English: 'The Great Republican Reform Party Calling on their Candidate', an 1856 print which is a political cartoon about John C. Frémont, the first Republican party candidate for president of the United States. In the 1840's and 1850's, radical social reform movements (such as slavery abolitionism, alcohol prohibitionism, pacifism, socialism, and after 1848, feminism) and/or what were considered eccentric currents of thought (such as Transcendentalism, Mormonism, Oneida, 'spirit-rappers' or Spiritualism, etc.) were sometimes stigmatized by being lumped together as 'the Isms'. Southerners ofte
English: 'The Great Republican Reform Party Calling on their Candidate', an 1856 print which is a political cartoon about John C. Frémont, the first Republican party candidate for president of the United States. In the 1840's and 1850's, radical social reform movements (such as slavery abolitionism, alcohol prohibitionism, pacifism, socialism, and after 1848, feminism) and/or what were considered eccentric currents of thought (such as Transcendentalism, Mormonism, Oneida, 'spirit-rappers' or Spiritualism, etc.) were sometimes stigmatized by being lumped together as 'the Isms'. Southerners often prided themselves on the American South being free from all of the pernicious Isms (except for alcohol temperance campaigning, which was fully compatible with traditional Protestant fundamentalism). For example, on Sept. 5th and 9th 1856, the Richmond, Virginia Examiner ran editorials on 'Our Enemies, the Isms and their Purposes', while in 1858 'Parson' Brownlow' called for a 'Missionary Society of the South, for the Conversion of the Freedom Shriekers, Spiritualists, Free-lovers, Fourierites, and Infidel Reformers of the North' (reference: The Freedom-of-thought Struggle in the Old South by Clement Eaton). And George Fitzhugh wrote 'Why have you Bloomers and Women's Right's men, and strong-minded women, and Mormons, and anti-renters, and 'vote myself a farm' men, Millerites, and Spiritual Rappers, and Shakers, and Widow Wakemanites, and Agrarians, and Grahamites, and a thousand other superstitious and infidel Isms at the North? Why is there faith in nothing, speculation about everything?'[1] This cartoon seeks to stigmatize the Fremont campaign and the Republican party (which was the first broadly-successful political party in United States history to firmly and unyieldingly oppose all attempts at the geographical expansion of slavery) by associating them with the 'Isms', most of which were politically very controversial (and some of which were considered to be offens 10 18
Size: 2590px × 1930px
Photo credit: © History and Art Collection / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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