For two decades after the Civil War, the political cartoons of Thomas Nast remained the most recognizable visual feature of Harper's Weekly, at the time one of the most widely circulated magazines in the United States. But despite his considerable fame, his dominance over the pictorial content of a successful periodical, and his unprecedented salary among American illustrators, Nast often felt beleaguered and disgruntled at Harper's Weekly. At the end of 1886, after nearly quitting on several earlier occasions, he declined to renew his contract with his publishers. Writers on Nast have commonly blamed his dissatisfaction and waning influence at the firm upon political feuding with the management, allegedly an increasingly conservative group reluctant to tolerate Nast's radical reformist views. But this ubiquitous explanation greatly exaggerates any such political rift while ignoring a crucial shift in cultural attitudes towards heightened civility in mainstream journalism that did far more to fuel resentments between the artist and his editorial board. Nast's alienation from his longtime employer stemmed less from divergent political goals and more from differing approaches to the niceties of political debate, most notably his failure to adapt his distinctly violent cartoons to standards of decorum embraced by his publishing house during the 1870s.