The Third-Term Panic

A large elephant labeled "The Republican Vote" stumbles toward a pit marked CHAOS, spooked by a donkey in a lion's skin labeled CÆSAR ISM. Fleeing animals carry labels identifying Democratic-aligned newspapers—the Herald, the Times—while signs on the pit's edge read INFLATION, REPUDIATION, and REFORM (TAMMANY, K.K.). The bottom caption quotes a fable: "An Ass, having put on the Lion's skin, roamed about in the Forest…" Nast's argument: Democratic press scaremongering about a Grant third term—the lion's-skin fraud—was panicking Republican voters into handing Congress to the very forces of Tammany corruption and Reconstruction's rollback. The Republican elephant, here making its first canonical appearance, is not strong but frightened—a warning, not a boast.