During the Civil War, no artist attacked the Northern war effort more savagely than the satirical printmaker and Southern sympathizer Adalbert J. Volck. A dentist in Baltimore, a city which harbored strong secessionist sentiment, Volck covertly published numerous scathing caricatures of Union leaders, including this portrayal of President Abraham Lincoln as the Devil himself, composing the Emancipation Proclamation while trampling on the United States Constitution.