he day after Whitelaw Reid’s Tribune editorial prompted Nast to add
“We Are on the Home Stretch!” to his “Tidal Wave” cartoon title, a letter
appeared in The New York Times (October 10), which provided Nast with the
germ of another cartoon: “The New-York Tribune of this morning says, ‘We
are on the home stretch, and confident of success.’ True! H. G. is going home
to Chappaqua [New York], and has every prospect of reaching there.”
The notion developed into perhaps the most controversial image of the 1872
election, “We Are on the Home Stretch.” When published (October 23, dated
November 2) two weeks before the landslide results of the presidential election
were reported, it must have seemed like a deliciously forthright act of
political prophecy. Morbid images of political defeat had been drawn before and
would be in the future. Building on Reid’s brazen editorial in the face of
dismal portents for the Greeley campaign, “The Home Stretch” would have seemed
like an appropriate response.
Nast could not have foreseen that Greeley’s wife would die of consumption on
October 30, a week after the cartoon hit the newsstands, or that the losing
candidate himself would die on November 29, less than a month after the
election. Earlier in October, upon hearing of Mary Greeley’s illness, Nast
withheld a cartoon showing her candidate-husband by the open grave of
Democracy. The artist reasoned “that its idea and purpose were likely to be
misconstrued.” On the day of the woman’s death, the New York Daily Herald,
obviously unaware of her demise offered its enthusiastic endorsement of Nast’s
“Home Stretch” cartoon, calling it “one of the best hits of the campaign… Go and
get the paper, if you haven’t seen it, and laugh your fill for once.”
In it, candidate Greeley is depicted arriving at his Chappaqua residence,
carried on a stretcher by stiff and stately Whitelaw Reid (front), managing
editor of the New York Tribune, and Senator Reuben Fenton of New York
(back), an early supporter of Greeley. A boy on the left is trying to return
the Gratz Brown tag, which has fallen off Greeley’s coat. Beyond the front
gate, the mourning party includes the Reverend Theodore Tilton, weeping, and
Senator Carl Schurz, who tips his hat in respect. To the center-rear, the U.S.
flag atop “The Greeley Ho[use]” (or “Ho[tel]”) flies upside down to signal
distress. The overall design purports to represent the Tribune front
page on the day after the election, including a burlesque of the newspaper’s
masthead.