Schurz and the German Vote

Carl Schurz—Missouri senator, 1848 revolutionary émigré, and champion of Liberal Republican reform—leans forward in anguished posture, hat on the ground beside him, reading a wall poster: "THE GERMANS WILL VOTE AS THEY PLEASE / THEY HAVE NO DICTATOR." His shadow falls in the unmistakable silhouette of a donkey. The caption below reads: C.S. "Perhaps I've lost it!" Nast's argument is direct: Schurz had defected from the Republican Party to support Horace Greeley, betting he could deliver German-American voters as a bloc. The cartoon mocks that pretension—the shadow brands him a Democrat, while the poster strips him of the ethnic authority he claimed. The German vote, Nast insists, belongs to no self-appointed boss.