SCARCE RECONSTRUCTION CDV.

Radical Members of the So. Ca. Legislature. Composite albumen carte de visite. [Columbia, South Carolina]: [J.G. Gibbes], [1868]. Caption printed to mount recto: "These are the photographs of 63 members of the reconstructed South Carolina Legislature, 50 of whom are negroes or mulattoes and 13 white. 22 read and write (8 grammatically), the remainder (41) make their mark with the aid of an amanuensis. Nineteen (19) are tax-payers to an aggregate amount of $146.10, the rest (44) pay no taxes, and the body levies on the white people of the State for $4.000.000." Printed caption to mount verso lists each subject and identifies whether they are "white" or "colored."

A scarce composite albumen CDV of the Radical Republican members of the South Carolina legislature from the height of Reconstruction. Some extant copies omit the lower caption, but provide information on the photographer and date of publication (c.f. Cowan's, Turner I, 20 February 2020, Lot 15). The copy here includes a caption designed to inflame white voters, many of whom until recently were slaveholders and Confederates. No precedent is established.

After the passage of the Reconstruction Acts in 1867, all adult males were registered as voters and new state constitutions, modeled on northern states, were drafted. The South Carolina legislature, dominated by Republicans, allowed for the passage of more legislation to improve the condition of the freedmen, including the 1869 formation of the South Carolina Land Commission. Groups such as the Ku Klux Klan formed to intimidate, physically harass, and in some times assassinate Republicans, as in the case of Solomon Dill, Benjamin Franklin Randolph, and James Martin, the latter two are included in this composite.

[African Americana, African American History, Black Americana, Reconstruction, Slavery, Emancipation, Abolition, Enslavement, Ulysses S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, White Supremacy, Racism] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Historic Photography, Early Photography, Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, Tintype, Cased Images, Union Cases]