The Union as It Was

Nast structures this cartoon as a parody of heraldic imagery. A pseudo-coat-of-arms shield bears the legend "Worse than Slavery" and encloses a Black family — rendered in the broad, simplified caricature conventional to 1870s illustration — huddled between a lynched corpse hanging from a tree and the smoldering ruins of a schoolhouse. Two "supporters" flank the shield: a rifle-bearing White Leaguer (labeled on his vest) and a hooded Ku Klux Klan figure (labeled "K.K."), their hands clasped over a skull-and-crossbones captioned "The Lost Cause." Above, a dying American eagle carries the motto "This Is a White Man's Government." The cartoon's argument is precise: Reconstruction's promise of citizenship, literacy, and safety for freed Black Americans is being systematically destroyed not despite but through organized white Southern violence — making the post-war South, Nast insists, worse than slavery itself.