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Amphitheatrum Johnsonianum
On March 30, 1867, Harper's Weekly devoted a two-page spread to a cartoon by Thomas Nast that severely ridiculed President Andrew Johnson for a race riot that had occurred in New Orleans eight months before. It involved the Republican Party's efforts to reconvene the Louisiana State Constitutional Convention to adopt a new Constitution that protected the rights of African Americans, especially voting rights for freedmen. Angry Southern Democrats attacked black marchers who supported the Republican convention. The ensuing melee left scores of African Americans dead and many more wounded.
In Nast's cartoon, President Johnson is depicted as a Roman emperor observing with approval what Harper's called the "massacre of the innocents at New Orleans, July 30, 1866." This tragedy was pivotal in convincing Congress to pass stringent Reconstruction laws enforced by federal troops.
Thomas Nast, 1867 |