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September found the Greeley presidential campaign to be a deeply dispirited
enterprise of weirdly dissimilar factions, the leaders of which were hoping
against hope to bring down the incumbent Republican war-hero in the White House,
U.S. Grant. Nast’s “Key-Note of the Campaign” (dated September 28; published
September 18) is a virtuoso display of portrait caricature amidst a carnival of
depression, alarm, frustration, fury, nausea, and mortification. A central
point of the cartoon is that the plans of the Liberal Republican progenitor,
Senator Carl Schurz (seated at the piano), have gone seriously awry. Schurz had
been exceedingly surprised and disheartened by Greeley’s nomination at the
Cincinnati convention, but had stoically joined the campaign. |
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