ublished on the opening day of the Liberal Republican Convention in
Cincinnati, May 1 (in the issue dated May 11), the elaborate “A ‘Liberal’
Surrender: Any Thing to Beat Grant” is Nast’s gamble at predicting the future
alignment of the Liberal Republicans with the Democrats. The subtitle is the
first of several cartoons in which Nast used the phrase “Any Thing to…” as a way
to demean the unusual political coalition as a shameless ploy for public
office.
Viewed from behind the battlements outside the nation’s capital, Horace
Greeley and Carl Schurz stand together at center right. The Tribune
editor blows his bugle and Schurz waves the white flag of “Truce/We
Surrender/Any Thing to Beat Grant” to summon in from the woods (right) the Ku
Klux Klan, Copperheads, Slavery, the Confederate States of America, and the
Tammany Ring. Closer to the line, attempting to scale the barrier is Nathan
Bedford Forrest, former Confederate cavalry leader and Klan founder, and at the
lower wall are (left-right) Jefferson Davis, former Confederate president, and
the 1868 Democratic national ticket of vice-presidential nominee Frank Blair and
presidential nominee Horatio Seymour.
Inside the barricade, ex-President Andrew Johnson creeps out from under the
tent (far right), while Senators Thomas Tipton, Reuben Fenton, and Lyman
Trumbull train their “Cincinnati” cannon on the forces of Grant (smoking a cigar
under the flag on the far left), as a pair of defecting Republicans scramble for
cover. Grant’s cannon of the regular Republican “Philadelphia Convention” (held
June 5-6) is ready to fire and his troops are prepared to charge. The tent at
lower left has figures of (left-right) Trumbull, Tipton, and Schurz caricatured
on its panels.