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September found the Greeley presidential campaign
to be a deeply dispirited enterprise of weirdly dissimilar factions, the leaders
of which were hoping against hope to bring down the incumbent Republican
war-hero in the White House, U.S. Grant. Nast's "Key-Note of the
Campaign" is a virtuoso display of portrait caricature amidst a carnival of
depression, alarm, frustration, anger, nausea, and mortification. A central
point in the cartoon is that the plans of the Liberal-Republican progenitor,
Senator Carl Schurz (seated at the piano), have gone seriously awry. Schurz had
been exceedingly surprised and disheartened by Greeley's nomination, but had
stoically joined the campaign. |
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