Description
In his 1874 cartoon titled, "The Union as It Was," Thomas Nast depicts a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the White League shaking hands atop a skull and crossbones that rests above an African-American woman and man huddled over their dead child as a school house burns and an African American is lynched in the background.
Transcript of "The Union as It Was" Political Cartoon
Source-Dependent Questions
- By 1874, three amendments had been added to the U.S. Constitution and Congress had passed numerous Reconstruction and civil rights acts for the benefit of former slaves. Use evidence from the cartoon to explain the artist’s evaluation of those laws.
- Using your knowledge of Reconstruction and the evidence contained within this primary source and others you have interpreted, do you agree with the artist that life during Reconstruction is worse than slavery for African Americans in the South?
Citation Information
Nast, Thomas, "The Union as it was, The lost cause, worse than slavery," 1874. Courtesy of Library of Congress
Cartoon depicting the European great powers — Britain, France, Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary — struggling to stop the conflict in the Balkans from boiling over into something much bigger and much worse, 1912-1913. Crises over the Balkans were not new — they had been a semi-regular occurrence in European diplomacy since the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s began the slow process of eroding Ottoman control over the region.
The resulting power vacuum encouraged Russia, Austria and other great powers to try to move in to fill it either by supporting the creation of new states like Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria or taking territory directly (such as Bosnia-Herzogovina, annexed by Austria-Hungary in 1908). But equally important was the need of the European great powers to try and stop each other from gaining too much influence or power in the region as the Ottomans withdrew. Balancing these two often conflicting goals required very delicate diplomacy and was not helped by the emergence of the new Balkan states, like Serbia and Bulgaria, which were quite capable of turning the tables on those powers who sought to manipulate them as regional clients.
By the first decade of the new century many European leaders and diplomats were convinced that the next major European war would begin in the Balkans. The outbreak of the Balkan wars seemed to many observers in the press to be the much-predicted spark that would cause a wider war.
Keywords
How to cite this page
'Balkan troubles cartoon', URL: //nzhistory.govt.nz/media/photo/balkan-troubles-cartoon, (Ministry for Culture and Heritage), updated 30-Jul-2014
RELATED TO BALKAN TROUBLES CARTOON
U.S. History
1st EditionJohn Lund, Paul S. Vickery, P. Scott Corbett, Todd Pfannestiel, Volker Janssen
567 solutions
Western Civilization
9th EditionJackson J. Spielvogel
651 solutions
America's History for the AP Course
8th EditionEric Hinderaker, James A. Henretta, Rebecca Edwards, Robert O. Self
470 solutions
Western Heritage Since 1300, AP Edition
12th EditionDonald Kagan, Frank M. Turner, Steven Ozment
490 solutions