Two Editors at Odds

Nast places two antagonists back-to-back in mutual suspicion. At left, a pudgy, bespectacled Horace Greeley—editor of the New York Tribune and soon the Liberal Republican presidential nominee—wears mock-ermine robes of self-importance and clutches a long quill-spear, while his coat pocket bulges with a pamphlet labeled "What I Know About Twisting. H.G."—a jab at his rhetorical evasions. At right, Ulysses S. Grant reads a paper Nast labels the N.Y. Misrepresenter, a swipe at the opposition press. The cartoon argues that Greeley's pretensions to reformer-kingship are fraudulent, while Grant rightly regards hostile journalism with wary contempt. No ethnic caricature appears; Nast's attack is purely ideological, targeting Greeley's imminent break with the Republican Party.