The correct answer is C) the Reconstruction Era.
Indeed, during the Reconstruction Era (1863-1877); white Southerners were especially aggravated and oppose to the occupation of the South by the Union army, the enfranchisement of African-American citizens and the election of African Americans to positions of political power that gave them ascendancy over white southerners. The Democrats had not won an election during 20 years and back then, the Democratic party, notably its southern Bourbon Democrat component was the party of slavery, racial discrimination and social (and later legal) discrimination towards black Americans.
The 1876 presidential elections saw Republican Candidate Rutherford Hayes oppose Northern Democrat Samuel Tilden for the office of POTUS. Tilden won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote but the fact was that four states in the South had inconclusive results due to death threats and intimidation towards African American voters who always voted Republican.
There was a constitutional crisis and southerners were threatening with armed insurrection if Hayes was sworn in as POTUS. During meetings behind closed doors, a deal was struck. Democrats accepted Hayes as president and in exchange occupation Union troops were withdrawn from the South, leaving southern African Americans vulnerable to reprisals, discrimination, social segregation and subjugation by Southern white democrats. This was called the 1877 Compromise which effectively ended the Reconstruction Era. This situation is the one described by this cartoon. Tilden was not sworn in as president and the blood of another southern insurrection was not spilled.
