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“Withdrawal of the Federal Bayonets from Alaska”
The Caucasian Bear Will Now Have Home Rule, And Will Not Be Intimidated Any More."
The explicit subject of Thomas Nast's cartoon is the withdrawal of the
U.S. Army from Alaska in 1877. The artist's choice of language and
images in the captions and illustration, however, reveals he is
implicitly criticizing the Southern Democratic attitude toward the
withdrawal of federal troops from political duty in the South at the
formal end of Reconstruction.
In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from
Russia, and on October 18 the official transfer of power took
place at Sitka, the headquarters of the new Military District (later,
Department) of Alaska. For ten years, the U. S. Army under General
Jefferson C. Davis (a former Union commander) provided the only
governing authority for the sparsely populated American settlements in
the region. In this difficult assignment, the Army did its best to
arbitrate disputes between native tribes and Americans. Although
they
provoked the resentment of both groups, no major altercations
erupted.
As the New York Tribune editorial quoted in the cartoon makes
clear, Army duty in Alaska was costly, burdensome, and often inefficient.
In 1877, the new Republican administration of President Rutherford B.
Hayes transferred jurisdiction over Alaska from the War Department to
the Treasury Department, which would police the area with its revenue
cutters. Most of the Army personnel were reassigned to the
American West to fight in the Indians Wars, with the last units leaving
Sitka in June 1877.
In the short run, there was a vacuum of authority in Alaska. In
early 1879, when American citizens received no response to their request
for protection from the natives, they turned to a British military post
in Vancouver for assistance. Thereafter, the U. S. Navy joined the
Treasury's revenue cutters in patrolling the coastlines and navigable
rivers, along which most settlers lived. In 1884, Alaska was
granted territorial status with a civil government, although the Navy
and Treasury still maintained their presence. When the territory's
population skyrocketed after the Klondike gold strike in 1897, the Army,
accompanied by the Marine Corps, returned in full force.
Meanwhile, Reconstruction had ended gradually over the 1870s in the
former states of the Confederacy. As the oversight by the federal
Army concluded in each of the Southern states, the biracial Republican
governments were replaced by white-only Democratic
administrations. After the disputed presidential election of 1876
was settled in favor of Republican Rutherford
B. Hayes, the new president removed federal troops (1877) from guarding
the statehouses in the three remaining Reconstruction states of Florida,
Louisiana, and South Carolina.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast was a strong supporter of Reconstruction and a
stringent critic of Southern Democrats, who had long bemoaned the
alleged interference of the "Federal Bayonets" in their
region. Here, Nast lampoons what he considered the hypocritical
concern of Southern Democrats with the U. S. Army by depicting its
parallel withdrawal from Alaska. The ferocious and numerous polar
bears ("Caucasian Bear") serve as a visual metaphor for white
Southerners and dominate the picture from the upper-left to the
lower-right, engulfing the few departing soldiers (the actual numbers of
troops in both the South and Alaska were low).
Southern Democrats had demanded "home rule" in their states
while they themselves intimidated black Southerners through
discrimination and systematic terror. Notice the diminutive figure
in the troop withdrawal is black. Vultures circle overhead, a
frequent symbol of impending doom, death, or pillage. The feeble
state of the U.S. military brought about by Congressional Democrats
refusing to pass an appropriations bill is conveyed by drawing the Naval steamship as a washtub
powered by a teakettle.
The text under the cartoon reads:
Washington, March 29.--One of the first acts of Secretary of
War [George] M[c]'Crary was to order the removal of the troops now stationed in
Alaska. This is not only a measure of wise economy, but one of
great humanity to the soldiers who have been kept there for the past few
years. The force has consisted of two companies of infantry, and
numbered from 80 to 150 men. Owing to the severity of the climate
and other causes which will be understood by those familiar with the
character of the people of Alaska, it has been found impracticable to
keep the same troops in Sitka more than a year. They are of no
practical use, as there is not duty to perform; and if it was necessary
to use force to keep the natives in order, no provision for transporting
troops to the different islands has ever been made. The extra
expense of this military occupation of Alaska is about $50,000 a
year. It costs about $10,000 to transport the troops there from a
station on the Pacific coast, about $10,000 more to bring them back
again at the end of the year, and from $20,000 to $30,000 a year for the
transportation of subsistence and other stores. The Secretary of
the Treasury will issue an order to the revenue marine officers
stationed in Alaska to use their vessels and men to preserve order among
the natives, if necessary.--New York Tribune.
Robert C. Kennedy
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