This photographer is reimagining Norman Rockwell for the 21st century. Yet most Americans would be surprised to learn that both political symbols as well as Santa Claus and Uncle Sam were popularized, and given their modern forms, by the same maverick cartoonist. His name was Thomas Nast , and over the course of his tenure at Harper's Weekly, from to , he became America's first great political cartoonist -- and one of its harshest satirists. In the intricately detailed wood engravings for which he's best remembered, he tackled the Civil War, the follies of Reconstruction, immigration, and -- most famously -- the Tammany Hall political machine.
Some have suggested that the word "nasty" derives from the artist's surname, and while this is almost certainly not true, one glance at his cartoons might convince you that it is.
Families allowed hug on the US-Mexico border. Historians have asserted that Nast, who grew up in New York City in the s and '50s, was ferociously bullied as a child. Indeed, the two themes that run through his career are his sneering disdain for bullies of all shapes and sizes, and his compassion for their victims. This political cartoon by Thomas Nast, taken from a edition of Harper's Weekly, was an early use of the elephant and the donkey to sybolize the Republican and Democratic parties.
At Harper's, he moved back and forth between these two poles. In one famous cartoon, "Worse Than Slavery" , a defenseless black family cowers before a grinning Klansman; in another -- a blistering parody of the KKK's alliance with New York's political machine, captioned "They Are Swallowing Each Other" -- there are no victims, only two bloated, bug-eyed men depicted as ouroboroi.
The Republicans have embraced the elephant as their official symbol and still use it in campaigns today. Uncle Sam, who first appeared in political cartoons during the War of , is used by Berryman to personify the United States.
He is usually depicted as a lanky man with white hair and a goatee, patriotically dressed in a star-spangled suit and tall top hat. The stories of the donkey and the elephant certainly have their own surprising twists and turns, and would have been hard to predict. Did you know the United States is a democratic republic? That helps in understanding the origin of the two major party names: Democrat and Republican.
Learn more about the party names here. Feedback Tired of Typos? Word of the Day. Meanings Meanings. Was the donkey originally a jackass? Word of the day. Since then the Republican Party has always been represented by the red color. The color is also included on the party symbol. The elephant was not intentionally decided or chosen to represent the Republican Party.
However, Thomas Nest is credited with popularizing the symbol. He felt that the party was straying away from social liberalism.
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