Title: the mower
abstract: print shows a curiously pastoral scene that actually carries a strongly anti-copperhead message. The artist contrasts the blessings of northern free labor with the inhumanity of the southern plantation system. Anti-republican or "copperhead" northerners, who advocated a negotiated reconciliation with the south, are implicitly condemned here as compliant with the slaveholders' interests. In the center a bearded farmer, possibly intended to represent lincoln, mows grass with a large scythe. He wears a narrow-brimmed hat and carries a wetstone in his trouser pocket. As he mows, his scythe blade catches the snakes in the grass. Behind him are two scenes. On the left, where the sun shines, several farmers, apparently free blacks, are also mowing. A large house stands in the distance. In contrast on the right dark clouds hover over a plantation scene where slaves harvest and carry cotton under the eye of an overseer armed with a whip. A young male slave kneels before the overseer, who stands leaning against a palmetto tree. Rude dwellings appear in the background, and a fugitive slave runs toward the left pursued by bloodhounds. In the margin below are the verses: we have battles to fight, we have foes to subdue / time waits not for us, and we wait not for you! / the mower mows on, though the adder may writhe / and the copperhead coil round the blade of his scythe. Physical description: 1 print on wove paper: lithograph; 20. 3 x 25 cm (image), 29. 3 x 38. 2 cm (sheet)
notes: published in: american political prints, 1766-1876 / bernard f. Reilly. Boston: g. K. Hall, 1991, entry 1863-14.;inscribed in ink at top left: (deposited dec. 15, 1863. Recorded vol. 38, page 755) no. 283.;inscribed in red ink at top left: no. 283.;title from item.;designed and lith. By d. C. Fabronius.;inscribed in pencil at bottom center: 24607.;stamped on right margin: copyright library feb 13 1864. Date: 1863.
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