"A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" (1870)

A rearing donkey labeled Copperhead Papers delivers a kick at a prostrate lion labeled Hon. E. M. Stanton — Edwin M. Stanton, Lincoln's formidable Secretary of War, who had died January 4, 1870, two weeks before publication. The U.S. Capitol dome rises in the background; an eagle watches from a bare branch. The printed caption twists the proverb in Ecclesiastes 9:4 — "a living dog is better than a dead lion" — into contempt for the Democratic press's post-mortem attacks on Stanton. Nast, a fierce Republican, treats the donkey here not yet as a fixed party symbol but as a figure of cowardice and opportunism: safe bravado aimed at a man no longer able to answer. The second line, And such a Lion! and such a Jackass!, sharpens the insult in both directions.