Abraham’s Dream
Title: Abraham’s Dream
Year: 1864
Creator: Louis Maurer, Lithograph, Currier and Ives
Description: A bitterly anti-Lincoln cartoon, based on slanderous newspaper reports of the President’s callous disregard of the misery of Union troops at the front. The story that Lincoln had joked on the field at Antietam appeared in the “New York World.”
Holding a plaid Scotch cap (see “Abraham’s Dream–“Coming Events Cast Their Shadows Before,”” no. 1864-42), Lincoln stands on the battlefield at Antietam, which is littered with Union dead and wounded. He instructs his friend Marshal Lamon, who stands with his back toward the viewer and his hand over his face, to “sing us {grave}Picayune Butler,’ or something else that’s funny.”