Library Company of Philadelphia
This large chromolithograph, titled “Heroes of the Colored Race”, was printed in 1881 by Joseph Hoover of Philadelphia to commemorate men prominent in and representative of the advancement of African American civil rights. Ex-Senator Blanche Kelso Bruce of Mississippi, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and ex-Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi are featured central, with corner portraits of African American legislators John R. Lynch of Mississippi, Joseph H. Rainey of Massachusetts, Roberts Smalls of South Carolina, and Charles E. Nash of Louisiana. Portraits of John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, William T. Sherman, and Ulysses S. Grant are also featured. The image also presents four scenes representing important phases in pre- and post-Civil War African American life, from slavery to education.
In honor of Election Day in the United States, we #Flashback to 1860 with this political cartoon titled The National Game, Three “Outs” and One “Run”, which compares the results of the 1860 presidential election with a completed baseball game influenced by the candidates’ position on the extension of slavery.
The winner, Lincoln, representing the “Wide Awake Club,” holds a rail-shaped bat labeled “Equal Rights and Free Territory,” and stands on “Home Base,” giving pointers to his competitors: Constitutional Unionist John Bell of the “Union Club” with his “Fusion” bat; Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas of the “Little Giant Club” with his “Non-Intervention” bat; and Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge of the “Disunion Club”, holding his “Slavery Extension” bat, plugs his nose as a skunk sprays at him.
Speaking in baseball terms, Lincoln declares “you must have ‘a good bat’ and strike a ‘fair ball’ to make a ‘clean score’ & a ‘home run’”. The other players respond with Bell crying “foul”; Douglas pondering his “fusion” not putting a “short stop” to the president-elect’s career; and Breckenridge whining that he shall leave for Kentucky as they have all been “skunk’d.”