Both Sides of the Question

This double-page plate from Harper's Weekly arrays the 1868 election's competing loyalties across three smaller vignettes above and one panoramic confrontation below. The lower image, captioned "Both Sides of the Question," splits into "The Boys in Blue" (Union veterans massed left, carrying a regimental banner) and "The Boys in Gray" (Confederate veterans gathered right). Between them stands a single civilian figure, the contested voter. The surrounding vignettes—labeled "Military Despotism," "The Bloated Bondholders Who Will Suffer," and "The Political Andersonville"—rebut Democratic campaign charges against Radical Reconstruction. Nast frames the Union soldier's sacrifice against Southern defiance, arguing that a Democratic victory would betray the war's outcome. The figures are rendered without overt ethnic caricature here, though Nast's broader 1868 work frequently depicted Black voters sympathetically while caricaturing Irish Democrats with simian features consistent with Anglo-American nativist illustration conventions of the period.