Harper’s Weekly -Thomas Nast PC’s – Reconstruction 1865 -1877

"We regard the Reconstruction Acts (so called) of Congress as usurpations, and unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void." - Democratic Platform of 1868. The three wings of the Democratic Party are pictured here…the Irish, (who using “machine politics” controls the urban vote) White South (Nathan Bedford Forrest-KKK), and the Rich (who want to move on to making money “they have their freedom don’t they.”) “ ONE VOTE LESS.” RICHMOND WHIG During Reconstruction, basic civil rights for black Americans were enacted into the U.S. Constitution via the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, into federal law through the Civil Rights Acts, and into the constitutions and laws of the former Confederate states and a few Northern ones. Given the prevalent racism in the country, and the resentment of many Southern whites to Reconstruction policies, a political reaction developed across the South. It resulted in the replacement of Republican Reconstruction governments with Democratic "Redeemer" governments. That change was accomplished and sustained in part by intimidation and violence against blacks and their white allies. The vehicle for those strong-arm tactics were paramilitary groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and the Red Shirts. Source: Harper’s Weekly Editorial - Harper's Weekly, November 4, 1871, pages 1026-1027 (Editorial) "The Ku-Klux"

That the bitter hostilities of the war would survive it, was to be expected. That the hatred of the government and of the influences which were victorious would long continue, was only natural; and that its consequences should be turned upon the race whose slavery was the cause of the war, and whose freedom was the sign of the victory, was not surprising. The terror which prevails in certain parts of the late rebel States, under the name of the Ku-Klux, is undeniable. Yet how strong party feeling upon the subject is at the North may be seen in the fact that when the statement of a just man from one of the Southern States was read in the Senate, that fifty thousand persons had been murdered by the Ku-Klux since the war closed, it was asserted by an opponent that there had not been one. The significant fact in all this lawlessness and terror is that it is chiefly political. The masked blow of the Ku-Klux always falls upon some loyal man, black or white, and always upon a Republican. Democrats are unharmed. It is not a terror for those who attempted to destroy the government during the war, but for those who sustained it. The conclusion is irresistible that it is an organization of Democrats. This fact is made still more unquestionable by the denials and sneers of Northern Democrats. They call it rawhead and bloody-bones, a bugaboo of scared radicals, and a device invented to authorize military coercion of Democratic districts. Of course the darkness and the mystery with which the Ku-Klux is enveloped serve both to exaggerate and to conceal the truth. They argue FOR a state of society which is simply intolerable…If the Democratic party were resolved that the Ku-Klux should disappear, it would be heard of no more. If it were as anxious to restore and confirm the tranquility of the Southern States as it is to throw the odium of military despotism upon a government which seeks to protect innocent citizens from cruel lawlessness, that lawlessness would cease. The country will not forget that the Democratic party sustains the Ku-Klux by affecting to deny its existence; that the terror which is undeniable in certain parts of the Southern States is Democratic; and that the party whose leaders refuse to assist the authorities in maintaining order hopes to elect a President and obtain control of the government. “ Everything Points to a Democratic Victory This Fall.”-Southern Papers October 31 st , 1874 This cartoon reflects the altered state of Southern politics in which the attempt by black men to vote had become a life-threatening risk especially after the “Redemption by Redeemers.” Harper’s Weekly Editorial that accompanies this Nast cartoon: October 24, 1874 WORSE THAN SLAVERY

How easily wicked and treasonable organizations may gain the control over the peaceable and the industrious members of society has always been signally apparent at the South. A band of wild and desperate young men, maddened with whisky and torn by demoniac passions, is the governing power in Texas and Alabama, Georgia, and even Kentucky. Masked, armed, and supplied with horses and money by the Democratic candidates for office, they ride over the country at midnight, and perpetrate unheard- of enormities. It is said, and no doubt truly, that not one in a hundred of their fearful deeds is ever told. Their enormous vices and crimes are faintly depicted in the Ku-Klux reports of 1872. Yet before these infamous associations Southern society trembles. They rob, they murder, they whip, they intimidate; yet no man, white or black, dares to denounce them. If a colored man ventures to tell of some frightful assassination which he saw in the dim midnight, he is himself dragged from the prison where he had been placed for safety and slaughtered, as happened recently in Tennessee, with horrible mockeries. If a United States official becomes conspicuous in politics, he is carried into the woods and shot, as at Coushatta. In Alabama and Louisiana the bands of young ruffians patrol the country by day as well as night, shooting down Republican voters. According to a recent estimate, there is a Republican majority of 20,000 in Louisiana, yet M’Enery and his band of assassins claim to have carried the last election, and hope to win the next by their usual outrages. Nor does any Southern paper in Georgia, or Alabama, or Texas, and scarcely in Tennessee, venture even to denounce the murderers or the violators of the laws; or if any Northern journal, roused to a proper indignation by the wrongs inflicted upon peaceable settlers and citizens in the disturbed districts, calls for the suppression and punishment of the lawless crew, it is at once placed under the ban of the secret associations. Such journals (exclaims the Austin Daily Statesman) "are more to be hated than the rattlesnake." Harper’s Weekly has been especially marked in this way, and its sale is forbidden by no unmeaning threats to the booksellers of Austin. The White Leaguers are resolved that the power of a free press shall never be felt in the South, and hope to pursue their career of crime unimpeded by the voice of humanity or reason.

“ IN SELF-DEFENSE” SOUTHERN CHIVALRY. EF I HAD-IN-T-ER KILLED YOU, YOU WOULD HAVE GROWED UP TO RULE ME.” October, 28 1876 This image dramatically condemns the brutal racism of some white Southerners against blacks. The white man has killed a black child, and his plea of "self-defense" exemplifies the perspective among Southern whites that Reconstruction had led to "black rule." The cartoon appeared just a few weeks before the presidential election OF 1876…AND illustrates the horrors of the implementation of the “Mississippi Plan,” in which Democrats in the South used violence through their para-military arms, KKK-Red Shirts-White Leagues, to REDEEM the Southern State Governments….The Compromise of 1877 ends Reconstruction in the South and begins the 100 year period which is characterized as “Jim Crow” in the South.

I have taught US History for over 25 years…and every time I get to this point…I feel that I can never truly impart the horrors and struggle which occurred during this time… I understand that these images can be upsetting…BUT…WE cannot ignore them… or we would be IGNORANT –Busch

Assignment: MANDATORY****

Choose 1 image. 1-What do YOU notice, explain why? Describe what the image portrays… 2-What is the Point of View? 3-Read the caption and summarize the significance of the image in context Reconstruction… 1865 – 1877.