The Lines Are Drawn Political Cartoons of the Civil War (review)

Hollis examines everything from the early days of Stuckey's and Kentucky Fried Chicken to the rise oftourist Meccas like South ofdie Border, Rock City, Cypress Gardens, and Gadinburg. Many ofthese places drew on some version oflocal history (e.g.,Confederatila), culture (Booger Holler), or environment (coundess Florida gator farms), and even diose whose appeal appeared to rest on being exotic or strange had a certain provincial charm. (A Virginia snake and monkey farm. A house-that-defiesgravityin Florida.) Although the millennial South has plenty oftourist traps—think Pigeon Forge, Branson, Myrde Beach—these spots are somehow more meretricious than tacky, more Las Vegas than Rock City, and there's a bland placelessness about diem: diey could all have been brought to you by Erewhon Enterprises, Inc. Hollis reminds us ofwhat we've lost: simpler pleasures, simpler times, simpler selves. His breezy style suits his subject matter (a "cultural studies" approach would have been too dreary forwords), but an impressive bibliography and chapter notes are tucked away discreedy in the back for anyone who wants to take this seriously. The book is lavishly illustrated with old postcards, brochures, and roadside signage. My only complaint is that Texas gets short shrift, which means there's no mention of Aquarena Springs, one of my personal favorites, which used to offer a wacky underwater pageant involving Indian braves, mermaids, and Ralph die Diving Pig. Alas, I'm told that Aquarena Springs has recendy gone out of business and Ralph will dive no more. The Lines Are Drawn Political Cartoons of the Civil War By Kristen M. Smith Hill Street Press, 1999 155 pp. Cloth, $18.50 Reviewed by Stephen W. Berry, who received his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and whose articles include "When Mail Was Armor: Envelopes of die Great Rebellion, 1861— 1 86 5 ," a study of Civil War iconography published in the Fall 1998 Southern Cultures. Each reproduction in TheLinesAreDrawn is a gem in itself, documenting such familiar themes as wartime inflation and scarcity in the Confederacy, northern Copperheadism, and die iconographie rise ofAbraham Lincoln and Uncle Sam. In all, Kristen M. Smith has collected 138 cartoons, comics, and caricatures re74 southern cultures, Summer2000: Reviews lated to die Civil War. Some are sophisticated prints from the likes of Currier & Ives, others are crude lithographs that ran in VanityFairor the little-known soudiern illustrated newspapers that operated out ofRichmond during the war. Interestingly, only twenty-two of these 138 images were produced by die Confederacy . Four others were created by Adalbert Volck, a Baltimore artist who might have been the most sophisticated propagandist of die Soudi had he not been operating clandestinely behind Union lines. Few of Volck's sketches were seen by Confederates during the war, though diey remain the most accomplished and interesting images of the southern cause. Indeed, a minor quibble with die book is diat it does not include some ofVolck's most intriguing sketches. Not included , for instance, is Volck's Tracks oftheArmies (1863) in which a Confederate soldier is depicted returning to a devastated home. His stone house is tumbleddown , his wife lies dead amid the rubble, bare-chested and clutching some strands ofhair, the victim ofrape and murder. Among the ruins are the carcasses of a dog and a mouse, underlining Volck's (far-fetched) point diat the Federals systematically slaughtered everything in their path. The Union army was in fact a relatively well-comported occupying force, and rapes were limited in number (and usually inflicted on black women, rather than on white women as Volck's sketch suggests). The point, though, is that images like TracL· oftheArmies drew on the belief, widely held in die Soudi, diat die Union army was composed of mere hirelings bent on plundering homes and compromising white women. The dearth of Confederate images in The LinesAre Drawn is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, die overwhelming number of northern prints gives the book a lopsided quality; die North and Soudi do not converse or compete. Rather, the North seems at liberty to bark and rain down on the helpless South a great cornucopia of abuse. On the...