not be bought with money, he could be influenced by adulation and fine dinners-and had left Washington, pledged to Grant and the Administration. Thomas Nast was indeed pledged to Grant; not in words, but in his spirit of loyalty to a hero who, with malice toward none and with charity for all, had led the nation's armies to victory-unswervingly and uncompromisingly fighting it out on a single line to that final hour when to a vanquished enemy he could say "Let us have peace."

HORACE GREELEY, 1872

And Grant needed the loyalty of just such a relentless and unflinching champion as Nast. His enemies were legion, his assailants fierce and vindictive. The press of the period hesitated at no charge that would serve to blacken an enemy, and caricature was restricted only by the limits of imagination. Frank Leslie, who, during the summer and autumn of 1871, had repeatedly endeavored to secure Nast, later had brought Matt Morgan from England to oppose him. Morgan, in England, had made a successful failure of a small paper called the Tomahawk-successful in the fact that it had given him a reputation, a failure from the financial point of view-and was now regarded as worthy of his great American opponent. But Morgan in America was to prove a poor investment. More academic than Nast, he lacked conviction and insight and, worst of all, humor. Never has the proverbial English lack of humor " been more conspicuously exemplified than in Morgan's Grant cartoons. From beginning to end they do not produce a single laugh. On the other hand, Nast's portrayals of Horace Greeley, however savage, seldom lacked the humorous note.

It is true Morgan had the weak side of the case. Grant was

charged with enough crimes and shortcomings to have destroyed him utterly, but they were only charges, and had a habit

CARL'S BOOMERANG

of melting into impalpability

under the light of investigation. He was a despot. He had wilfully made corrupt appointments and shared in the profits of fraud. He had abetted the sale of the nation's surplus arms to agents of the French Government during the Franco-Prussian War-a charge made by Schurz and supported by Sumner. He

wanted to be President again, perhaps even a third timeSumner and Schurz found it necessary to prepare a bill restricting the presidential period to one term only. He owned a stone quarry in Seneca, New York, whence large quantities of stone for government building were said to have been taken. He had appointed countless relatives to office, and was therefore guilty of "nepotism," a word which did not fail to find place in Sumner's classic vocabulary. He was accused of being fond of fast horses and expensive cigars. Worst and most heinous offence of all, it was said that he drank whiskey! Sumner had smelled it on his breath that eventful night of the San Domingo quarrel. It was the same charge which had been made against him during the war, and to which Lincoln, who never himself touched a drop of liquor, had replied: "Well, if Grant drinks whiskey, I wish some of the other generals would get hold of the same brand."

To portray Grant as a besotted despot in the midst of a saturnalia was hardly convincing to those who had followed his march from Donelson to Appomattox, and under his administra

tion had seen the national debt reduced at the rate of nearly one hundred millions a year. Lacking the touch of humor, such a picture was more than likely to become a boomerang, or a lighted grenade, tossed straight into the air. "All that goes up must come down," and the Grant cartoons by Morgan fell destructively on the heads of those who had given them flight.

On the other hand, Horace Greeley was accused of none of these sins. It was unnecessary to charge him with anything save the fact that he had not remained steadfast in his faith and works. His career had been one of brilliant vacillations and distinguished credulities. His own printed utterances, reprinted categorically, became his accusation and his conviction. Adding together the evidences of his erratic record, his eccentricities of dress and manner, his own fondness for fierce invective and wordy warfare, with the further addition of Nast's unfailing touch of humor, and the Greeley cartoons were bound to become the effective weapons of the campaign. Indeed, if there was ever an ideal subject for pictorial satire it was found in the person and career of Horace Greeley. It has been charged against Nast that he assailed a feeble old man. On the contrary, Greeley was not yet sixty-two at his death, and certainly during the earlier months of the campaign was anything but

CHAPTER XXVII

GRANT AND WILSON, AND GREELEY AND BROWN

The cartoons of Schurz, Sumner and their associates continued, becoming more drastic with each issue. Curtis did not protest again, and presently found it necessary to tighten his editorial strictures, whether from his own inclinations or because of urgent hints from Franklin Square cannot now be known. In an editorial of March 28 he said:

When Senator Schurz declared that the General Order swindle* was sustained by a power higher than the Secretary of the Treasury, he hinted that it was the President, because he is the only power which, in that sense, is higher than the Secretary. Those who in the investigation of frauds in the Administration seem much more anxious to smear the President than to punish guilty agents, ought to consider whether by so clear an exhibition of personal animosity they do not harm the cause of simple, honest reform.

Nast had made another trip to Washington earlier in the month, and while there, had been presented to Schurz, who looked down with sinister contempt on the little man before him. "You will not be allowed to continue your attacks upon me,” he said rather fiercely.

"Why not, Senator?" queried Nast.

"Your paper will not permit them!"

"Oh, I think it will," ventured the artist pleasantly.

In the New York Custom-house.

66

'Well, then, I will not!" declared the tall statesman with a threatening air. "I shall publicly chastise you!

Nast laughed his happy, infectious laugh, in which many joined. That the man who had defied and destroyed the Tweed Ring, with its legions of bullies and thugs, could be intimidated by Senator Schurz perhaps seemed to them humorous. In the issue with the Curtis editorial above noted appeared "Carl Schurz the Brave" as a "Tower of Strength," the most pronounced caricature thus far of the Missouri senator. On the same page Roscoe Conkling, as Macduff, the fearless defender of Grant, makes his first appearance, and a little later we find Schurz as Quixote, fighting the U. S. Windmill. Logan was left out of the cartoons now, or appeared very dimly in the background, sometimes turning his back on his former associates.

Colonel Chipman, always a faithful friend of Nast, was very close to Grant and in frequent letters kept the artist posted as to the situation at the capital. In one of these the President had sent word:

Logan is all right. I remember him in the field. He was always critical and fault-finding until the order came to move. Then he was in the front rank and ready to charge. Logan is loyal.

So Logan escaped after one or two hard

knocks, but as the conventions drew nearer, THE TOWER OF STRENGTH the dissenting faction grew, and its members with the Democratic leaders were combined by Nast in a motley