um nests actual boss fletcher harper the man who was the owner and operator a publisher of harper's weekly his position was we're not in the business of making senators happy. we're in the business seeing on american politics and if senator schertz is unhappy, i guess that's his problem. and so nast was vindicated in this moment, but he said openly in conversations he had for a while. he engaged in a really popular form of lecture not unlike what we're doing tonight the lyceum circuit in which people who were prominent would tour the country giving talks and given that there wasn't a ton to do in the evening in the 19th century, especially in the winter time, which was the season for these kinds of talks. and if those of you who are familiar with the chautauqua series, that's the same thing folks like thomas nest would show up in your town and they would give a lecture and everyone would go and pay a couple of dollars for the opportunity to listen to him talk in his case. he would do chalk talks where there would be a chalkboard and he would draw while he talked. and he used and he had a p

and as long as fletcher harper lived, fletcher harper protected nast, and he was free to do what he wantedunfortunately, fletcher harper's death coincided with a crisis of the election of 1876. one of the things that happened to nast is that right at the moment when the united states was up to its eyeballs in a controversy about who had won the presidential election, where there had been dishonest voting, which was alleged in several states and seems very likely that there was massive amounts of voter fraud in those states, my home state south carolina being one of them, and this question, this unresolved question for months about who should be president next. at that precise moment, thomas nast effectively lost his protector. and so he wanted to keep fighting, particularly he wanted to keep fighting for the rights of black americans in what was now the redemption south, the white democrats had taken back the state governments ending reconstruction, ending efforts to help freed people, ending efforts to protect voting with federal soldiers. and it looked like that was headed for a total di