[Civil War]: [Scott, Winfield]:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE HERCULES OF THE UNION, SLAYING THE GREAT DRAGON OF SECESSION [caption title]. An uncommon and visually striking Currier & Ives print, published early on in the Civil War, likely in 1861, glorifying General Winfield Scott, the one-time hero of the Mexican-American War and now commander of Union forces. The cartoon depicts a gallant - and much younger looking - image of the seventy-five-year-old general as the mythical Hercules slaying a many-headed hydra symbolizing secession. "At left stands Scott, wielding a great club 'Liberty and Union,' about to strike the beast. The hydra has seven heads, each representing a prominent Southern leader. The neck of each Southerner depicted is labeled with a vice or crime associated with him. They are (from top to bottom): Hatred and Blasphemy (Confederate secretary of state Robert Toombs), Lying (vice president Alexander Stephens), Piracy (president Jefferson Davis), Perjury (army commander P.G.T. Beauregard), Treason (United States general David E. Twiggs, who in February 1861 turned over nineteen federal army posts under his command in Texas to the South), Extortion (South Carolina governor Francis W. Pickens), and Robbery (James Buchanan's secretary of war John B. Floyd, accused of supplying federal arms and supplies to the South)" - Reilly. The print speaks, in part, to the North's optimism during the first year of the war. Such optimism soon proved to be misplaced, however, for on July 21, 1861, at the First Battle of Bull Run, th

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