---
title: This Is a White Man's Government
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/white-mans-government-nast-harpers-weekly-1868/
description: 'Harper''s Weekly, 5 September 1868, p. 568. Three men clasp hands over a Black man lying on the ground: a figure with a club marked ''A VOTE'' and a cap…'
section: Collection
---

[Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)

**Content note:** 1868 Harper's Weekly cartoon with violence imagery and a Black victim. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![This Is a White Man's Government](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/white-mans-government-nast-harpers-weekly-1868.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/white-mans-government-nast-harpers-weekly-1868.jpg)

# This Is a White Man's Government

Harper's Weekly, 5 September 1868, p. 568. Three men clasp hands over a Black man lying on the ground: a figure with a club marked 'A VOTE' and a cap marked '5 Points', a figure with a knife marked 'The Lost Cause' and a belt buckle 'CSA', and a man in a frock coat holding a roll of money. Behind them a school and a building burn. The caption quotes the 1868 Democratic platform on the Reconstruction Acts ('usurpations, and unconstitutional, revolutionary, and void') as the source of the title phrase. The image links the party's platform to violence, the Confederacy and urban machine politics.

[← The Republican Platform, or the Political Mountebank](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/republican-platform-mountebank-mcdermott-1868/) [Das ganze Deutschland soll es sein. Haut sie auf den Chassepot! (German broadsheet song and caricature, Franco-Prussian War) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/das-ganze-deutschland-soll-es-sein-chassepot-1870/)

## Using the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)