Schurz Germania

Two allegorical women clasp hands at center: a toga-clad Columbia and a crowned Germania, whose shield reads 'Let Us Have Peace' beneath a German eagle. Behind Germania, a squat, dark-bearded figure—rendered in the coarse ethnic caricature Nast routinely applied to figures he wished to diminish—thrusts a scroll labeled 'Sumner's Resolution: Has Violated Her Neutral Obligations to the German Government.' In the background a Prussian soldier observes from a colonnade. The argument targets Senator Carl Schurz, the German-born Republican turned Liberal Republican critic of Grant, who backed Charles Sumner's resolution charging the U.S. with breaching neutrality by supplying France during the Franco-Prussian War. Nast presents Germania herself as unmoved—even offended—by Schurz's agitation, implying the charge is manufactured grievance rather than principled diplomacy.