became famous in the late 1850s for his daring tightrope walks over
Niagara Falls. Most white Southerners were convinced that Lincoln
was a secret abolitionist, and supported their case by pointing to his
"House Divided" speech in which he argued that a house divided against
itself could not stand; that the country could not continue being
half-slave and half-free, but would eventually become all one or all the
other. To pro-slavery advocates such rhetoric meant the forced
abolition of slavery in the South.
In fact, Lincoln was not an abolitionist, but a
"free-soil" advocate, who desired to prohibit the expansion of
slavery into the Western territories and thereby contain it in the
South. During the 1860 campaign, however, he refused to alleviate
Southern fears or to elaborate on his position.
The Republican nominee simply pointed to his previous statements
that slavery was immoral; he hoped it would end someday; and he would
not disturb it where it already existed (i.e., in the South).
The
stunt that Lincoln performs in this Harper’s
Weekly cartoon recreates the time when Blondin carried his 136-pound
agent, Henry Colcord, on his back while crossing Niagara Falls on a
tightrope.
The image may also allude to a crossing in which Blondin
appeared as an enchained Liberian slave.
Blondin
repeated the Niagara Falls crossing several times while performing various
stunts, such as drinking a bottle of wine, eating a meal, standing on
his head, standing on one foot, walking blindfolded, hanging by his
feet, pushing a wheelbarrow, lying down, and walking on stilts (the
latter accomplished before an audience that included Edward, Prince of
Wales). The daredevil made other challenging tightrope walks, including
crossing the Montmorenci Fall in Quebec, which is wider and deeper than
Niagara Falls, and the Genesee River at Rochester, New York.
In 1861, the British Home Office prohibited him from pushing
prizefighter Tom Sayers in a wheelbarrow across a tight rope suspended
from the Crystal Palace.
By
depicting Lincoln performing the dangerous feats of Blondin, the
cartoonist promotes caution on the slavery issue, which was a
perspective in line with the editorial stance of the newspaper at the
time. Before the Civil War, Harper’s
Weekly tried to avoid publishing discussions or images of slavery
whenever possible, and to calm anxiety and tempers when compelled to
confront it. That editorial
inclination was grounded in both the conservative political principles
of the Harper brothers and their financial self-interest not to alienate
readers in any area of the country.
Once the Civil War began, Harper’s
Weekly took a firm Unionist stance.
It was not until the last half of 1862, however,
that the newspaper shifted its policy to strong support of emancipation
and black civil rights. That
transition was due to the hiring in August of cartoonist Thomas Nast and
the appointment in December of columnist George William Curtis as
editorial writer. Over the
next several decades, those two men were a potent force agitating for
the equal rights of black Americans, and castigating the prejudice and
violence perpetrated against them.
Robert C. Kennedy
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