Schurz & Gratz Brown

Nast draws a lean, bespectacled figure—labeled by a bag on the table as Carl Schurz, U.S. Senator from Missouri—leaning forward in consternation toward a chair marked U.S. Senate. Hanging from the chair's arm is a card reading Gratz Brown, the defeated Liberal Republican governor who apparently has prior claim to the seat. Schurz's travel bag reads Off for Chicago, suggesting he is mid-journey and mid-scheme. The caption teases: The Missouri papers say that (ex) Gratz Brown's objective point is understood to be— The cartoon mocks the scramble among Missouri's Liberal Republicans, post-1872 electoral collapse, over political spoils each man felt entitled to but neither could securely hold.