Grant Liberal Gratitude

Nast frames the 1872 Liberal Republican revolt as mutiny on the Ship Union. President Grant grips the helm—labeled WAR and PEACE—having steered the republic through Reconstruction's storms into calmer water. Behind him, editor Horace Greeley (slumped in white coat, papers spilling from his lap) and Senators Carl Schurz, Thomas Tipton, Lyman Trumbull, and Reuben Fenton crowd the deck with undisguised menace, apparently ready to throw the helmsman overboard the moment the danger has passed. The caption asks the rhetorical question plainly: now that the good Ship Union has safely passed through the Sea of Trouble, shall the Helmsman be thrown overboard? Nast's answer is contempt for the ingratitude of men who opposed Grant's wartime leadership yet now want his office.