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

as long as flutter harper loved, fletcher protected nast and he was free to do what he wanted. unfortunately, his death coincided with the crisis of the election of 1876, given that the exhibit was about voting, one of the things that happened to nest was that right at the moment when the united states was up to its eyeballs on a controversy about who had won the presidential election. where there had been dishonest voting, in several states and it seems that there was unlikely that there was massive fraud in these states, my home state of south carolina being one of them. this unresolved question for months about who should be president next. at that precise moment, thomas nast effectively lost his protector so he wanted to continue fighting. particularly, he wanted to continue fighting for the rights of black americans in what was now the redemption south, the white democrats had taken back state democrat, ending reconstruction, and-ing efforts to help freed people, ending efforts to protect voting with federal soldiers, and it looked like that was headed for a total dismantl