HarpWeek | Elections | 1868 Medium Cartoons

Chase's Candidacy

"Would You Marry Your Daughter to a Nigger?"

	Cartoonist: Thomas Nast
	Source: Harper's Weekly
	Date: July 11, 1868, p. 444

Click to see a large version of this cartoon

Caption: Rev. Dr. Chase (to the bride). "Do you promise to love, honor, and obey---?"

The Bride. "Don't I?"

Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase supported black manhood suffrage, yet in 1868 sought the presidential nomination of the Democratic party, whose members largely opposed it. Democratic spokesmen often warned that Republican support of civil rights for black Americans would lead inevitably to miscegenation (interracial marriage). Cartoonist Thomas Nast saw the irony of the Chase candidacy and turned the tables on the Democrats. In this cartoon Nast asks the same question about the Democratic party that the Democrats used to frighten their constituencies away from the Republican party: "Would you marry your daughter to a Nigger?" In the center of the cartoon, Chase presides as the officiating minister at the wedding of a black man and an Irish-American woman, the latter representing Democratic party supporters.

The other figures in the cartoon are leading Democratic politicians. On the left side (l-r): John Hoffman, New York gubernatorial candidate; John Morrissey, Tammany Hall associate and former prize-fighter; Fernando Wood (background), former New York City mayor; Manton Marble, New York World editor; Senator Thomas Hendricks of Indiana, a presidential candidate; and James Gordon Bennett Sr., former New York Herald editor.

On the right side (l-r): Horatio Seymour, former New York governor and eventual 1868 presidential nominee; Congressman James Brooks of New York; Senator James Doolittle of Wisconsin (background), a presidential candidate; Raphael Semmes (background), famed Confederate admiral; and Nathan Bedford Forrest, former Confederate general of Fort Pillow infamy.