Content note: 1868 Harper's Weekly cartoon with violence imagery and a Black victim. This object is shown as it was published. Why
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.
- Date
- 1868
- Period
- Pre-1914
- Made by
- Thomas Nast; Harper's Weekly
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Johnson Administration
- Leader
- Andrew Johnson
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Demonize
- Event
- 1868 US Election
- Techniques
- Fear appealTransferCard stacking
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Library of Congress, retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (published 1868; over 150 years old); LOC records no known restrictions on publication
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
