(RECONSTRUCTION) Black Republican and Office Holders Journal

Sale 2615 - Lot 229

Price Realized: $ 1,188

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900

(RECONSTRUCTION.) Black Republican and Office-Holder's Journal. 4 lithographed pages, 11 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches, on one folding sheet; foxing, short separations at folds and slight edge wear, one tape repair, horizontal fold. New York: "Pluto Jumbo," August 1865

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A crudely printed satirical newspaper, written in minstrel-show dialect and purporting to be edited by one Pluto Jumbo. It displays a deep resentment of the Republican Party and the new engagement of freed African Americans in the political and legal system. Its masthead states that it was printed in New York, and its obsession with New York war supporters Henry Ward Beecher, Horace Greeley and James Gordon Bennett suggests that it actually was a New York Copperhead production. Typical items include a proposed law "agin marriage between two pussons of de same color" and a poorly executed portrait of "Caesar Guss, the Presidential Candidate." At least 3 other issues were produced (numbered #2 through #4), all dated August and September 1865. This was apparently the first issue. The Boston Courier ran a mocking blurb about the Black Republican in August 1865, treating it as an actual newspaper. That squib was republished in at least 11 newspapers over the next year, reaching as far as England and California. No examples of any issue have been traced at auction since 1923.