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245 C H A P T E R E L E V E N The End of an Era Between 1877 and 1884 Nast’s presence at Franklin Square was intermittent and punctuated by illness and clashes over rejected cartoons. He continued to work, submitting cartoons on a variety of issues.1 But during these years, Nast’s fame and talent began to decline. Pain that had developed in his drawing hand in 1873 during his chalk talk tours persisted.2 His connection to the public and to the staff at Harper’s Weekly suffered, too. By the early 1880s, Nast’s career had begun its decline in earnest. The presidential election of 1884 only increased the speed. Nast’s absence from Harper’s Weekly in mid-1877 attracted substantial comment in the press. This heartened the cartoonist and helped him to return to work. Roscoe Conkling’s attack on Curtis at the Republican state convention, where he lauded Harper’s as the magazine “made famous by the pencil of Thomas Nast,” brought a moment’s satisfaction. In November, Harper’s published Nast’s cartoon criticizing the president’s southern policy as a capitulation to the Democrats. The drawing was beautiful—the democratic tiger’s fur produced in careful detail, his tongue sliding across his cheek to illustrate his satisfaction at having eaten the Republican lamb— and it attracted reassuring letters and public notice.One paper likened Nast to the warrior Grant and called Curtis a “fly on the chariot wheel.”3 By 1878, Nast’s contributions to Harper’s reflected the aftermath of the contested election of 1876. They returned to a much broader, more unpredictable set of policy concerns. The gold-versus-silver debate captured his attention in 1878, along with less crucial events like the triumph of the Columbia College crew team at the Henley Royal Regatta.4 He received invitations to lecture, but he hated to travel alone, so he declined.5 Instead, Nast took his wife and children to Europe to enjoy the Paris Exposition. Nast’s relative quiescence in this period is partly related to the unexpected pregnancy of Sallie Nast. Their youngest son, Cyril, was born on August 28, 1879. He enchanted Nast, who used Cyril as the model for his Christmas drawings of 1879. The family’s total assets, including the Mor- 246The End of an Era ristown house and more than $60,000 in government bonds, reached $125,000 that year. Nast was a wealthy man, but not always a happy one.6 Dissatisfied with his position at Harper’s, he hoped to start his own weekly magazine. When that proved impossible, he diversified his investments , removing money from the safety of his bonds and buying shares in mining and other speculative ventures. Nothing could really distract Nast from his primary trouble, though. As the presidential campaign of 1880 began, Nast confronted his nemesis again. This time, Nast and Curtis clashed over the Republican and Democratic nominees. In some ways, the election of 1876 poisoned American politics. While Nast and his family visited the Paris Exposition, an enormous scandal had broken, exposing the details of the frauds perpetrated during the presidential election. A series of encoded cables, published in the NewYork Tribune, showed clearly that allies of the Democratic candidate had offered cash for votes. The enquiries of the Potter Committee eventually tossed mud onto both parties, revealing the depth and complexity of the maneuvering for supremacy even before the electoral crisis. Historian Mark Summers argues that paranoia about corruption warped the entire political process in the postwar period. It was certainly visible in 1878 and 1879, when Nast returned to a nation whose politics echoed with accusations and counteraccusations .7 Relations between Nast and Curtis remained tense. From Nast’s point of view, and that of many other Americans, the president’s approach to national unity failed to achieve any Republican objectives. On November 30, Harper’s published “Our Patient Artist.” It was a commentary on his previous cartoon, “Nay, Patience, or We Break the Sinews.” In the earlier drawing , Uncle Sam holds the cartoonist in place, demanding patience for the president’s policies. In the new cartoon, Uncle Sam flees the scene while Nast—collapsed through the seat of the chair but with his arm raised— appears “defiant” to the last.8 Clearly, Nast believed that his assessment of the Compromise of 1877—that it amounted to the nation’s abandonment of the freedpeople—had been correct. That...

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