A "Dodge" That Wont Work

Inscriptions

Inscribed, on stone, speech bubble, upper center: Of course Sam and / Ceasar, you'll vot for / me your old friend / Horace Greeley?; inscribed, on stone, speech bubble, upper right: No M.r [r in superscript] Greeley we cant / vote fore you, for behind / you we see Jeff Davis / and behind him is the / old lash and bondage.; inscribed, on stone, speech bubble, upper right: We vote, as all true hearted colored men / will vote; for M.r [r in superscript] Lincoln's friend General Grant / who conquered the rebellion & secured our freedom.; signed, on stone, within image, lower right: J. CAMERON; inscribed, on stone, lower left margin: PUBLISHED BY CURRIER & IVES; inscribed, on stone, lower center margin: Entered according to the act of Congress in the year 1872 by Currier & Ives in the Office of the LIbrarian of Congress at Washington.; inscribed, on stone, lower right margin: 125 NASSAU ST. NEW YORK; titled, on stone, lower center: A "DODGE" THAT WONT WORK.

Label

In this political print, two African American men, Sam and Ceasar, are seen challenging the presidential run of New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley. Formerly enslaved and now able to vote, they state their support for Ulysses S. Grant instead. The work draws attention to the fears of some Republican Party members that Black men’s support of Grant's administration would ruin the Party. Greeley, whose newspaper was anti-slavery and the mouthpiece of the Republican party, was so critical of corruption in Grant’s administration that he ran against him in 1872 as the nominee of the newly formed Liberal Republican Party. This party called Reconstruction a success and argued that there was no longer a need for federal troops in the South. Yet behind this idea Sam and Ceasar see Jefferson Davis with a whip and shackles, a reference to Greeley’s partial payment of Davis’s prison bond years earlier, and to slavery’s possible return.

From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)

Course History

HIST 18, US Political History of the 19th Century, Robert Bonner, Fall 2012

HIST 18, Nineteenth Century American Politics, Robert Bonner, Spring 2014

WRIT 7.24, Past Imperfect, Cynthia Monroe, Spring 2019

WRIT 7.24, Past Imperfect, Cynthia Monroe, Spring 2019

Exhibition History

Fred Wilson, So Much Trouble in the World - Believe It or Not!, William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Jaffe Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 4-December 11, 2005.

Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.

No Laughing Matter: Visual Humor in Ideas of Race, Nationality, and Ethnicity, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, in conjunction with the Humanities Institute, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 6-December 9, 2007.

Publication History

Barbara Thompson, Fred Wilson, So Much Trouble in the World - Believe It or Not!, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2005.

Provenance

Sherman Adams (1899-1986), Lincoln, New Hampshire; given to present collection, 1958.

Catalogue Raisonne

Conningham (1949): 1594; Gale Research (1983):1733

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