Monkey Is Up! means a person is getting angry

In consequence of the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States (bravo, hooray, O my brothers!), it is announced that South Carolina, in an ecstacy of slave-owner's rage, has ordered a solemn day of humiliation, on which all the slaves of the State are to be flogged, and all copies of the Scriptures burned. Moreover, she calls a Convention, and declares that she is going to separate from the Union, and be an independent State, and have representatives of her own at the Courts of Europe. We hear that her first demands on England are, that to show our sympathy in her hate of the President, Lincoln Cathedral be pulled down, the County of Lincoln be re-christened and called Breckenridge County, that all Lincoln and Bennett hats be immediately smashed in, that Lord Lincoln be transported, and that when Falstaff in the play speaks of "thieves in Lincoln green," he be ordered to say "President Lincoln's black thieves." Anything to please the lovely Carolina.


So says the editorial in December 160's Punch--a British publication.  The cartoon is by John Tennial.