Thomas Nast Portfolio
By 1876 Reconstruction-era Republican idealism was largely
exhausted. Republican state governments in the South,
supported primarily by African American votes, were charged
with massive corruption, similar to that charged against the
Irish Catholic-backed Tammany Hall machine. The charges
were exaggerated, but Republican reformers, among them
Harper’s Weekly, blasted traditional Republican leaders for
sustaining corrupt governments and engaging in dishonest
practices themselves. To offset waning support for
Reconstruction, Republicans resorted to anti-Catholic,
anti-Irish posturing, prejudices that were widely shared at the
time. This cartoon was published in the wake of the disputed
election of 1876, in which both sides charged fraud. Nast
compares the African American Republican vote of the South
to the Irish Catholic Democratic vote of the North. Under
such circumstances, winning elections is hardly an honor, and
neither Democrat nor Republican should claim special virtue.
Nast’s changing attitude toward former slaves paralleled that
of many Republicans as they shifted from the idealistic politics
of the Reconstruction era to the cynical politics of the Gilded Age.