Started in 1852, Yankee Notions was the longest running American satire magazine of the Civil War period.  It lasted until 1875.

Yankee Notions was edited and published by Thomas Strong, an enterprising publisher of cheap paperbacks and penny valentines.  Strong modeled it after the comic almanacs that had been popular with American audiences for a generation.  Each issue contained a motley assortment of comic stories, jokes, doggerel, woodcuts with humorous captions, and a full-page interior and cover cartoon.

Strong preferred everyday humor to politics, but sprinkled in some political cartoons and prose, especially during the Civil War. Although he was a Union supporter, his heightened interest in current events seemed more to be due to his appreciation of Lincoln as America’s leading comic.

While many publications heaped scorn on Lincoln for his reliance on humor to get through the day, Strong celebrated it.  Yankee Notions regularly reprinted humorous stories attributed to the President, and even went so far as to announce in 1863 that “Honest Old Abe” had signed on as a contributor.

Although Yankee Notions had its fun with candidate Lincoln, it always depicted President Lincoln sympathetically.  In 1864, it portrayed Lincoln’s second term as an inevitability when it was anything but.  As a sign of Strong’s appreciation for Lincoln’s lighter side, he was one of the first publishers to issue an anthology of Lincoln anecdotes after the President’s assassination.

  

 

 

Website design © 2000-2007 HarpWeek LLC
All Content © 1998-2007 HarpWeek, LLC
Please submit questions to support@harpweek.com