A Republican Form of Government, and No Domestic Violence

Nast draws Louisiana as a bound woman in white, her head wrenched back by two figures in the pointed hoods associated with the White League—forerunners of Klan iconography—who force something down her throat while a crowd of similarly capped men loiter behind them. A scroll at her feet reads Compromise Louisiana. The caption quotes "Banditti" threatening: the Northern and Southern Democratic Party will place the U.S. Government in their hands—"So what are you going to do about it?" Nast is attacking the 1875 Wheeler Compromise, which returned Democrats to power in Louisiana by sidelining the Reconstruction-era Republican government. He treats the settlement not as pragmatic peace but as coercion by domestic terrorists, arguing it violates the constitutional guarantee of republican government and protection from internal violence.