Grant Blown on by a Cabal of Senators

Nast stages a literal political wind contest beneath the word SENATE. Five Republican dissidents—Reuben Fenton, Lyman Trumbull, Thomas Tipton (puffing from behind), Carl Schurz, and Charles Sumner—strain and contort as they blow toward Ulysses S. Grant, who sits serenely in his presidential chair, cigar in hand, utterly unmoved. The caption reads "What the Senatorial Cabal Can Not 'Blow Over.'" A pedestal inscription quotes Grant's December 4, 1871 message praising honest administration and debt reduction. These men were organizing the Liberal Republican revolt that would nominate Horace Greeley in 1872. Nast's caricatures deploy the grotesque physiognomy standard to 19th-century American cartooning—exaggerated jaws and brows used indiscriminately on all the senators here—while flattering Grant as unflappable granite against factional ambition.