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Superb Hancock and Awful Democrats |
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“A ‘Change’ in the Cabinet” |
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Cartoonist: William Allen Rogers |
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Source: Harper's Weekly |
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Date:
October 30, 1880, pp. 696-697
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Click to see a large version of this cartoon |
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Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
Cartoonist William Allen Rogers warns the American electorate of the corrupt,
incompetent, and unconstitutional rule that will flourish if Democratic nominee
Winfield Hancock is elected president. Like most pro-Republican cartoons in
1880, the Democratic nominee is not attacked personally, but his supporters are
reviled as shady, self-serving politicians. In the cabinet room of the White
House, President Hancock rests his head on his palm in a gesture of frustration
and despair, as he grimly stares downward.
Hancock's imagined cabinet consists of (clockwise from the left): Congressman
Fernando Wood as postmaster-general; Tammany Hall boss John Kelly (with Irish
pipe and shamrock) as secretary of state; Louisville Courier-Journal editor
Henry Watterson as secretary of war (he cuts out paper soldiers, an allusion to
his threat to raise 100,000 men to ensure that Democrat Samuel Tilden was
inaugurated as president after the disputed election of 1876); former
congressman "Widow" Benjamin Butler (see,"The Widow's Wants"), who has doodled a picture of soldiers and Indians fighting, as
secretary of the interior (the Bureau of Indian Affairs was in the Interior
Department); Senator Wade Hampton as secretary of the Navy, welcoming former
Confederate president Jefferson Davis; Senator Daniel Voorhees, a
"soft-money" advocate, as secretary of the treasury; and Robert Toombs,
former Confederate secretary of state, as attorney-general, neglectfully letting
the Constitution fall to the floor.
The map on the wall reveals that the United States has been divided into three
dominions: the Northeast for Kelly; the South for Toombs; and the West for
Butler. An incongruous portrait of President George Washington watches from the
other wall. |
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