But There Was No Peace

BUT THERE WAS NO PEACE: A HAUNTING IMAGE OF RECONSTRUCTION VIOLENCE

Source: “Worse Than Slavery” by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, October 24, 1874 The artist chides the White League and the Klan for creating conditions "worse than slavery" for freed blacks. Several terrorist organizations sprang up throughout the South during the Reconstruction era. They aimed to intimidate Republican voters and officeholders of both races, obstruct Radical Republican policies, and redeem the South with native whites (a.k.a. the former Rebels) in power. Many former Democrats joined these terrorist organizations when they began losing power to Radical Republicans, both white and black. The immediate goal of these groups was to keep white and black Republicans away from polling places. Their violent tactics escalated during Reconstruction. To many white southerners still reeling from Union victory, the Ku Klux Klan represented noble founders of a reunited nation, the white Lancelots of American reunion. As shown in this Thomas Nast cartoon, “Worse than Slavery,” white groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White League used every form of terror, violence, and intimidation to restore a “white man’s government” and redeem the noble “lost cause.”

Harper’s Weekly, August 5, 1865, pages 488-489

This early political cartoon of Thomas Nast contrasts Confederate politicians and generals applying for pardons, which may give them the right to vote and hold office, with a black Union soldier who has lost his leg and does not have the right to vote. Pardon petitioners in the foreground who can be recognized include Roger Pryor (far right, a Virginia lawyer and soldier); General Robert E. Lee (kneeling); CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens (holding pardon petition); Raphael Semmes, commander of the Alabama naval ship which was built in England, sank numerous Union merchant ships, and was the subject of a long-term post-war claims dispute between Britain and the US (left of Stephens); Robert Toombs, ex-Senator and leading Georgia politician (behind Stephens); John Letcher, ex-Governor of Virginia (far left); General Richard Ewell (behind Semmes); General John Bell Hood (behind Ewell).