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| "No Rest for the Wicked" |
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Cartoonist: Thomas Nast |
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Source: Harper's Weekly |
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Date:
December 2, 1876, p. 965
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Click to return to previous version of this
cartoon |
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Caption:
Sentenced to more hard labor. |
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Complete HarpWeek Explanation:
For the third time in one year, Thomas Nast places himself at the center of one
of his own cartoons and another Harper's Weekly cover. With the election returns
disputed and no agreed upon winner in the presidential sweepstakes, the artist
sharpens his pencil for more sketching. He calms any fears his audience may have
by explaining (upper-left) that the current circumstances are far different from
those of 1860. A key distinguishing factor is President Ulysses S. Grant, who is
described as "a fixed pillar in the welter of uncertainty" and
compared favorably to the vacillating President James Buchanan (1857-1861).
Jefferson Davis' antebellum threat of disunion is in the trash can. There will
not be another civil war.
The quote from the New York Tribune (in front of Nast) confirms Nast's belief
that the Democrats had committed vote fraud. The monument in the upper-right to
"Adams Fall" refers to the failure of Charles Francis Adams to win the
Massachusetts governorship. "Adams had been nearly indispensable during the
Civil War as President Abraham Lincoln's minister to Great Britain, but earned the ire of Republicans by bolting the party in 1872 and supporting Samuel Tilden in 1876."
"Adams Fall" is a pun on the folk saying about the biblical Adam and
the doctrine of original sin: "In Adam's fall, we sinned all." |
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Timeline
