Nast Asks Pardon

Nast draws himself hunched in a deep, ironic bow before four Greenback-sympathizing Republican senators—Logan, Morton, Cameron, and Carpenter—who stand in a tight, self-important cluster at left. Scattered newspaper pages at their feet bear headlines attacking Nast's cartoons as "brutal" and "blackguarding." A sign behind them restates the Republican platform's pledge of specie resumption, the hard-money position the four senators were undermining. In the background, Carl Schurz whispers to Reuben Fenton. The double caption quotes Julius Caesar on worthless schoolboys and offers a mock-Shakespearean apology. The senators are drawn with heavy, exaggerated jowls and beards—the standard Nast shorthand for pompous officialdom rather than ethnic caricature here. The argument is pure sarcasm: Nast has nothing to apologize for in exposing men who repudiate their own party's platform while hiding behind senatorial immunity.