"One Vote Less"

By Jordan Livingston

In the post-civil war United States, the south was an area of extreme hostility toward former slaves and highly against African Americans in politics. The cartoon I have chosen titled, “One Vote Less,” by Richmond Whig is very symbolic of the turmoil of the time. The cartoon was actually originally posted in the August 8^th edition of Harpers Weekly^[1] and was used in a later edition of Harpers Weekly that would put it into context. For the most part the publication takes an anti-south republican view on the situations that this particular cartoon depicts. I would argue that the cartoon represents the uneasiness in the south, the bitterness of the south towards the suffrage of African Americans as it relates to the balance of political parties, as well as the extreme measures taken by certain peoples to ensure that white supremacy continued.

One of the main meanings that comes through in the cartoon is not just that it is dead African American man that has been killed, but the political tension that was occurring in reconstruction America that led to it. Eugene Lawrence writes in the later article including the cartoon, that, “The Ku-Klux labors have proved successful: a Democratic Governor has been elected, who denies the existence of any Ku-Klux conspiracy, and will see nothing of the brutal system of intimidation by which he has won his office.”^[2] This cartoon is meant to show the hostile tactics of the southern Democrats and show the extremes that they would go in order to keep the power out of the hands of the Republican Party that they felt threatened their way of life. They would do so even if it meant killing an African American in order to send a message of intimidation.

Lastly in the perspective of the time period, the cartoon is meant to show the terrors of the white supremacy that ruled the south during the reconstruction period. The article that uses the cartoon is in fact about the problems stemming from the Ku Klux Klan at the time,^[3] which is seen as the symbol for violence and white supremacy. An important connection to the Klan from the cartoon can be seen when looking to Martha Hodes where in her writing she states, “Although black women and whites who supported the rights of the freed people were also victims of Klan terror during Reconstruction, the greatest violence was reserved for black men.”^[4] This idea goes along with the cartoon in that we see a dead African American lying in front of a sign that says “Negro Killed.”^[5] The cartoon is meant to show that terror and extremism of the Klan while also showing the turmoil and unrest in the south. It would seem as if the turmoil and mess are being represented by the toppled crates in the background while the innocent looking dead African American is the victim of the terror and evil.^[6]

Overall my interpretation of the cartoon is this; it represents the evils of the reconstruction struggles in the south. It shows the very extreme measures taken against those who were innocent in order to allow the return to the top of those who were not. The time period being reconstruction era and the publication being northern, it was used to be an example of the atrocities, and a motive to spark action in order to protect those who were having their new rights revoked.

Endnotes:

^[1]  Richmond Whig, “ONE VOTE LESS,” Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, August 8, 1868, Vol. XIL.—No. 606 edition. 512.

Bibliography:

Hodes, Martha. “The Sexualization of Reconstruction Politics: White Women and Black Men in the South after the Civil War.” In American Sexual Politics: Sex, Gender, and Race since the Civil War, edited by John C. Fout and Maura Shaw Tantillo, 59–74. University of Chicago Press, 1993. http://historymaking.org/files/original/f2538868416d2380e54a5632a81b7d23.pdf.

Lawrence, Eugene. “The Ku-Klux Conspiracy.” Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. October 19, 1872, Vol. XVI.—No. 825 edition. 805. Accessed March 20, 2015 http://app.harpweek.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/ViewIndexEntryImage.asp?subEntryClass=combined&subEntryKey=551077&page=9

Whig, Richmond. “ONE VOTE LESS.” Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. August 8, 1868, Vol. XIL.—No. 606 edition. 512. Accessed March 20, 2015 http://app.harpweek.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/IssueImagesView.asp?titleId=HW&volumeId=1868&issueId=0808&page=512&imageSize=m