Occasional artwork: Because It’s The Dream

“I am especially to speak to you of the character and mission of the United States, with special reference to the question whether we are the better or the worse for being composed of different races of men.”

— Frederick Douglass, Composite Nation, 1869

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the USA.  So, here’s a Thanksgiving cartoon from 1869, by the great American cartoonist Thomas Nast.



You may have seen it before.  But it’s an interesting piece of work, and rewards close attention.


So most obviously, this shows people of different races and nationalities sitting around a table, while Uncle Sam carves a turkey.  (Yes, by 1869 Thanksgiving in November was already a thing.  And yes, so was eating turkey.)   The overall message is pretty straightforward: everyone has a place at the American table.  But let’s take a look at some details.

— Uncle Sam is not yet wearing his red-white-and-blue-with-a-top-hat outfit.  He’s in civvies here, appropriate for a family dinner.  And he’s not lecturing or talking. He’s serving, and he’s doing it silently.  Nast (who was really an excellent artist with a keen eye for detail) has given him the slightly distracted look of the American paterfamilias confronted with a tricky technical job — carving a large turkey for a big table of people — that only comes once or twice per year.



— Clockwise around the table: to Sam’s left we see an Irish couple.  Later in his career, Nast would regularly depict the Irish as subhuman simians.  That’s not the case here… though you do see that Mrs. Ireland is keeping a wary eye on Mr. Ireland.

— Next is a Mexican lady (the veil and fan give it away) and a vaguely Middle Eastern looking guy.  As always at Thanksgiving, the two singles are put next to each other.  

— The next couple… her hat looks Spanish, but he looks more French.  (This was still the Second Empire, and he’s rocking a very Napoleon III hairdo and beard.)  Anyway, definitely Europeans of some sort.

— Next we have a Chinese family.  In 1869, this would have been eyebrow-raising, but Nast is literally putting them front and center.  Even these weirdest, most alien foreigners are part of the American family!  And they have a baby.   Nast — who knew exactly what he was doing — is putting this baby right in our face: yes, they will come here and have children and settle down, and that’s just fine.  (Also, every Thanksgiving dinner is improved by a baby or two.)

— Opposite from Sam we have his older sister Columbia.  For reasons that are fascinating but beyond the scope of this blog post, Columbia pretty much disappeared from American iconography in the 1940s.  But she was around long before Sam, and for over a century she kept pace with him as a symbol of America.  

— And next to Columbia we have an African-American couple, with another baby.  Nast has very deliberately seated Columbia between two nonwhites, representing two of the groups that 1869 white Americans were most likely to be alarmed by or bigoted against.   Jim Crow was still in the future, but the idea of sitting down to dinner between a Chinaman and a Negro?  This would have been startling to most and shocking to many.  But, again, it’s literally front and center.  And Columbia is clearly comfortable here!  Like Sam, she’s not talking or holding forth.  She’s listening to her neighbors, smiling slightly, looking perfectly content.



— Along the far side of the table we have an English couple (that’s John Bull); two bearded guys whose origins are unclear, though one of them might be wearing a fez; a Dutch couple (the Dutch were always depicted as fat, it was a thing); a tall, solitary Native American with feathers in his hair; and another family whose origins are unclear, except the father looks vaguely Mitteleuoropaisch and is eyeing the pie rather hungrily.  Not much to add here except that Nast has seated John Bull as far as possible from the Irish.

Taking a step back, we note that everyone at this table is well dressed and well behaved.  Nobody is angry, sullen, drunk or quarreling.  And the glimpses we get of the table show that it’s full but not grossly overloaded.  The implicit message:  restraint, good manners, prosperity without excess.  You could do a class analysis and say that it’s very much a bourgeois ideal, but… there are worse things?  Especially for nonwhites and immigrants in 1869?

I will note that this cartoon was written at pretty much the high point of Nast’s personal liberalism.  As he got older and richer, he got crankier and more conservative.  His later cartoons can be pretty nasty — racist, classist, violent — though still technically brilliant until nearly the end.  But as a young man in 1869, he was absolutely breathing that hopeful post-Civil War air of a New Birth of Freedom. 

I linked to Frederick Douglass’ Composite Nation above.  Let me link to it again.  Douglass was flat-out amazing, an escaped slave who became one of 19th century America’s greatest writers and thinkers.  He gets half neglected because he’s pigeonholed into Black History.  That’s a damn shame, because he was a much broader thinker than that.  The essay in question, for instance, was about Chinese immigration. Douglass uses that to make one of the first clear and thorough arguments for a liberal immigration policy anywhere ever.  — Anyway, Douglass’ ideas were very much in the air in 1869, and they’re almost certainly one of the inspirations for Nast here.

Okay, so that’s the grouping around the table.  What else is going on here?

— Behind Uncle Sam, there’s a painting on the wall.  It’s clearly labeled “Castle Garden”.  Castle Garden was in New York Cit.  (Well, it still is.  Just, today it’s known as The Battery.)  And Castle Garden was Ellis Island before there was Ellis Island — for decades, it was the main receiving point for immigrants.  Just to drive the point home, the painting adds “Welcome”.

— On the other wall… okay, there’s a lot going on.  It’s hung with patriotic bunding in the pattern of the US flag.  Below it, left to right, we have a painting of Abraham Lincoln; then a statue of Justice; then a larger painting of George Washington; then a statue of Liberty; and finally a painting of Ulysses Grant (who had just been inaugurated as President).  You can’t really see it in this small reproduction, but under Lincoln are words from his Second Inaugural:  “With Malice Towards None, And Charity Towards All” — words intended to begin the healing of a nation bitterly divided by civil war. 



— Above Grant is a sash saying “15th Amendment”.  That’s the amendment to the US Constitution, under consideration at the time of this cartoon, which prohibits federal or state governments from limiting a citizen’s right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

— In case the reader didn’t spot this, the literal centerpiece of the table says “Self Government” and “Universal Suffrage”.  Everyone at this table gets a vote!  And everyone at this table is assumed capable of responsible self-government!

— And finally, the captions in the lower corners read:  Come One Come All, Free And Equal.  

Phew. 

Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but there’s a point here:  these are not new ideas!  This cartoon was published in Harper’s Weekly — at that time, one of the most influential publications in the country — over 150 years ago.  The ideas it expressed were not fringe or radical.  The 15th Amendment was about to pass, and the US was about to begin 50 years of accepting massive waves of immigration on a scale unmatched in previous history.

I’ll give Frederick Douglass the last word:

“I submit that this question [of immigration] should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency. There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are eternal, universal and indestructible.

“Among these is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here…

“I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

“But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men… And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United States is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt.

“As a matter of selfish policy, leaving right and humanity out of the question, we cannot wisely pursue any other course. Other governments mainly depend for security upon the sword; ours depends mainly upon the friendship of the people… and that policy is a mad one, which would reduce the number of its friends by excluding those who would come, or by alienating those who are already here.”

Happy Thanksgiving, all.