The European Plan

Two figures face each other before a wall map labeled "European Map of America" showing Northern and Southern States divided by the Mason-Dixon Line. The portly figure on the left — top-hatted, rendered with the exaggerated jowls Nast used for corrupt or complacent establishment types — grips a pair of scissors at the Mason-Dixon Line opposite a leaner figure labeled with Count de Lesseps, the French engineer then promoting a Panama Canal. To the right hangs a placard: "U.S. Army — Supported by Congress" depicting a skeleton in uniform, beside a note reading "Dr. Monroe is Dead." Nast's argument is blunt: congressional underfunding has gutted the military, leaving the Monroe Doctrine a corpse and the continent open to European commercial penetration — scissors poised to carve America along its oldest wound.