History of the United States I / Unit 16 USH1 2267 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Clymer Poster
The idea
The eighteen sixty-six campaign poster for Hiester Clymer, the Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, shows a caricatured Black man reclining while White men labour, saying whar is de use for me to work as long as dey make dese appropriations. Behind him a building is labelled Freedman's Bureau, Negro Estimate of Freedom, inscribed Freedom and No Work, Candy, and Rum, Gin, Whiskey. The caption reads that the Freedman's Bureau is an agency to keep the Negro in idleness at the expense of the White man.
In practice
A state campaign poster arguing that public assistance produces laziness, printed one year after the people it depicts were freed from forced labour.
Where people slip
The argument that relief makes people lazy arrives in American politics fully formed, in eighteen sixty-six, aimed at people who had spent their lives working without pay. Note what the Bureau actually did, at entry 2266. Note also that this is a northern poster, in a Pennsylvania governor's race, which locates the argument outside the South from the beginning.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
Unlocks
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