War/Peace

This hand-colored lithographic print, circa 1864, employs an optical illusion of Jefferson Davis’ profile to create an anti-Confederacy cartoon. The “War” viewing of the print reveals “Jeff. Rampant” with verses underneath the Confederate president telling of his eagerness to fight “For glory and his vaunted right.” Four vignettes depicting scenes of battle surround these verses. When the image is turned upside down, however, Davis metamorphoses into a donkey – his cap and mustache becoming the animal’s bridled snout and ears. A set of now-upright verses, entitled “Peace,” jests that “Jeff. Subdued” has lost his courage after actually witnessing battle and he now “homeward travels like an ass.” The corner vignettes around these verses contain three scenes of farm life and one of a battered, mustached Confederate, presumably Davis, returning home on a donkey.

The design for this colored lithograph was based on a similar 1861 cartoon, “Jeff. Davis going to War / Jeff. Returning from War An [Ass],” copyrighted by E. Rogers and published by S.C. Upham of Philadelphia. During the War, Upham famously printed millions of dollars’ worth of counterfeit Confederate currency, which, when taken into the South, further destabilized the already hyper-inflated Southern economy.

It was produced by the Hartford, Connecticut lithographic firm of E.B. & E.C. Kellogg. Edmund Burke Kellogg and Elijah Chapman Kellogg were younger brothers of the founder of the Kellogg lithography firm, Daniel Wright Kellogg. After Daniel Wright Kellogg moved west, his two brothers took over the family lithography firm in 1840 and changed the name to E.B. & E.C. Kellogg. They were responsible for the continued success of the family firm and involved in partnerships with Horace Thayer in 1845/1846, John Chenevard Comstock in 1848 and William Henry Bulkeley in 1867.

George Whiting, credited on this print as Witing, worked as the agent and distributor of the Kellogg brothers’ prints in New York from 1848 to 1860. In 1860, the Kelloggs closed their New York office and Whiting took over the firm, selling prints until his death two years later.

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