It is only a truce to regain power ("playing possum") / Th. Nast.

Horace Greeley with "C.S." (Carl Schurz?) coaxing an Afro-American to shake hands with two men, one wearing hat labeled "Ku Klux Klan" and one wearing hat labeled "Tammany," who are hiding weapons behind their backs and standing over the body of an Afro-American woman with her children.
Illus. in: Harper's weekly, v. 16, no. 817, 1872 Aug. 24, p. 652.