|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Rail Candidate
|
During the campaign of 1860, cartoonists played
up Abraham Lincoln’s frontier image as a rail splitter.
The rail he rides in this cartoon is that of the
Republican party’s antislavery platform. Unlike
the abolitionists, Lincoln was personally resigned
to respecting the institution of slavery where it
existed under the Constitution. Yet he was firmly
committed to stopping its expansion by keeping it
out of the western states and territories. |
|
Louis Maurer (1832–1932)
Lithograph, 1860
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
|
|
|
|
|
