Grant Inflation Bill Veto

Caption reads "Public Opinion — April 22, 1874" — the date Grant actually signed his veto message. A composed Grant stands on a portico holding the veto document while a jubilant crowd surges below, waving newspapers whose mastheads are legible: The Nation, N.Y. Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Boston Post. Identifiable figures include reformer Carl Schurz and editor Whitelaw Reid, throwing hats and cheering. The crowd represents the press coalition — Republican and Democratic alike — that had hammered Grant to kill the inflationary currency expansion bill Congress sent him. Nast argues that Grant, often lampooned as a political liability, here earned rare cross-party applause by siding with hard-money creditors over agrarian soft-money expansionists. The figures carry no ethnic caricature unusual for Nast's Grant-era work; this cartoon celebrates an establishment consensus rather than targeting an outsider group.