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Thomas Nast
on the Chinese
1886This is a pair of political cartoons by Thomas Nast which were clipped from two issues of Harper\'s Weekly which were published 140 years ago. One from March 20, 1886, is a two-panel cartoon measuring 11x6 inches in size. It is captioned:IF WE WERE ENOUGH OF A NATION TO DEMAND —
WE OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH OF A NATION NOW TO PAY.
U. Sam. ‘We, as a Nation, are not responsible; it is the State; and as the murders were all committed by unnaturalized foreigners, you should go to their native lands for indemnity.’ This is an editorial comment in the aftermath of the notorious Rock Springs Massacre in Wyoming in Sept. 1885, in which over two dozen Chinese immigrant miners were slaughtered by other miners who were European immigrants. This was after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and when China demanded payments for the victims, the U.S. paid some property reparations, but claimed no responsibility for the killings, blaming them strictly on non-American citizens.Thomas Nast was the most important political cartoonist in U.S. history, and often used the symbol of Uncle Sam in his drawings, as he does twice here.The other cartoon appeared in the May 15, 1886, issue of Harper’s Weekly. It measures 5x6 inches in size, and shows two pigtailed Chinamen commenting ironically on a scene of rioting Americans in the background. It shows the recent Haymarket Riot in Chicago, and shows a crowd battling police in the streets of that city. The rioters carry flags saying, ‘Burn the Town!’ ‘Kill the Police’ and ‘Socialist.’ Meanwhile, the peaceful Chinese look on, bemused, with the caption stating:THE CHINESE PUZZLED.
“Is it because we don’t do deeds like that, that we ‘must go’ and they stay?”
_gsrx_vers_1836 (GS 10.1 (1836))
