The Cradle of Liberty in Danger

A monstrous genie — labeled nowhere but unmistakable as Benjamin Butler, the polarizing Massachusetts politician — erupts from a smoking bottle marked 'Bottled Butler', looming over a rocking cradle whose infant occupant wears sashes reading 'Boston, Mass.' and clutches papers marked 'Commonwealth of Mass.' The caption quotes the giant's threat: "Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum! The Genie of Massachusetts smells Blue Blood." Nast casts Butler as a fairy-tale ogre menacing Boston's Brahmin establishment — old-money Republicanism personified as a helpless baby. Butler's face is rendered with the grotesque, animalistic exaggeration Nast applied to enemies regardless of party: bulging eyes, fanged grimace, simian hands. The cartoon reflects Nast's genuine alarm at Butler's 1874 gubernatorial ambitions and his demagogic appeal to immigrant and working-class voters against the Yankee elite.