The Georgetown Election—The Negro at the Ballot-Box

Nast depicts a queue of men approaching a Georgetown polling table staffed by two election clerks. A Black voter reaches forward to cast his ballot. Behind him stand white men whose sour, crossed-arm postures signal resentment; one carries a rolled document labeled Suffrage and another bears papers suggesting nativist affiliation. The table's signage names both candidates: Welch and, more prominently, "The White Man's Ticket for Mayor H. Addison." Nast's argument is unambiguous: he endorses Black male suffrage—granted by the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified 1868—and mocks those who would deny it. The explicit "White Man's Ticket" placard indicts Addison's coalition as openly exclusionary. Welch won narrowly, 1,019 to 933, with pro-suffrage voters providing his margin.