"The Nigger" in the Woodpile

Currier & Ives|Abraham Lincoln|Louis Maurer|Horace Greeley

1860 · Lithograph · Drawings and Prints

This political caricature uses a highly offensive racial epithet that was a common colloquialism in 1860, pointing to the casual racism that permiated American culture at that date. The image shows a Black man imprisoned in a kind of wooden jail to comment on Abraham Lincoln's indeciveness towards slavery when he first ran for the presidency.

Artist

Currier & Ives|Abraham Lincoln|Louis Maurer|Horace Greeley

Date

1860

Medium

Lithograph

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of A. S. Colgate, 1952