Though slavery had been defeated, racial prejudice thrived in post-Civil War New York. Democrats whipped up anti-black sentiment to rally white working men to their banner. Satirist Thomas Nast vehemently represented Republican reactions in a cartoon that showed a "Five Points Irishman," Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, and Wall Street financier and Democrat August Belmont — all three men standing atop a black veteran while the Colored Orphan Asylum burns in the background. Nast drew this scene after the 1868 Democratic National Convention, where Forrest was a featured speaker.

In this political cartoon, as in many of this period, the Irish man was portrayed with a distinctive, not quite human-looking nose and jaw line. Many Americans did not consider the Irish to be white, and used this visual shorthand to stress their lowly place on the racial ladder.