"Why We (Republicans) Laugh" — B. F. Butler and S. S. Cox

Nast draws two Democratic politicians as squabbling fishwives outside a Democratic Fish Market, their ships' masts looming behind them. The larger figure — balloon-jowled, aproned, mouth agape — represents General Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, notorious for wartime controversies that earned him nicknames the caption recites: Old Cock-eye, Beast, Spoons. The smaller figure is Ohio congressman Samuel S. Cox. Their caption dialogue stages a mutual-admiration pact, each swearing never to insult the other again — a truce Republicans found absurd given the pair's history of mutual contempt. Both figures carry the grotesque, bulbous-featured caricature style Nast applied to political enemies regardless of party, exaggerating physiognomy in ways routine to 19th-century editorial cartooning. The joke is pure Republican schadenfreude: Democratic unity, Nast implies, is pure theater.