After the Civil War, African Americans faced assaults upon their newly won political rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, giving all male citizens the right to vote, disturbed many Southerners, as well as Northerners, who used a variety of extra-legal means to intimidate blacks and prevent them from voting.
1. Political cartoons such as Nast's employ a different visual rhetoric from photographs or paintings. What makes cartoons effective as pieces of social commentary?
2. How might a Southern Democrat have depicted the events of the era of Reconstruction?
