From the exhibition
"Any Thing for Revenge!" — A La Commune
Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902, artist · Harper's Weekly, July 27, 1872

A tall column inscribed with Union victories — Grant, Lincoln, and battles named up its shaft — dominates the left, topped by a female Liberty figure. At its base reads "The Republican Column." A long rope runs from the column's base to a crowd of figures hauling on it from the lower right, attempting to topple it. Nast labels this mob-effort with the Paris Commune's name, tarring the Liberal Republican opposition as anarchist wreckers. The text panel reprinted beside the cartoon is a Democratic-aligned Missouri paper's platform: White Supremacy, state sovereignty, repudiation of the war debt, and the ticket of Horace Greeley and B. Gratz Brown. Nast's argument is blunt: those who cannot win on principle will settle for destroying what Union soldiers earned in blood.
Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902, artist Public domain