of yours a sort of safety valve for you?"

"You have hit it, Curtin," was the quick reply. "If I could not tell these stories I think I should die."

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Plate Number Eighteen—This cartoon, published in Harper's Weekly, on January 10, 1863, also reflects the resentment provoked by the Fredericksburg fiasco, for which General Halleck and Secretary Stanton were at first held responsible in the popular mind. Lincoln is shown holding these officials over the side of the Ship of State. "Universal Advice to Abraham—Drop'Em," was the significant legend appended to this cartoon.

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Plate Number Nineteen—This cartoon, "Scene from the American Tempest," published in Punch, on January 24, 1863, was prompted by the final Proclamation of Emancipation, issued on the first day of that year. The President, clad in the uniform of a Union soldier, hands a copy of his proclamation to a grinning negro, who points to a glowering Confederate in his rear and says: "You beat him'nough, Massa! Berry little time, I'll beat him too."

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Plate Number Twenty—This cartoon, without title, was published in Harper's Weekly, on May 16, 1863. It deals with the underlying cause of England's unfriendly attitude toward the Union—the sudden shutting off of the supply of raw material for her cotton mills. Lincoln leans on a cannon and confronts John Bull in plaintive mood. "Hi want my cotton bought at fi'pence a pound," pleads the Briton. "Don't know anything about it, my dear sir," is the curt reply. "Your friends the rebels are burning all the cotton they find, and I confiscate the rest. Good morning, John."

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Plate Number Twenty-one—This cartoon, "Right at last," was published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, on June 13, 1863. Grant was still hammering at the defences of Vicksburg, with the outcome of his campaign in doubt, and the people of the North impatient and distrustful. The editor of the Tribune was especially earnest and insistent in the demand that his work should be given into other hands. The President, who holds in his hand a broom bearing Grant's name, is made to say: "Greeley be hanged! I want no more new brooms. I begin to think that the worst thing about my old ones was in not being handled right."

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Plate Number Twenty-two—This cartoon, without title, was published in Vanity Fair, on July 4, 1863. When Lee invaded Pennsylvania to meet defeat at Gettysburg, the President called upon the States of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia, for 120,000 men, for temporary use, and they were promptly supplied him. The design under review, in happy keeping with the day upon which it was issued, showed Lincoln holding aloft a flag and calling for volunteers, who are flocking to him from every side. This was the last time he was cartooned in Vanity Fair. A week later that journal ceased to exist.

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Plate Number Twenty-three—This cartoon, "Rowdy Notions of Emancipation," published in Punch, on August 8, 1863, has for its subject the lamentable draft riots in New York City. A gang of rioters are shown beating one negro and another lies prostrate on the ground, while President Lincoln stands at one side, dismayed but apparently unwilling to put an end to the foul work going on at his elbow. Here Punch's artist is once more needlessly and manifestly unjust, for if any one deserved censure for the excesses of the draft riots, Horatio Seymour, then Governor of New York, not Lincoln, was the man upon whom the whip should have fallen.

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Plate Number Twenty-four—This cartoon, "Extremes Meet," was published in Punch, on October 24, 1868. The Polish insurrection was then in progress, and the American President and the Russian Czar are depicted triumphantly clasping hands in the foreground of an impressive picture of rapine and desolation. The result sought by the artist is made clear in the appended dialogue:

Abe—Imperial son of Nicholas the Great,

We air in the same fix, I calculate,

You with your Poles, with Southern rebels, I,

Who spurn my rule and my revenge defy.

Alex—Vengeance is mine, old man; see where it falls.

Behold yon hearths laid waste, and ruined walls,

Yon gibbets, where the struggling patriot hangs,

Whilst my brave myrmidons enjoy his pangs.

The Polish insurrection, then in progress, furnishes the motive of this cartoon, which serves to recall the good will shown by Russia for the Union, when it stood without other friends among the nations. How substantial was this good will furnishes the cue to a chapter in our history which yet remains to be written. A part of this chapter the writer once had from the lips of the late Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania. Just before General Cameron went to Russia as American Minister in the early part of 1862 he was charged with a secret commission. He was directed, upon the presentation of his letters to the Russian Chancellor in St. Petersburg, to say that President Lincoln asked that the Minister might have a personal and confidential interview with the Czar. If this was accorded he should say to the Czar that the President was troubled about the possibility of interference by England or France in behalf of the Confederacy, and that if the friendship of Russia was such as to justify the monarch in conveying, confidentially, any intimation of his feelings and attitude in such a contingency, the President would be grateful. The interview was accorded, the message was delivered and the answer was