The great American tanner / Thomas Worth. sketch ; on stone by [John] Cameron.

An election-year cartoon invoking both Grant's humble beginnings as a tanner and his successful Civil War military career. Before the war Grant had worked in his family's leather goods establishment in Galena, Illinois, earning the later sobriquet, "the Galena Tanner." Popular New York governor John Thompson Hoffman, dressed as an Indian, the "Great Sachem of Tammany," presents Democratic candidates Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair, Jr., to Grant (center). Thompson was a leader of New York Tammany Democrats. He addresses Grant, "Here General is a couple more hides to be tanned when will they be done?" Grant smokes a cigar and wears the leather apron of a tanner, rolled-up sleeves exposing his muscular arms. He replies, "Well I'll finish them off early in November." At right former Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Simon Bolivar Buckner, and John C. Pemberton hold their rumps and hop about in pain. They announce, "This is to Certify, that we have had our hides tanned by U. S. Grant and that the work was by him thoroughly done? [signed by] R. E. Lee, S. P. Buckner, Pemberton and others Late of Confederate Army."

Signed with initials: J.M.I. [James Merritt Ives]
Currier & Ives : a catalogue raisonné / compiled by Gale Research. Detroit, MI : Gale Research, c1983, no. 2783
Weitenkampf, p. 156
"U. S. Grant, The Man and the Image, p. 56
Published in: American political prints, 1766-1876 / Bernard F. Reilly. Boston : G.K. Hall, 1991, entry 1868-11.