Existing comment:
Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885 (Thomas Nast cartoon):
It was one of General Ulysses S. Grant's small good fortunes after the Civil War, as he began settling into the White House as the eighteenth president, to count one of the nation's leading political cartoonists, Thomas Nast, as a friend. In part, Grant attributed his election to the presidency in 1868 "to the pencil of Nast"; the cartoonist was a staunch supporter of both Grant and the Republican Party. Nast developed a camaraderie with the president and the first family, as this watercolor drawing of Grant might suggest. Yet Nast's drawing of Grant has, in hindsight, become a caricature of his "armchair" presidency, one in which he relegated too much authority to untrustworthy subordinates, and interpretation that the artist never intended to suggest.
Thomas Nast, 1872 |