ComicBook Experience

From the exhibition

Two Editors at Odds

Thomas Nast · May 4, 1872

Two Editors at Odds
Nast places two antagonists back-to-back in mutual suspicion. At left, a pudgy, bespectacled Horace Greeley—editor of the *New York Tribune* and soon the Liberal Republican presidential nominee—wears mock-ermine robes of self-importance and clutches a long quill-spear, while his coat pocket bulges with a pamphlet labeled *"What I Know About Twisting. H.G."*—a jab at his rhetorical evasions. At right, Ulysses S. Grant reads a paper Nast labels the *N.Y. Misrepresenter*, a swipe at the opposition press. The cartoon argues that Greeley's pretensions to reformer-kingship are fraudulent, while Grant rightly regards hostile journalism with wary contempt. No ethnic caricature appears; Nast's attack is purely ideological, targeting Greeley's imminent break with the Republican Party.

Thomas Nast Public domain