Mephistopheles at Work for Destruction: A Bid for the German Vote

Nast casts Missouri Senator Carl Schurz as a lean, hook-nosed Mephistopheles—drawn with the ethnic caricature routinely applied to German-Americans in period press, emphasizing foreign cunning—whispering over Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, slumped as a drowsy Faust. A luminous Columbia floats in the background, ignored. The sign reads: Wanted: New Plans for Breaking Down the Administration and Plans to Stir Up Bad Feeling Between European Powers and the United States. Sumner's books, labeled with his anti-slavery record, are stacked beside a wastepaper basket. The cartoon attacks the Liberal Republican coalition's Senate investigation into U.S. arms sales to France during the Franco-Prussian War—which Nast viewed as cynical electioneering targeting German immigrant voters rather than principled oversight.