The Democratic Party By Thomas Nast

In “Reconstruction Revisited”, Eric Foner reexamines the political, social, and economic experiences of black and white Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War. With the help of many historian works, Foner gives equal representation to both sides of the Reconstruction argument.

In 1872, John Gast created a masterpiece that not only exemplified what American society was like, but global advancement as well. This artwork, rightfully titled “American Progress” is a clear display of the journey Americans were taking in attempt to civilize the world to their standards, what would become known as the White Man’s burden. While we continue to call it a burden, it seemed anything but to those on the “civilized” side of it. “American Progress” shows the joy of bringing enlightenment to those believed to be in need of help. Despite being labeled as a strenuous responsibility, fulfilling the White Man’s burden was something powerful countries enjoyed and by accomplishing this onus they themselves created, they are seen as the more powerful and therefor developed members of society.

Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Negro race still was not accepted as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles faced during this period, one must take a look at its' literature. James Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities faced before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” One does not only read this book, but instead one takes a journey alongside a burdened mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.

This duality, this mixture of something wonderful and something equally terrible really captures for me the state of the country during the Reconstruction period. A lot of pulling and pushing. The african-americans had been freed but to what purpose? Even when granted the Fifteenth amendment allowing black males the right to vote, they were still disenfranchised through state laws which kept them from voting through legal loopholes and to top it off, none of this did much in the way of women's suffrage. Again, back to the pulling and pushing struggle. Sort of like "two steps forward but three steps back." When thinking of the Reconstruction era one must also remember the violence that lingered on. The formation of the Ku Klux Klan was birthed in that era and from that violence. Such a prolific group full of hate and detestable rhetoric that lingers on to this day. One good example of that violence is given in our text when it describes the events of Hamburg, South Carolina on July 4th, 1876. The violence of one-thousand armed white men obliterating one-hundred african amercan men. I would be remiss not to recall the freedmen bureau, the many charities towards education as well as the government

During the Reconstruction period, beginning in 1865, the United States entered a period in which they mended relationships between the North and the South. It was also a period of hostility between both sides. The war had ended and the Southerners’ had suffered plenty of damage to their land. The Reconstruction period was a time which the South was rebuilt with the integration of all the newly freed blacks into society. This particular collection I chose by Thomas Nast called “Franchise. But not this man?” and “Pardon” are depicted during the Reconstruction. This collection was printed in the Harper’s Weekly, a very popular Union newspaper during the Civil War. An analysis of the images depict the common beliefs shared by

America in 1857 was a “Nation on the Brink.” Relationships between the Northern and Southern states had been strained for decades. During the 1850 's, the situation exploded. The Compromise of 1850 served as a clear warning that the slavery issue—relatively dormant since the Missouri Compromise of 1820—had returned. African Americans existence in America has been a disaster ever since they have been here. Every avenue of their cultural, economic, literary, political, religious, and social values has been violated to no avail, and then only until the

Moreover, the document links the changing definition of freedom for whites as self-ownership. In contrast, the changing definition of freedom for blacks meant having full political rights, citizenship, and owning land. In Eric Foner’s Voices of Freedom, a former slave’s petition to the president, who took his lands away to give to the previous owners states, “[t]his is our home, we have made These lands what they are,” for he demands to the president himself that they deserve the right to own land. The treatment of black Southerners differed greatly from white Southerners due to the idea of white supremacy. Colby’s story matters because Reconstruction aimed to rebuild the South, although that did not occur for black Southerners, since black oppression continued on after this time

For almost 150 years, since the first slaves touched American soil in the early 1600’s, slavery flourished throughout America. Predominantly in the South, slaves were prized as free labor. Possibly the keystone of the entire southern economy, slaves were valuable and southerners had no plans to ever free slaves. But as time progressed, antislavery activists pushed for reform and the freeing of slaves. Developed and published by these activists were numerous signs, banners, and newspaper ads publicizing the inhumanity of slavery. In 1935, Patrick Reason engraved a picture of a female slave, praying “Am I not a Woman and a Sister!?”. (Document C) To illustrate the dehumanization of slaves, and call for change. Such propaganda illustrated the ideal of “All men are created equal” A common angle taken by antislavery activists was the point that slaves are humans and possess their own souls and identities. Thus being entitled to equality and freedom in this nation, the “land of the free”. Slaves were not the only ones who were oppressed. So were immigrants and women, though not nearly to the same extent as slaves. Immigrants were discriminated against if they weren't free white men. As stated in (Document D), as a nation of youth, we need strength in numbers to steady us in the unstable times early in our country’s youth. And to do this, reform is needed to reevaluate and

African-Americans have fought on many of liberty’s battlefields from the pre-emancipated plantation to the killing fields of the Civil War. African-Americans have always been willing to fight not just for their freedom, but for their country as well. Yet, their country never lived up to its founding document that asserts that, “All men are created equal; ”instead,

According to Matthew Mason’s academic journal “A Missed Opportunity? The Founding, Postcolonial Realities, And The Abolition Of Slavery,” African Americans have been enslaved in America since the early 17th century.” The first slaves were brought by the Dutch to the colony of Jamestown, Virginia to help harvest tobacco. The institution of slavery was practiced in America through the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Slavery helped to build the economic foundation of the United States. When the Emancipation Proclamation was passed by Abraham Lincoln in the year 1893 it changed the lives of over three million slaves who were reclassified as “slave” to “free.” Former slaves struggled to find their place within this new world of freedom which they had not yet known before. However, African Americans still faced problems such as discrimination, lack of opportunity, stereotyping, and mortality. Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois both confronted these issues. These two men advocated for the advancement of Black people within society, however in this essay I argue that Du Bois was more effective than Booker T. Washington because of his idea that African Americans should have the same possibility to achieve the same rights as any other race in the United States.

Slavery is a contradictory subject in American history because “one hears…of the staid and gentle patriarchy, the wide and sleepy plantations with lord and retainers, ease and happiness; [while] on the other hand on hears of barbarous cruelty and unbridles power and wide oppression of men” (Dubois 2). Dubois’s The Negro in the United States is an autoethnographic text which is a representation “that the so-defined others

Nicholas Lemann’s book helps us to heed to the lessons and experiences of the slaves in the golden age, from the 1930s to the 1970s. America’s working class was comprised heavily of racial and ethnic minorities, who often stood in problematic relation to political and civil societies. When they tried flexing their political muscle, either through in their workplace, or electoral means, they were often provoked by the hard fist of authority. African Americans who prearranged the Republican Party in Grant Parish, Louisiana, elected officials who represented their views. Later on, in 1873, the representatives were murdered by the white vigilantes in Colfax on Easter Sunday. This indicates how the American politics were encompassed by an explosive mix of democracy and terror.

Through the illustration of innocent victims, Nast’s cartoon reveals the Democratic party’s desire to further degrade the African American community. In the middle of the cartoon, a black man, wearing a Union military uniform, is being pinned to the floor by three Democrats [see fig. 1]. The Union military uniform connotes his dedication to the nation. Furthermore, Nast uses intricate details, such as the black man’s childlike features, to portray the man’s innocence. The cartoon illustrates angry-looking Democrats, prepared to stab and beat this soldier for attempting to exercise his right to vote. Their prevention of the soldier from voting creates an irony; the soldier “earned the right to vote through [his] participation in the war” but

Even though freedom has been our nation’s identity for its entire existence, our nation has suffered “dark ages” when the freedoms of African Americans were repressed. During the period of slavery, African Americans were forced to labor under often cruel and gruesome conditions, for their white masters. Solomon Northup, a free man forcefully made a slave, describes his thoughts on slavery in his 12 Years a Slave:

The dichotomy of freedom and slavery in rhetoric and rise of the United States of America has long been an enigma, a source of endless debate for scholars and citizens alike who wonder how a nation steeped in the ideals of republicanism could so easily subjugate and enslave an entire group of people. The Chesapeake region was home to America’s great statesmen, men who espoused ideals of freedom and liberty from tyranny. Yet at the same time, these men held hundreds of men, women, and children in conditions of lifelong bondage. How then did this dichotomy arise? The dangers posed by indentured servants that became freemen resulted in the development of a system of African-descended chattel slavery in the Chesapeake, a system whose creation and continuance was aided by a continuum of racial thinking and racial prejudice aimed at Africans in Virginia.