This Little Boy Would Persist in Handling Books Above His Capacity / And This Was the Disastrous Result

Two panels frame a pointed attack on whoever Nast judged unfit to govern. Left: a squat, big-headed figure — drawn with the bulbous-nose caricature Nast routinely applied to Irish-American political opponents — teeters on a stepladder reaching for a volume labeled Constitution of U.S. from a packed law library, far beyond his physical and, the caption sneers, intellectual reach. Right: the Constitution lies crushed flat on the floor, the same tiny legs pinned beneath it, a fallen ladder beside it. The caption pair works as a single dry joke: childish overreach produces constitutional ruin. In 1868, with Reconstruction amendments being contested and Andrew Johnson's impeachment fresh, the cartoon argues that incompetent or corrupt hands on the nation's founding law destroy it outright.