On September 23rd, 1871, Nast drew Boss Tweed and his three Tammany Ring' associates - New York Mayor Oakey Hall, Peter Sweeny and Richard Connolly - as a group of vultures on a stormy mountain ledge squatting on a body marked 'New York'. They were shown picking over bones with labels such as 'Rent Payer', 'Liberty', 'Law', 'Tax Payer', 'Justice' and 'Suffrage' and above their heads could be seen a lightning bolt about to start a landslide that would sweep them away.

A staunch Republican himself (and a Protestant), Nast - together with Harper's Weekly - campaigned vociferously against William Marcy Tweed, the corrupt leader or 'boss' of Tammany Hall (named after its headquarters on East 14th Street), the political machine which ran New York City's Democratic Party. A former New York State Senator, Tweed and his Irish Catholic associates had by January 1869 taken control of the city, and were looting millions of dollars of taxpayers' money by 'invoice padding', bribes, kickbacks, intimidation and other means. It was said that construction of the Brooklyn Bridge could not proceed until Tweed had got a seat on the construction company's board, and a particular scandal was the massive overspending on the construction of the New York County Courthouse (begun in 1861), which finally cost more than the USA's purchase of Alaska in 1867.

The impact of Nast's cartoons and the campaign by journalists at Harper's Weekly, and later the New York Times, led directly to a change of leadership at Tammany Hall and most of the Ring were eventually voted out of office. Tweed himself was sentenced to twelve years in prison, but was released after a year and then arrested again in an attempt to recover $6 million in stolen funds.