Country Politician, which George Caleb Bingham painted soon after being elected a US Congressman for Missouri, depicts the artist’s interpretation of American democracy in action. Seated near a stove, a young politician attempts to enlist the support of an older farmer, while a businessman listens attentively. Bingham’s political subject would have resonated with his fellow Missourians, who participated in the intense debates about slavery that dominated American politics prior to the Civil War.

In 1849, the Missouri Senate passed the pro-slavery Jackson Resolutions, intended to overturn the Missouri Compromise to allow Kansas to become a slave-holding state. Bingham countered with the Bingham Resolutions, which recommended that the issue of slavery in the territories be decided at the state level. In illustrating the ways in which those in power determined the fates of Black men and women without their participation, Bingham’s vision of American democracy reveals the glaring contradiction at its core.