For years, Nast had been fascinated by the Tell fable with its tangled mix of fact, romance, nationalism, and stark contrast between good and evil.  In December 1860, as an impressionable youth of 20, the artist spent three days in the Lucerne area, visiting as much of the “original site” as possible.  At Lucerne, he attended a performance of the Rossini opera based on the story.

According to tradition, Tell was confronted by a cap erected on a pole in the marketplace and ordered to bow to it as a sign of obedience to Austrian tyrant, Gessler.  Infuriated, Tell refused.  As a test of skill, he was obliged to shoot an apple off the head of his son with a crossbow, and in due course he killed the hated Gessler.

In this 1872 version, Nast substitutes Greeley’s well-worn, trademark hat and coat for Gessler’s cap.  After the Cincinnati convention, white hats became popular as Greeley campaign favors.  Leslie’s Illustrated compared the Tribune editor’s coat and hat with the log cabin and hard cider of William Henry Harrison’s 1840 presidential campaign.  The symbolism was made to order.  Nast saw no reason to abandon the battered old hat that he had been cultivating as a reminder of the editor’s eccentricity and seniority.  Here for the first time Greeley’s coat trails the “Gratz Brown” tag—a symbol of the vice-presidential candidate’s insignificance—with which the remorseless cartoonist would pursue the Greeley-Brown ticket until after the election. 

The flags on the Tribune building are (left-right): an American flag flown upside-down (a nautical symbol of distress), with words reminding viewers of Greeley’s original acquiescence in secession and his push for negotiated settlement of the Civil War; the British Union-Jack flag (below) incongruously positioned with an Irish-Catholic flag (top), which combines the white of the Vatican flag with an Irish harp; the Confederate flag, with words reminding readers that Greeley bailed ex-Confederate President Jefferson Davis out of jail; and (partly obscured by Greeley’s coat) a white flag for Mayor Oakey Hall of New York City.

Senator Reuben Fenton and Greeley himself are just to the rear of Grant’s raised elbow. The group bowing to the pole erected in front of the Tribune building includes Nast’s usual mixed cast of Greeley supporters.  The first circle (left-right) consists of John Morrissey of Tammany Hall, Jefferson Davis, Senator Frank Blair, and Henry “Hank” Smith, a Republican who had cooperated with the Tweed Ring.  Behind them (left-right) are John Kelly of Tammany Hall, public speaker Anna Dickinson, “Boss” Tweed of Tammany Hall, Mayor Oakey Hall of New York City, and journalist Theodore Tilton.  In the far background stand Senators Carl Schurz and Thomas Tipton.