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Casting Ballots |
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"The Ignorant Vote..." |
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Cartoonist: Thomas Nast |
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Source: Harper's Weekly |
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Date:
December 9, 1876, p. 985
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Click to return to previous version of this
cartoon |
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Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
This full-page cover by Thomas Nast appeared a few weeks after the presidential
election. It is notable because of the derogatory black caricature by the artist
and its placement on the cover of Harper's Weekly. Nast had been an abolitionist
and a strong defender of black civil rights during Reconstruction, positions in
line with the rest of the publication since late 1863. The artist's previous
depiction of blacks was almost uniformly dignified, humane, and sympathetic.
Here, however, the black man is a barefooted buffoon who is unfit to vote.
During the 1876 campaign Republican politicians continued to "wave the
bloody flag"-that is, to associate the Democratic party with the
Confederate cause and with opposition to Reconstruction policies. Pro-Republican
cartoonists often accomplished that by portraying the violence that black
Americans faced in the South. Unlike other Harper's Weekly cartoonists and his
own previous work, Nast did not detail the plight of black Americans in 1876.
Instead, he linked Tilden to Tammany Hall and other corrupt ventures, pointed
out the conflicting positions of Tilden and Hendricks, and raised the specter of
the Catholic Church as a threat to public education.
Nast's belittling sketch of an ape-like Irish-American Catholic, on the other
hand, is a typical stereotype used by Nast and other Harper's Weekly cartoonists
over the years. The newspaper was vehemently opposed to what it believed was the
increasing political and social influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the
United States. The difference in this cartoon is that Nast now considers the
black vote in the South to be equally inferior with the Irish vote in the North. |
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