Schurz Played Out

Nast draws Missouri Senator Carl Schurz—German-born Liberal Republican and Grant critic—slumped at a grand piano, fingers barely touching the keys, the picture of exhaustion. The sheet music propped before him reads *Grant Is Not Honest / Amnesty and Civil Service Reform / Composition Carl Schurz*; pages littering the floor carry titles such as *Down with Grant*, *Military Ring*, *Liberal Reform*, and *The Germans Will Vote for Grant*, cataloguing Schurz's political crusades and contradictions. The caption, *Played Out!*, is Nast's verdict: that Schurz's anti-Grant campaign for the 1872 Liberal Republican nomination had spent itself without result. No ethnic caricature appears here; Nast targets Schurz's politics, not his German origin—unusual restraint for an era when immigrant politicians were routinely lampooned in dialect and grotesque physiognomy.