“Of Course He Wants to Vote the Democratic Ticket” This Republican cartoon from the October 21, 1876, issue of Harper’s Weekly comments sarcastically on the possibility of honest elections in the South. The caption reads: “You’re free as air, ain’t you? Say you are or I’ll blow yer black head off.” The cartoon demonstrates not only some Northerners’ concern that violence would deliver the election to the Democrats but also the perception that white Southerners were crude, drunken, ignorant brutes.

The Granger Collection, New York.