ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an analysis of the ways in which images of Lincoln drew upon and depicted gendered characteristics and roles to exaggerate or highlight their political messages. Representations of Abraham Lincoln number well into the hundreds if one considers photographs, illustrations, mass-produced engravings and etchings, and cartoons and caricatures. Abraham Lincoln's physical characteristics, political positions, and personal principles readily lent themselves to visual representation in Civil War print media, especially in the illustrations and cartoons in illustrated periodicals. The roles ascribed to Lincoln in illustrations from 1860 to 1865 invoke cultural expectations about masculinity and femininity, strength and weakness, and decisiveness and cowardice in mid-nineteenth-century America. Art historian Robert Philippe asserts that "caricature is the most usual and familiar mode of" the "language of the image. Two cartoons from 1863 portray Lincoln in the role of mother or mammy when military failure weighs heavily and public protest turns to violence.
