The idea for the cartoon had been suggested after the Liberal Republican Convention by the Cincinnati Evening Post (May 15).  The newspaper reported journalist Samuel Bowles’s account (originally published in the Springfield Republican) of a meeting of Liberals in a private home.  All were dejected after the Greeley win and Charles Francis Adams loss of the nomination.  “Mr. Schurz was unable to speak, but going to the piano, played with the skill of the accomplished amateur he is… There was not a dry eye … in the whole company…”  Nast willingly incorporated the idea into his cartoon, “Played Out!” (dated June 15, published June 5).  The scene was transferred from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C., and Schurz’s musical piece became an attack on Grant.

The cartoonist returned to the “Played Out” theme three months later with “Key-Note of the Campaign.”  The New York Times commented (September 19) that the latter cartoon “is perhaps superior in point of elaboration and careful grouping to anything which has yet been produced by the great American caricaturist.  A more perfect gallery of portraits could not be arranged… Face, expression, and pose are equally characteristic and unmistakable…”  Although Nast would not have been aware of it when completing the plate for “Key-Note” in early September, Greeley would be out of town on a campaign tour during most of the time the cartoon was in print.  Thus, the candidate’s absence gave additional punch to Nast’s study of dissension in the ranks of Greeley’s followers.