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The Impeachment of
Andrew Johnson |
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HarpWeek Commentary:
In this Harper’s Weekly cartoon, Thomas Nast
ridicules the American government’s purchase of Alaska from
Russia by depicting Secretary of State William H. Seward as an
elderly mother caring for her child, a small version of Uncle
Sam. The latter is irritated because of his sore
head—i.e., President Andrew Johnson (“Andy”), whose
lenient Reconstruction policy had angered Republicans.
Uncle Sam shakes his fist at a portrait of “King Andy,” a
pejorative nickname for Johnson. Seward tries to relieve
the national pain by applying Redding’s Russia Salve, a
popular ointment for skin maladies advertised in the pages of Harper’s
Weekly and elsewhere. For Nast, the purchase of
Alaska was an administration ploy to ease widespread
resentment toward the president. On the wall poster in
the cartoon’s background, Uncle Sam is shown trudging in
snowshoes across the icy tundra, planting American flags on
Alaskan mountaintops, as polar bears and walruses watch.
A picture of an Eskimo family is sarcastically labeled “One
of the Advantages.” |
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Old Mother Seward, "I'll
rub some of this on his sore spot; it may soothe him a little." |
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