Grant asks Schurz to play on a Flute

Nast draws on Hamlet's rebuke—'You would play upon me'—to frame a confrontation between President Ulysses S. Grant, seated on a throne-like chair beneath the U.S. shield, and Senator Carl Schurz, who stands in jester's motley alongside a worried Senator Thomas W. Tipton. Grant extends a flute toward Schurz; Schurz, fingering his chin skeptically, refuses to be played. The scene targets the Liberal Republican revolt of 1872: Schurz and reformers accused Grant of manipulation and patronage corruption, while Grant's allies saw the dissidents as self-important meddlers. By costuming Schurz as a court fool, Nast—then firmly pro-Grant—mocks the senator's pretensions to principled independence. A crowd of petitioners mills in the background, underlining the spoils-system atmosphere both factions claimed to oppose.