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.
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