Mud on the White House

Lady Columbia—Nast's allegorical figure for the American republic, draped in a classical gown—stands before the White House door and points with cold fury at dark mud splattered across its white columns. The single label "MUD" does the accusing. Her expression is not rage but controlled contempt, the posture of a witness rather than a brawler. The caption quotes Mark Antony's ironic funeral oration from Julius Caesar III.ii—"They are wise and honorable, / And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you"—turning Shakespearean sarcasm against the Liberal Republican faction and the press organs (Greeley, Schurz, the Tribune) Nast believed were smearing Grant with corruption charges he considered unfounded. Columbia is rendered as a dignified civic ideal, her indignation the cartoon's entire argument.