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In the November 23, 1872 issue of Harper’s Weekly, Nast offered up a
self-caricature in a lament to the end of the campaign. The disgruntled
cartoonist wonders, “What am I to do now?” Nast stands isolated in the
foreground, while behind him a crowd rejoices in front of The New York Times
building, where placards proclaim Grant’s “Grand Victory,” the destruction of
“The Senatorial Cabal,” “Sham Reform Exposed,” and in tiny characters, “H. G.
Gone West,” an allusion to Greeley’s famous advice to enterprising young
Americans: “Go west, young man, go west.” At the upper-left, an announcement
on the Tribune office building reads “The Greeley Triumph Postponed.”
After two years of intense professional exertion during the anti-Tweed and
anti-Greeley campaigns, it is hardly surprising to learn that Nast was
exhausted. He would take a six-month leave-of-absence from Harper’s Weekly
in 1873.
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