The Crowning Insult to Him Who Occupies the Presidential Chair

A lion in a businessman's suit — Nast's emblem for President Ulysses S. Grant — sits in a throne-like chair before the Capitol dome while a fox in a coat climbs his back to crown him with a goat's head labeled THE SCAPEGOAT. The fox's horns are inscribed with the phrase carrying out the party platform and the blunders of Congress, transferring congressional failures onto Grant. Smaller animals — rabbits, squirrels, a bear, a prostrate dog — crowd the margins, suggesting a corrupt political menagerie. The bottom caption names the act precisely. Nast argues that a hostile, scandal-plagued Congress manufactured Grant as a convenient fall guy for its own failures during Reconstruction's contested final years.