Lightning Speed of Honesty

Uncle Sam — top hat, striped trousers, long coat — rides a giant snail whose shell is labeled 45th Congress. He cracks a whip that accomplishes nothing; the creature barely moves. Under his arm he clutches an Army & Navy Pay Roll; in his hand, a dollar-sign banknote; stuffed in his back pocket, loose bills and what appear to be reform measures including a Resumption Act. The Capitol dome looms behind him. Nast's caption, The Lightning Speed of Honesty, is pure sarcasm: the 45th Congress, elected on reform promises after Reconstruction's scandals, moved at a snail's pace on veterans' pay, currency reform, and debt resumption. The whip signals impotent urgency — public pressure applied to a body that would not be hurried. Nast's Uncle Sam here is gaunt and frustrated rather than heroic, the nation itself made ridiculous by its own legislature.