How Books Came to America by John Hruschka

Author:John Hruschka [John Hruschka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-271-05081-2
Publisher: The Pennsylvania State University Press

The book made no particular argument beyond the simple, repeated association of Southern sympathizers with “snakes in the grass.”18 (“Yclepid” is nothing more than an old spelling of an archaic word meaning “called.”)

Ye Book of Copperheads was a more sophisticated effort that made brutal fun of Northern Democrats who wanted a continuation of James Buchanan’s policies, in particular the doctrine of “popular sovereignty.” The Copperheads were primarily midwesterners with commercial or ideological ties to the agrarian South. In the urban Northeast, many of the same people who had supported the nativist position of the Know-Nothings before the war, including many Irish and German immigrants, supported the Peace Democrats during the war.

For Republicans like Leland and Leypoldt, “Copperhead” had become a synonym for traitor. Leland used the term in that sense, ignoring entirely any of the issues that animated the Copperhead movement. Each panel of Ye Book of Copperheads featured a political cartoon, a short verse, and a quotation from Shakespeare. One panel, for example, depicted a devil reclining on an ottoman, holding a snake that was drawn to suggest a hookah. The devil sat surrounded by bubbles bearing the names of Copperhead papers, such as the Chicago Times, the New York World, and the Philadelphia Age. The caption read “The Pipe of Peace.” A verse below the illustration played on “bubble” as a slang term for nonsense: “There’s a character very well known / Who bubbles for ages has blown; / But the best he has made / since at bubbling he played, / from a Copperhead pipe have been thrown.”19

Although he never listed the Copperhead books in his catalogs, Leypoldt believed in Ye Book of Copperheads enough to put his name on it. He also published, or at least planned to publish, a German translation of the book—two days after he filed his copyright for Copperheads, Leypoldt filed a copyright for Das Giftige Schlangenbuch (The venomous snake book).20 If Leypoldt published a German version of the book, no examples survived, nor do we know who provided the translation (Leland was certainly able, as was Leypoldt).

Ye Book of Copperheads might seem an obscure little publication today, but it was quite popular in its time. President Lincoln was the book’s most famous reader. In his memoir, Leland recalled his literary connection to the president: “I also wrote and illustrated a very eccentric pamphlet/The Book of Copperheads.’ When Lincoln died two books were found in his desk. One was the ‘Letters of Petroleum V. Nasby,’ by Dr. R. Locke, and my ‘Book of Copperheads,’ which was later sent to me to see and return. It was much thumbed, showing it had been thoroughly read by Father Abraham.”21 Leland made nothing more of the story, simply allowing Lincoln’s unspoken tribute to speak for itself.

Leypoldt and Leland produced at least eight books together. Most were translations, but a few, like the Copperhead pamphlets, were original works. Leland cataloged his wartime publications in his Memoirs. The list picked up after Ye Book of Copperheads:

I also translated Heine’s “Book of Songs.

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