Halloween, Civil War Style

It's getting close to Halloween and I thought I would share an image from the 26 October 1861 Harper's Weekly entitled "Jeff Davis Reaping the Harvest."

Note the skulls, the vulture, the noose, the snake, and the rib cage.

Politics today are so tame compared to 150 years ago!

And what does this have to do with family history and genealogy? Directly - nothing. But indirectly, it tells us a lot about how the Northern newspapers viewed Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. It shows who they blamed for the war, which was really just getting started. And it seems to foretell the slaughter we would experience over the next nearly four years. This is the sort of thing your northern family members read and likely agreed with, This is the sort of editorial comment which made your southern family members crazy over the unfair association between Jefferson Davis and the Grim Reaper.