Hang Thaddeus

Nast frames a damning contrast in two visual planes. At left, a gaunt figure stands before a wall labeled MONROE — Jefferson Davis, held at Fortress Monroe — as a bowing, hat-in-hand President Andrew Johnson extends a PARDON document with obsequious deference. In the background, a gallows bears two dangling figures labeled THAD STEVENS and W. PHILLIPS — Radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens and abolitionist Wendell Phillips — hanged in effigy by the logic of Johnson's own rhetoric. The caption quotes Johnson's actual rejoinder to hecklers during his disastrous 1866 'Swing Around the Circle' speaking tour: 'Then I would ask you why not hang Thad Stevens and Wendell Phillips?' Nast weaponizes Johnson's words verbatim, making the President complicit in pardoning a Confederate leader while figuratively executing his Republican critics.