Nick Nax For All Creation was a direct competitor to Yankee Notions, identical in format and similar in content.  It was started in 1856, four years after Yankee Notions, both monthly magazines went out of business in 1875.  Initially published by Jesse Haney and M.A. Levison, it became Levison’s property solely when Haney established his Comic Monthly in 1859.

Each 32-page issue contained an assortment of comic stories, jokes, verse, woodcuts with humorous captions, and a full-page cover and interior cartoon.  It ranked behind Yankee Notions, both in quality and its interest in the war, although it did support the Union.

In its few political cartoons on current events, Nick Nax expressed the widely held beliefs that the specter of emancipation was an effective scare tactic with the truant South and the act of emancipation would lead to a speedy restoration of the Union.

Of the 72 issues published between 1860 and 1865, 16 are presented here through the courtesy of Richard S. West, who made them available from his private collection.