Thomas Nast was America’s most powerful political cartoonist throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction. A strong supporter of the Republican Party during the 1860s, he backed Ulysses S. Grant during his run for president in 1868. Nast advocated for Black voting rights and he opposed the growing power of the Ku Klux Klan in the South after the Civil War ended.
The armed and dangerous Democratic figures in the left-background include former Confederate General Wade Hampton holding a torch aloft. He was mustering Democratic forces to try to take back South Carolina from the African American majority there. Nathan Bedford Forrest, wearing a Fort Pillow medallion, is advanced among the crowd. Next is a squatting Robert E. Lee, the former Confederate commander. Presidential nominee Horatio Seymour, with demonic horned hair, is wearing a Ku Klux Klan breastplate, and carrying a flag that commemorates slavery, the Confederacy (“lost cause”), the Ku Klux Klan, the Civil War draft riots in New York City, and the Reconstruction race riots in Memphis and New Orleans. Vice presidential nominee Frank Blair, also has on a Ku Klux Klan breastplate. Blair was a Union general but he sided with the defeated Confederates after the war. Raphael Semmes, commander of the commerce raider C.S.S. Alabama and John Hoffman, the mayor of New York City, and a stereotypical Irish-American Catholic in the shadow under Hoffman’s arm flank the candidates on the right.
In front of them is a wounded Black man figured as Samson from the Bible. His hair has been cut off by “Southern Democracy” depriving him of his strength from voting (suffrage).
At the center of the cartoon are the Democratic nominees for president, Horatio Seymour of New York, and Frank Blair. Both of them have breastplates with the letters KKK on them. Seymour is carrying a flag that looks like the early Confederate Flag with a skull and crossbones surmounted with the word “SLAVERY” above it. Underneath the skull and crossbones is written “THE LOST CAUSE REGAINED.” The slogan “The Lost Cause” was in common usage in both the North and South soon after the end of the war. On the left side of the flag are references to the white riots in New Orleans, Memphis, and in New York. Seymour was governor of New York when the 1863 New York City Draft Riots took place. There is also a reference to Fort Pillow on the flag, where troops under Nathan Bedford Forrest carried out a massacre of Black Union troops in 1864.
To the left of the standard bearers you can see Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. He is firing off a pistol and he wears a medal emblazoned with “FORT PILLOW.”
The pillar supporting the statue of President Johnson is emblazoned with the “lies” he is telling. You can see the ape-like image of an Irish working-class man next to it.
In this close-up you can see Forrest stoking the fire to burn up the books that many Americans look to for their religion and democratic faith.
The pillar says it is for the “DEMOCRATIC BARBECUE” at which the intellectual symbols of free government and learning are incinerated.
Up above the inscribed pillar, is President Andrew Johnson as “Moses.” He is holding in his hands, not the Ten Commandments,” but the Veto. He had used it to try to block civil rights legislation designed to establish Black citizenship and civil rights. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a big supporter of Johnson at the 1868 Democratic Convention.
This Nast cartoon, “The Modern Samson” appeared on October 3, 1868, p. 632 in Harper’s Weekly.
Follow Reconstruction Blog on Social Media:
It is true that Robert E. Lee generally supported Andrew Johnson and the Democratic Party in the post-war. And I can well reflect this is a political cartoon, meant to generate attention and support for the Republicans and against Johnson and the Democrats.
However, it is extremely inaccurate to ‘link’ Lee’s above general support in his private views with political endorsement. In the post-war, though Lee made no secret of his preferences as relating to political candidates, policies and parties, he absolutely abhorred enunciation of any endorsement of any of these publicly.
As well, while it is very correct to say that Robert E. Lee never eschewed 100% of his racist sentiments, it is NOT accurate to depict him ‘in step’ in terms of his views as above.
For the rest of his life in private and public, Robert E. Lee exemplified AGAINST what the KKK were doing and advocating. The notion he inspired the term ‘invisible empire’ in a secret endorsement of the KKK is not true.
Lee came about to embrace significant progressive growth in his outlook about Black Americans and there are the other notion he opposed them voting is also not true; there are four pieces of primary evidence that show he supported Black Americans voting in the same terms as Abraham Lincoln, Alexander Stephens, George Custer, Stephen Mallory, Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, Robert Smalls and Thomas Morris Chester.
I did not go into discussing Lee’s involvement because his actions are much less documented around the election of 1868 than, say, Forrest. Lee did not attend the Democratic National Convention that year, whereas Forrest did. Lee also visited Grant at the White House about six months after the election.
Absolutely and completely true.
I just felt the need to articulate accurately on Lee due to the information I held.
As to the rest of such depicted, I can’t say.
Much appreciated.
Yes, I know. It some point I might put something up on Lee’s participation in the 1868 Election, but I just have not researched it yet.
He wanted to stay pretty much 100% out of the active political arena in the post-war. When Longstreet contacted him for some support after what occurred in 1867, Lee declined to provide this on the basis he wanted to stay out of the political situation, not that he didn’t support the newly-provided status of Black Americans in politics.
The closest Lee came to political involvement was his signing of the 1868 White Sulphur Springs Letter.
Even in this, though Lee clearly never eschewed 100% of his racist sentiments, his signature must be understood in the wider context of his firm support of impartial suffrage towards Black Americans and even a willingness to support universal suffrage in practical and tacit terms, as shown in his 21 May 1867 letter to the wife of General Maury.