"He (The Solid South) Will Soon Be 'Lett Alone'"

By Christopher Clayton:

The cartoon “He (The Solid South) Will Soon Be ‘Lett Alone’” by Thomas Nast is a cartoon from April 26, 1879 in Harper’s Weekly about the exodus of African American laborers from the South during reconstruction. The exodus of the African Americans was the last of groups of peoples leaving the south due to Southern violence. The cartoon brings up these points and expresses that the South of the United States will soon be left to its own devices because of other groups leaving.

Nast’s cartoon has a rigid figure of a white man turning his back on a former slave talking to him. He is indignant and has a whip attached to his cane. He symbolizes the southern white man who hates Unionist, Carpet-Baggers, and the African Americans. He has his back turned to a former slave who calls him ‘Massa’ or master symbolizing that he is still in a position of servitude even if he is no longer a slave. Nast writes that the African American man is leaving because the master “kill us with kindness.” Nast is ridiculing the Southern white population that claims that it is kind and not violating any Civil Rights of the African Americans in the Southern United States. Nast also ridicules “The Solid South” by having the African American man say “I am going where the ‘bad Yankees’ live” and “There is too much freedom at the polls.” Nast is pointing out the African American plight in the Southern United States and ridiculing the Southern claims that they are “kind” to the African Americans and that there is freedom at the polls during this time.

During the time in which Nast created the cartoon of “The Solid South” African American laborers were flocking to the Northern States in the Union, primarily Kansas, in order to be protected and free from the Southern white attacks. In the same issue of Harper’s Weekly an author states that “So general a flight shows that they are seriously suffering, or seriously alarmed.” The same article goes on to say “The emigration of great bodies of laborers, therefore, means that they feel insecure.” African Americans were fleeing from the South due to poor treatment and unfair wages compared to the white Southerners who often attacked them. The Ku Klux Klan was part of the dangers that African Americans from the South were fleeing. With the voting restrictions, “Ku-Kluxery,” and generally poor living conditions they were forced to live in, the African American population had large bodies of people moving to the North to the alarm of Southern State governments. One man helping the migrants said “They are…Absolutely panic stricken.” A large part of the laborer class of the South fled, leaving “The Solid South” alone and with and insufficient labor force.

The main purpose of Nast’s cartoon is to show that the South will be “Let Alone” with no way to support it self and with no help from the federal government. The text on the building shows that federal troops have pulled out, carpet baggers have left, and African Americans are leaving. Thus only the one man is going to be in the state and thus unable to support himself. The text says that the problems of the South will be fixed once every one leaves but it goes against the rest of the cartoon.

Nast’s cartoon is about the South’s loss of its labor class and its driving away of them. It ridicules the Southern beliefs that others are the cause of their problems. It also highlights the problems of the Southern beliefs of “nigger insurrection and war of races” with the African American exodus. Therefore Nast created a cartoon to show the problem of the South and the causing of the exodus of 1879.

Bibliography:

"The Flight of Colored Laborers." Harper's Weekly, April 26, 1879. Accessed April 16, 2015. http://app.harpweek.com/IssueImagesView.asp?titleId=HW&volumeId=1879&issueId=0426&page=322&imageSize=d.

Nast, Thomas. "He (The Solid South) Will Soon Be "Let Alone"" Harper's Weekly, April 26, 1879. Accessed April 15, 2015. http://app.harpweek.com/IssueImagesView.asp?titleId=HW&volumeId=1879&issueId=0426&page=321.

Painter, Nell. "Millenarian Aspects of the Exodus to Kansas of 1879." Journal of Social History 9, no. 3 (1967): 331-38. Accessed April 17, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786574?pq-origsite=summon&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents.

"The Historic Elephant and Donkey." The New York Times, August 2, 1908. Accessed April 17, 2015. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D07EFDB113EE033A25751C0A96E9C946997D6CF&oref=slogin.