The Death of the "Great Negro Party"

[African Americana]: [Reconstruction]: [Republican Party]: [Pennsylvania]:

The Salt River Gazette - Extra. Wednesday, Oct. 9, 1867 [caption title].

[Philadelphia: 1867]. Broadside, 12.5 x 9.25 inches, illustrated with several woodcuts. Old folds and creases, some scuffing and minor chipping to edges, rectangular-shaped portion of left margin cut away, not costing any of the printed area. About very good. Item #5694

A very rare political cartoon lambasting the Republican Party for its continued support of the African American community following the Civil War. This biting political cartoon announces the death of the "Great Negro Party" (i.e., the Republican Party) as a result of the defeat of several Republican candidates to Democrats in the Philadelphia local elections of 1867. The broadside depicts a series of racist vignettes and caricatures with equally derisive captions. The eight separate vignettes picture a well-dressed African American caricature with dialect caption reading, "Golly! Dis child make 'em sick dis time;" a scene of a Black caricature resting while white people work to pay their taxes behind him, captioned "The Work of Congress repudiated by the People" and with additional references to "white women," "idleness," "whiskey," "Freedom," "Uncle Sam," and more; an elderly African American man with a cane, with the caption reading, "De old man has a heap of trouble on his head dis morning," a proposed statue of an elderly Black woman sitting on a ragged donkey "to be erected in front of the Union League House;" a scene of potential miscegenation "at the Broad Street League House" in which the minister marrying a Black man to a white woman complains, "Marriage is a contract. I must do this or be fined;" a young Black man in winter wear observing his shadow, captioned, "A Big Thing on Ice, by the Tribune's 'Low Dutch;'" and finally a striking illustration of the head of an African American man above a coffin, with the caption reading, "The Great Negro Party---Born, 1856---Died, Oct. 8, 1867." The implication of the latter is clear: the Republican Party is dead in Philadelphia, and African Americans are to blame for it.

Though the broadside carries no imprint, the references to Broad Street, the Philadelphia Tribune, and the Union League House make the location obvious. The employment of the term “Salt River” in the title of the "Gazette" is no accident. Beginning in the 1840s, and continuing throughout the latter half of the 19th century, "Salt River" became a popular term and visual metaphor for the political defeat of candidates and their parties.

According to the Library Company of Philadelphia’s cataloguing note: "The African American dandy caricature originally appeared as an illustration titled 'S.S. Sanford in One of his Great Delineations of Ethiopian Character' in 'Our Day,' an 1860 circular that advertised his Sanford Opera House. The statue caricature originally appeared in the 'Original Comicalities' section of the June 1854 edition of 'Graham's Magazine' and was titled 'Woolly Equestrian Statue of the late Mrs. Joyce Heth.' Mrs. Heth, an early attraction of P.T. Barnum from 1835 until 1836, claimed that she was over 100 years old and a nanny to George Washington."

A searing political cartoon highly critical of the Republican Party, and typifying anti-African American sentiment that began almost immediately following the Civil War, and continued throughout Reconstruction and beyond. The anonymous publishers of this work apparently issued it on both October 9 and 10, 1867. Both versions are exceedingly rare. OCLC records just four copies of this October 9 issue, at AAS, the Library of Congress, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and the Osher Map Library in Maine. Frank Weitenkampf's bibliography on political cartoons records only a version dated October 10 with the only copy noted at the New York Historical Society (OCLC also lists one at Northwestern).

Weitenkampf, Political Caricature in the United States in Separately Published Cartoons, p.154 (ref).

Price: $1,250