Unconditional Surrender Grant

Published days after Ulysses S. Grant's presidential election victory, this full-page plate turns Grant's famous Civil War ultimatum—"no terms except unconditional surrender"—into a triumphal pun. At center, defeated Democrats and their allies are literally carried off the field on a rail, a traditional American punishment for scoundrels. Scattered at their feet are placards reading "C.S.A.," "K.K.K.," and "Copperhead," branding the opposition as a coalition of ex-Confederates, Klan nightriders, and Northern traitors. Grant's Union supporters crowd the left behind smoke and a flag-topped earthwork. Several opposition figures are rendered with the broad, rubbery facial caricature Nast routinely applied to Irish-American Democratic voters—a nativist shorthand common in illustrated weeklies of the period. The caption below reads simply: Unconditional Surrender Grant.