“Driven Back!”: Undead Souths
In which we explore the Georgia State University Southern Labor Archives
Below, I have selected an image from the 19th and Early 20th Century Labor Prints housed under the Southern Historical Collection.
Here is the information I would include to annotate this document:
Link to Digital Home
http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/laborprints/id/71
Information
Name: “Driven Back! Dedicated to our Southern Friends”
Date: 1882
Artist: Gillam, Bernhard, 1856–1896
Gillam was a political cartoonist who worked for various magazines and is most well-known for his work on during the Grover Cleveland campaign of 1892. He was a Republican policy supporter, so it’s interesting that his cartoons of James Blaine (tattooed in his numerous scandals) helped lead to Cleveland’s election.
Original Publication Location: Puck
Puck (1871–1918) was a satirical magazine of the Guilded Age. It is considered the U.S.’s first large-scale successful humorous magazine, and it was well-known for its political cartoons. You can look at the complete 1884 run of the magazine free, here. The Wikipedia page for Puck has several examples of the magazine’s illustrations.
Analysis
This cartoon is compelling for a number of reasons. It juxtaposes northern capital, labor, and emigration with a large, but notably dead, South. While the sign says the South needs capital, labor, and grand opportunity, the confederate dead holds these things back. He is heavily armed with the threat of lynching, murder, duels, violent death, assassination, and a shotgun. Though he is but a ghost, he looms well above the living men from the North who are armed with the tools of labor and more importantly, capital and bank accounts. Ultimately, this picture suggests a South that is un-dead or a South that has outlived its usefulness but remains dominant in its ghostly memory. However, this cartoon may also offer an implicit critique of this “saving” northern capital. The laborer remains behind the investor, suggesting perhaps that this new investment from the north maintains structures of inequality. Furthermore, the sign promising “rich” land lying “idle” sets up a clear recipe for southern exploitation. Thus, the message here is ambivalent. Is the southern ghost protecting the South from new exploitative circumstances or is it holding the region in a death grip? Perhaps it is both — ultimately, we’ll notice in closing that the southern ghost has wrapped the lynching rope around his own neck.
