The Administration sawmill / J. Keppler., Political Cartoon

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The Administration sawmill / J. Keppler., Political Cartoon

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Illustration shows President Cleveland standing next to a large "Reform Buzz-Saw" labeled "Pat. 1884 by G. Cleveland" at a sawmill, where three members of his cabinet "Manning, Whitney, [and] Bayard" are milling lumber labeled "For the Improvement of the Custom House" and "Props for the Navy"; a carpenters square labeled "Honesty" rests against some boards at Cleveland's feet. A group of newspaper editors, congressmen, and a dog labeled "Blaine's Pup" has entered on the left, among them are "Dana, McLean, Vance, Eustis, Reid, Beck, Evarts, Sherman, Medill, [and] Edmunds", they are standing just outside the "Secretarys Office" where Daniel S. Lamont is sitting; through the open door is visible a wagon loaded with large logs labeled "Mormon Question, Silver Question, Tariff Ques, [and] Coast Defences".

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He was the first Democrat elected after the Civil War in 1885. Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later. He is the only President in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His will for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism. As his second administration began, disaster hit the nation when the Panic of 1893 produced a severe national depression, which Cleveland was unable to reverse. "The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity."

Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement of Restorationist Christianity, which began with Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the Mormons followed Brigham Young to what would become the Utah Territory. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints originated in Upstate New York, where Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, was raised. Joseph Smith gained the first following in the late 1820s as he was dictating the Book of Mormon, which he said was a translation of words found on a set of "golden plates" that had been buried near his home by an indigenous American prophet. The church rapidly gained a following, who viewed Smith as their prophet. As church leader, Smith instituted the then-secret practice of plural marriage and taught a form of Millennialism which he called "theodemocracy", to be led by a Council of Fifty which, allegedly, had secretly and symbolically anointed him as king of this Millennial theodemocracy. In late 1830, Smith envisioned a "city of Zion", a Utopian city in Native American lands near Independence, Missouri. After Smith and other Mormons emigrated to Missouri in 1838, hostilities escalated into the 1838 Mormon War, culminating in adherents being expelled from the state under an Extermination Order signed by the governor of Missouri. After Missouri, Smith built the city of Nauvoo, Illinois. Soon, The Nauvoo Expositor, a newspaper edited by dissident Mormon William Law, issued a scathing criticism of polygamy and Nauvoo theocratic government. Smith and the Nauvoo city council voted to shut down the paper as a public nuisance. Relations between Mormons and residents of surrounding communities had been strained, and some of them instituted criminal charges against Smith for treason. Smith surrendered to police in the nearby Carthage, Illinois, and while in state custody, he and his brother Hyrum Smith were killed by an angry mob attacking the jail on June 27, 1844. After his death, the majority of church members voted to accept the Quorum of the Twelve, led by Brigham Young, as the church's leading body. Under the leadership of Brigham Young, Church leaders planned to leave Nauvoo, Illinois in April 1846, but amid threats from the state militia, they were forced to cross the Mississippi River in the cold of February and forged a path to Salt Lake City known as the Mormon Trail. One of the reasons the Saints had chosen the Great Basin as a settling place was that the area was at the time outside the territorial borders of the United States, which Young had blamed for failing to protect Mormons from political opposition from the states of Missouri and Illinois. They left the boundaries of the United States to what is now Utah where they founded Salt Lake City. The groups that left Illinois for Utah became known as the Mormon pioneers. The arrival of the original Mormon Pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847 is commemorated by the Utah State holiday Pioneer Day. In the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico ceded the Utah area to the United States. As a result, Brigham Young sent emissaries to Washington, D.C. with a proposal to create a vast State of Deseret, of which Young would naturally be the first governor. Instead, Congress created the much smaller Utah Territory in 1850, and Young was appointed a governor in 1851. By 1857, tensions had again escalated between Mormons and other Americans, largely as a result of church teachings on polygamy and theocracy. In 1857-1858, the church was involved in an armed conflict with the U.S. government, entitled the Utah War. The war resulted in the relatively peaceful invasion of Utah by the United States Army, after which Young agreed to step down from power and be replaced by a non-Mormon territorial governor. Nevertheless, the church still wielded significant political power in the Utah Territory. Mormons continued the practice of polygamy despite opposition by the United States Congress. In 1862, 1874 and 1887 the U.S. Congress enacted acts which made bigamy a felony in the U.S. territories. By 1890, many church leaders had gone into hiding to avoid prosecution, and half the Utah prison population was composed of polygamists. Church leadership officially ended the practice in 1890 and stopped performing polygamous marriages in 1904. During the 20th century, the church became an international organization and strong public champion of monogamy and family values.

Alois Senefelder, the inventor of lithography, introduced the subject of colored lithography in 1818. Printers in other countries, such as France and England, were also started producing color prints. The first American chromolithograph—a portrait of Reverend F. W. P. Greenwood—was created by William Sharp in 1840. Chromolithographs became so popular in American culture that the era has been labeled as "chromo civilization". During the Victorian times, chromolithographs populated children's and fine arts publications, as well as advertising art, in trade cards, labels, and posters. They were also used for advertisements, popular prints, and medical or scientific books.

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Date

01/01/1886
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Contributors

Keppler, Joseph Ferdinand, 1838-1894, artist
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Source

Library of Congress
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No known restrictions on publication.

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