# Patriotism versus Bummerism, Bromley's 1868 race-baiting campaign print

The Great November Contest. Patriotism versus Bummerism is an 1868 anti-Republican cartoon published by Bromley & Co. of New York. Seymour and Blair pull Liberty, who proclaims a "White Man's Government," while Grant and Colfax, drawn as asses, stall before a graveyard labeled "100,000,000 White Lives, the Price of Nigger Freedom!"

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      The Great November Contest. Patriotism versus Bummerism

      Patriotism versus Bummerism, Bromley's 1868 race-baiting campaign print
      Bromley & Co.'s 1868 print stalls Grant's wagon at a graveyard labeled "100,000,000 White Lives, the Price of Nigger Freedom!" Library of Congress.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appealScapegoatingName-calling
      Date1868Made byBromley & Co. (New York)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeJohnson AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (published 1868; over 150 years old); LOC records no known restrictions on publication Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  The Great November Contest. Patriotism versus Bummerism is an 1868 anti-Republican cartoon published by Bromley & Co. of New York. Seymour and Blair pull Liberty, who proclaims a "White Man's Government," while Grant and Colfax, drawn as asses, stall before a graveyard labeled "100,000,000 White Lives, the Price of Nigger Freedom!"

## What it shows

Content note: this print uses a racial slur, racist caricature and dialect. The archive's note says the Library of Congress describes it as strongly racist. The words are quoted here as the archive gives them.

Two teams race. Horses with the heads of Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair pull a carriage that carries Liberty, who declares "This is a White Man's Government!" Asses with the heads of Ulysses S. Grant and Schuyler Colfax pull the other vehicle, a wagon, and it has stopped in front of a graveyard. The archive records the graveyard's label as "100,000,000 White Lives, the Price of Nigger Freedom!" Stones nearby read "Negro Supremacy" and "Killing Taxation." Black figures in the scene are drawn as idle or speaking in dialect.

## Who sold it

Bromley & Co. of New York published the cartoon in 1868 and, per the archive, sold it by mail order. It was a commercial product for the campaign season, not a government sheet. The Library of Congress holds the print; the archive retrieved it on 2 October 2026 and records it as public domain by age. FRAME tags the purpose as "Demonize" and lists fear appeal, scapegoating and name-calling.

## What was wrong with it

The Library of Congress reads the cartoon as an attack on Reconstruction and on Black rights, and the drawing supports that reading. Read through its labels, the argument is that freedom for Black Americans had been bought with white lives and would end in "Negro Supremacy." The hundred-million figure is printed as a bare label. The slur in the caption is the cartoon's own word, and the dialect and idle poses tell the buyer what to think of Black citizens before any policy is named.

A taxpayer in 1868 had every right to object to "Killing Taxation" and to argue about how the South should be governed. This print bundles that complaint with the claim that a racial group should have fewer rights, and it uses the second to sell the first. That was wrong, and the fact that a private firm sold it for profit does not change what it said.

The same slogan ran the other way in Thomas Nast's This Is a White Man's Government, which drew the phrase as an indictment. Four years earlier a Bromley print, Abolition Catastrophe, worked the McClellan side. The campaign print hub places these sheets party by party, and the Civil War print case study collects print from the war itself.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, The Great November Contest. Patriotism versus Bummerism, 1868. Bromley & Co. (New York). Rights as recorded: public domain (published 1868); LOC records no known restrictions on publication.

- Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, item 2008661708, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/great-november-contest-bummerism-1868/