The mysteries of "The new Voter"

Warren Scott Dungan

I've spent just about enough time trying unsuccessfully to sort out the story behind this vintage image, entitled "The new Voter" and found in a photo album at the museum that belonged to one of the daughters of Col. Warren Scott Dungan. There were several daughters to choose from --- Myrtle, Myra, Minnie, Mary, who went by Edna, and May, known as Effie.

The album dates from the late 1860s or 1870s and is filled with photographs in a size generally known as carte de visite as well as a few commercially printed cards. This may be one of the latter.

It was Myra, I think, who wrote on this image's album page, "This is NOT the freed slave brought home to Chariton after the Civil War by Col. Dungan."

This is an intriguing note because there is no indication elsewhere in Lucas County lore that Col. Dungan brought anyone, let alone a freed slave, home to Chariton with him after the war.

And look at the costuming. The young man seems to be wearing a tam o' shanter and other clothing that suggests, could we see him full length, he'd be wearing a kilt, too.

"The new voter" suggests that it might have been produced ca, 1870, when the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, in intent at least guaranteeing that neither federal nor state governments could prevent qualified men from voting on the basis of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." A vote for women? Unthinkable (to most men) at the time.

At the time, a battle of both words and imagery was in progress --- proponents of suffrage presenting the newly enfranchised voters in a positive light, opponents in a negative light. This is a positive image. 

Other than that, I can't explain it.

Col. Dungan, born during 1822 in Pennsylvania, was educated there but then set out as a young man for the South, alighting first in Louisiana, then from May of 1852 into 1855 operating his own "select school" in Panola County, Mississippi --- in the northwest part of the state --- while studying law there with Col. Calvin Miller.

He returned to Pennsylvania in 1855 for more study of the law, was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar during April of 1856, then headed west immediately to Chariton where the remainder of his long life was spent.

During 1861, while serving in the Iowa Senate, Dungan resigned to recruit what became Company K, 30th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, serving as its captain. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he was breveted full colonel as the war was ending.

Another footnote to Iowa history --- the Hawkeye state was the 28th to ratify the 15th Amendment --- on Feb. 3, 1870 --- giving the amendment the necessary number of ratifications to become the law of the land.

If anyone tracks this image to its origin, please let me know.