The New Orleans Plum

Happy Friday! This week’s Friday Funny is an 1862 cartoon entitled, “The New Orleans Plum.”

A contemporary take on the famous Mother Goose tale, “Little Jack Horner,” this illustration casts President Abraham Lincoln as Jack Horner who is seemingly stuck in a corner by the Civil War. Despite the rising cost of war and an inability to end the war quickly, a smug looking Lincoln has avoided eating his “humble pie”—in this case, admitting defeat—courtesy of the Union victories at Shiloh and New Orleans.

Image Credit: Punch, Volume 42, May 24, 1862.

Leave a Reply

Voice from the Past: “Great Victories…At Such a Price of Blood”

Good morning! Our Fort Donelson sesquicentennial series continues with this excerpt from Lucy Larcom’s February, 1862 diary: There is news to-day of great victories in progress for us. Fort Donelson…