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One of the leading candidates for the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1868 was
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase,
a former anti-slavery activist and treasury
secretary in the Lincoln administration. Beside
those incongruities with the Democratic party,
Chase was a supporter of civil rights for black
Americans during the Reconstruction era. He
eventually lost the Democratic nomination to
Horatio Seymour, the former governor of New York
who had vigorously opposed the Civil War draft.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast saw the irony of the
Chase candidacy and turned the tables on the
Democrats. In this cartoon he asks the same
question about the Democratic party that
Democratic politicians and newspapers employed to
frighten their constituencies away from the
Republican party: "Would you marry your
daughter to a Nigger?" In the center of the
picture, Chase presides as the officiating
minister between a black man and an Irish-American
woman representing the Democratic party.
The other figures in the cartoon are leading
Democratic politicians. On the left side (l-r):
John Hoffman, New York gubernatorial candidate;
John Morrissey, Tammany Hall associate and former
prize-fighter; Fernando Wood (background), former
New York City mayor; Manton Marble, New York
World editor; Senator Thomas Hendricks of
Indiana, a presidential candidate; and, James
Gordon Bennett Sr., former New York Herald
editor.
On the right side (l-r): Horatio Seymour,
former New York governor and eventual 1868
presidential nominee; Representative James Brooks
of New York; Clement Vallandingham, former leader
of the Peace Democrats; Senator James Doolittle of
Wisconsin (background), a presidential candidate;
George Pendleton, 1864 vice presidential nominee
and the leading 1868 presidential candidate;
Raphael Semmes (background), famed Confederate
admiral; and Nathan Bedford Forrest, former
Confederate general of Fort Pillow infamy.
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