Lincoln's Yarns and Stories

ALL WERE TRAGEDIES.

The cartoon reproduced below was published in “Harper’s Weekly” on January 31st, 1863, the explanatory text, underneath, reading in this way:

MANAGER LINCOLN: “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to say that the tragedy entitled ‘The Army of the Potomac’ has been withdrawn on account of quarrels among the leading performers, and I have substituted three new and striking farces, or burlesques, one, entitled ‘The Repulse of Vicksburg,’ by the well-known favorite, E. M. Stanton, Esq., and the others, ‘The Loss of the Harriet Lane,’ and ‘The Exploits of the Alabama’—a very sweet thing in farces, I assure you—by the veteran composer, Gideon Welles. (Unbounded applause by the Copperheads).”

In July, after this cartoon appeared, the Army of the Potomac defeated Lee at Gettysburg, and sounded the death-knell of the Confederacy; General Hooker, with his corps from this Army opened the Tennessee River, thus affording some relief to the Union troops in Chattanooga; Hooker’s men also captured Lookout Mountain, and assisted in taking Missionary Ridge.

General Grant converted the farce “The Repulse of Vicksburg” into a tragedy for the Copperheads, taking that stronghold on July 4th, and Captain Winslow, with the Union man-of-war Kearsarge, meeting the Confederate privateer Alabama, off the coast of France, near Cherbourg, fought the famous ship to a finish and sunk her. Thus the tragedy of “The Army of the Potomac” was given after all, and Playwright Stanton and Composer Welles were vindicated, their compositions having been received by the public with great favor.