Louisiana

Newspaper clipping of cartoon showing a bear in a tree labeled “Wheat Market” attacking a figure composed of a bag of wheat. The figure cries out, “Teddy help! Here’s a bear for you!” In the background Theodore Roosevelt holds a blunderbuss in front of the U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Capitol. A sign on the right points to “Louisiana.” The cartoon probably refers to a bear hunt Roosevelt attended in Louisiana in 1907 and government wheat policies.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1907

Cartoon shows an unidentified man, possibly Attorney General Philander Knox, on the left holding sheet “Remove Dutch standard technicality 209 Tariff Law 1897” and H. T. Oxnard on the right holding a sheet “Remove 12 1/2 [cent] per. 100 lbs. on refined.” They stand on either side of a billboard, “57th Congress. Solutions wanted. Reward offered. Prevent Cuba’s annexation? Protect American beet sugars? Protect Louisiana cane sugars? Break sugar refiner monopolies? Preserve Republican harmony? Help Cuban sugar planters? Protect Puerto Rico sugars? Explanation 209 Tariff Law 1897. April 18, ’02.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1903

The author “congratulates” John Milliken Parker’s “Boss-ship” during the successful Good Government League convention and his triumph in Judge Luther Egbert Hall’s nomination. In truth, Parker’s actions are an “inexcusable breach of faith,” and the League’s convention was an “insidious attack on the integrity of the party.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-07-28

Several men drag bears to be tied to stakes as reporters wait in the canebrakes for President Roosevelt to arrive at his tent.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon was published before or during President Roosevelt’s descent into the dark, dangerous and almost mysterious canebrakes of Louisiana in October of 1907. In the two middle weeks of an extensive speaking tour through the Midwest and South, Roosevelt hunted black bears, not so much for a vacation (his summer vacation in Oyster Bay that year had been longer than most of his presidency) as a quest to fulfill his frustrated goal in the same general area of bayous, swamps, dense growth, snakes, panthers, wild boars, and several varieties of black bears. That 1902 trip resulted, at least, in a legend that inspired the teddy bear. But in 1907 Roosevelt would not be put off.

President Roosevelt stands on the back of a train as he is sent off by several men at the train station and a group of four bears in the canebrakes. The bears say, “Dey-dey. You’re all right,” “You’re a jolly good fellow–but–we’re glad we’re not in the trusts,” “Tra-la. We’ll play tag again,” and “Bye-bye. Come again.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

On the very day that President Roosevelt departed Stamboul, in Louisiana’s “Cajun Prairie” in East Carroll Parish, where he had hunted black bears for two weeks, cartoonist Joseph H. Cunningham imagined the event. A small group of men waving from across the tracks; a small sleuth of bears waving their good-byes from the tall and thorny canebrakes.

A group of bears march toward President Roosevelt holding a rifle on his right shoulder in the canebrakes. The bear in the front holds a sign, “We want federal regulation of bear hunters.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

President Roosevelt’s two-week hunting trip after black bear in the Louisiana canebrakes in October of 1907 inspired many cartoonists to explore the obvious themes presented by the inveterate hunter engaging in a Golden Fleece, if not a hide, since he failed to bag more than a legend (the teddy bear) in the region several years earlier.

The first vignette depicts President Roosevelt and his dogs marching into the canebrakes to find a bear. The second vignette shows a lot of downed trees and the sun high in the sky. The third vignette shows Roosevelt in his tent and a tired dog outside the tent with the moon in the background.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Cartoonist Ralph Wilder quotes a newspaper headline, or plausible rumor, about President Roosevelt’s hunting dogs being exhausted during the two-week tracking of black bears in the Louisiana canebrakes. In fact the bayous and canebrakes — tall and dense, rather like bamboo — and the boggy bayous were inhospitable to hunters and their hounds alike.

A “sheriff” holds a rope over his shoulder with several men attached to it walking along a path “to the jail.” In the foreground is a bear near a sign, “Line of march of bear hunt,” with several reporters and photographers taking pictures. Other reporters and photographers sit in trees saying, “Photo of primeval forest” and “bear before being shot.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The day after President Roosevelt commenced his two-week black-bear hunt in the Louisiana canebrakes, cartoonist Ralph Wilder of the Chicago Record-Herald — certainly not alone among his fellow artists — began to draw comments on the trip. It was a period in the middle of a wide-ranging speaking tour when reporters and cartoonists would not be allowed to cover or even pursue the president at a distance. The same unofficial but stern prohibition would be imposed on Roosevelt’s African safari eighteen months later.

President Roosevelt and several other men rush toward a tent with an “odor of fried ‘baar'” and “odor of hot coffee” as the cook beside the tent says, “Breakfast!”

comments and context

Comments and Context

As would happen during Theodore Roosevelt’s African safari eighteen months in the future, reporters (and cartoonists) were denied the privilege of accompanying the hunting party as the president spent two weeks chasing black bears in central Louisiana. Cartoonists were virtually addicted to Roosevelt as a subject and object, so newspapers abounded between October 6 and 19 with speculations, political allegories, and fantasies of Roosevelt in the dense and wild canebrakes.

Newspaper reporters, photographers, and cartoonists gather outside a forest with several signs: “Where the president was last seen,” “To the canebrakes,” and “Posted.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

The day after the presidential hunting party was absorbed into the bayous and canebrakes of central Louisiana on what would be an extended black-bear hunt (October 6-19), Clifford Kennedy Berryman of the Washington Star vented the frustration of journalists and commentators that the object of their affection, or attention, would be off the boards.

President Roosevelt, with a rifle in his right hand, runs after a bear with a chain and a stake attached to it. Bears hiding in the canebrakes all say, “Saved.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Joseph Harry Cunningham’s cartoon was rather snide, considering it appeared in the Republican Washington Herald, as it shows President Roosevelt, in odd hunting attire, chasing a black bear in the Louisiana canebrakes. As other bears — presumably free and wild — hide in the dense bamboo-like brakes, Roosevelt chases a bear who has broken loose of fetters. The reference is to a bear hunt in the same general area, but closer to, or in, Mississippi, earlier in his presidency. Roosevelt’s failure then to bag a bear, and refusal to shoot one that had been tied to a spike, led to the creation of the teddy bear at the hands of cartoonists and doll-makers.

Six teddy bears walk toward “The Clarion” where there is a sign: “President Roosevelt leaves Washington today.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 hunt in the canebrakes of Mississippi and Louisiana resulted in no bagged bears… and one national legend, the inspiration for an enduring plush companion for generations of children, and a cartoonists’ mascot. Frustrated by the paucity of game on that expedition, and famously refusing to shoot the bear that Holt Collier — a legendary former slave who claimed to have shot three thousand black bears himself — tied to a tree for the president.

President Roosevelt holds a rifle on his right shoulder and a bag labeled “off to Louisiana” and walks away from four bears hiding behind a “Wall Street” sign.

comments and context

Comments and Context

A fascinating, and historically valuable, aspect of political cartoons, beyond their insights into contemporaneous events they address, is how the better cartoonists could be prescient — presenting and forecasting important trends, movements, and forces.

President Roosevelt sits in hunting attire that he will wear in Louisiana in search of big game.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-09-22

Excerpts from an Interstate Commerce Commission publication listing the powers of railroad commissions in various U.S. states.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-02-19

The author writes about the problems with the Republican Party in the South, noting that some individuals have joined the Democratic Party even though they agree with Republican principles about almost everything except the “Negro Problem.” The author wishes that President Roosevelt would clean up the “Gang,” because that would allow these individuals to join the Republican Party again.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1907-12-12

Theodore Roosevelt sympathizes with William A. Ferguson’s purpose and shall be in Louisiana. Roosevelt mentions the “gallant young Lindon Bates,” who died during the sinking of the Lusitania.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1915-06-03

A four panel cartoon showing National Guardsmen marching into Camp Ordway in Washington, D.C.; President Roosevelt assisting Foreign Affairs Minister Komura and Secretary of State Witte with the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the Russo-Japanese War; Secretary of Agriculture Wilson celebrating the return of Hyde (possibly James Hazen Hyde); and a Mississippian and a Louisianan eying each other across the state line, while a mosquito above them says, “Here’s where I get my work in. Biz-z-z.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1905

Theodore Roosevelt thanks John Parker for the photograph and has been telling Progressives of the North about the Progressives of Louisiana.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1914-10-02

Views of TR walking on the beach. Holding his hat, TR stands near bushes on an island and follows the flight of birds. Film photographed by Herbert K. Job of the National Audubon Society, on an expedition with TR to bird sanctuary islands off the Louisiana coast in June 1915.

Collection

Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound

Creation Date

1915