Thomas Nast

The American River Ganges, a cartoon by Thomas Nast showing bishops attacking public schools, with connivance of "Boss" Tweed. Harper's Weekly, September 30, 1871

Schurz, Belmont, Fenton, Trumbull, Tipton, and others lie before a vengeful Columbia (representing the U.S.) while Uncle Sam (also representing the U.S.) waves his hat beside the victorious Ulysses S. Grant, 1872.

Nast's cartoons frequently had numerous sidebars and panels with intricate subplots to the main cartoon. A Sunday feature could provide hours of entertainment and highlight social causes. After 1870, Nast favored simpler compositions featuring a strong central image.[9] He based his likenesses on photographs.[9]

In the early part of his career, Nast used a brush and ink wash technique to draw tonal renderings onto the wood blocks that would be carved into printing blocks by staff engravers.[20] The bold cross-hatching that characterized Nast's mature style resulted from a change in his method that began with a cartoon of June 26, 1869, which Nast drew onto the wood block using a pencil, so that the engraver was guided by Nast's linework. This change of style was influenced by the work of the English illustrator John Tenniel.[21] A recurring theme in Nast's cartoons is anti-Catholicism.[22][23] Nast was baptized a Catholic at the Saint Maria Catholic Church in Landau,[24] and for a time received Catholic education in New York City.[25] When Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, but his conversion was likely formalized upon his marriage in 1861. (The family were practicing Episcopalians at St. Peter's in Morristown.) Nast considered the Catholic Church to be a threat to American values. According to his biographer, Fiona Deans Halloran, Nast was "intensely opposed to the encroachment of Catholic ideas into public education".[26] When Tammany Hall proposed a new tax to support parochial Catholic schools, he was outraged. His 1871 cartoon The American River Ganges, depicts Catholic bishops, guided by Rome, as crocodiles moving in to attack American school children as Irish politicians prevent their escape. He portrayed public support for religious education as a threat to democratic government. The authoritarian papacy in Rome, ignorant Irish Americans, and corrupt politicians at Tammany Hall figured prominently in his work. Nast favored nonsectarian public education that mitigated differences of religion and ethnicity. However, in 1871 Nast and Harper's Weekly supported the Republican-dominated board of education in Long Island in requiring students to hear passages from the King James Bible, and his educational cartoons sought to raise anti-Catholic and anti-Irish fervor among Republicans and independents.[27]

Nast expressed anti-Irish sentiment by depicting them as violent drunks. He used Irish people as a symbol of mob violence, machine politics, and the exploitation of immigrants by political bosses.[28] Nast's emphasis on Irish violence may have originated in scenes he witnessed in his youth. Nast was physically small and had experienced bullying as a child.[29] In the neighborhood in which he grew up, acts of violence by the Irish against black Americans were commonplace.[30]

In 1863, he witnessed the New York City draft riots in which a mob composed mainly of Irish immigrants burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground. His experiences may explain his sympathy for black Americans and his "antipathy to what he perceived as the brutish, uncontrollable Irish thug".[29] An 1876 Nast cartoon combined a caricature of Charles Francis Adams Sr with anti-Irish sentiment and anti-Fenianship.[31]

In general, his political cartoons supported American Indians and Chinese Americans.[32] He advocated the abolition of slavery, opposed racial segregation, and deplored the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. In one of his more famous cartoons, the phrase "Worse than Slavery" is printed on a coat of arms depicting a despondent black family holding their dead child; in the background is a lynching and a schoolhouse destroyed by arson. Two members of the Ku Klux Klan and White League, paramilitary insurgent groups in the Reconstruction-era South, shake hands in their mutually destructive work against black Americans.[33]

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  September 1868 Nast cartoon "This is a White Man's Government!"[lower-alpha 1]
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  The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things, a Nast cartoon depicting a drunken Irishman lighting a powder keg. Published in Harper's Weekly, September 2, 1871
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  1871 Nast cartoon: "Move on! Has the Native American no rights that the naturalized American is bound to respect?"[lower-alpha 2]
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  1879 Nast cartoon: "Red gentleman (Indian) to yellow gentleman (Chinese)[lower-alpha 3]
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  Nast's cartoon "Third Term Panic".[lower-alpha 4]
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  October 24, 1874, Nast cartoon "The Union as it was...This is a White Mans Government....the Lost cause...Worse than Slavery"
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  "Colored Rule in a Reconstructed(?) State (The members call each other thieves, liars, rascals, and cowards)", Harper's Weekly, March 14, 1874.[lower-alpha 5]

Despite Nast's championing of minorities, Morton Keller writes that later in his career "racist stereotypy of blacks began to appear: comparable to those of the Irish—though in contrast with the presumably more highly civilized Chinese."[35]

During Nast's era, William Shakespeare's plays were an inherent part of the school curriculum. He introduced into American cartoons the practice of modernizing scenes from Shakespeare for a political purpose, referencing 23 of his 37 plays in more than 100 cartoons — sometimes with just a recognizable line or two, but generally with pictorial content.[36]

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  Nast referenced 23 of Shakespeare's 37 plays in more than 100 cartoons — sometimes with just a recognizable line or two, but generally with pictorial content.[lower-alpha 6]
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  Nast quoted from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, comparing Ulysses S. Grant to Caesar.[lower-alpha 7]
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  Nast ridiculed Senator Lyman Trumbull (IL), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, via Shakespeare's Macbeth. Published in Harper's Weekly, March 23, 1872 (Pg 232)[39]
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  Nast detested Carl Schurz and attacked him about 60 times during Ulysses S. Grant's presidency.[lower-alpha 8]
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  Carl Schurz's long legs were his primary exaggerated feature for the caricaturist, Nast.[lower-alpha 9]
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  Nast dramatized Ulysses S. Grant as a victorious knight stamping out corruption and fraud.[lower-alpha 10]
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  Nast's target in this cartoon was James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the wealthy, conceited, autocratic editor of the Herald.[lower-alpha 11]

Nast also brought his approach to bear on the usually prosaic almanac business, publishing an annual Nast's Illustrated Almanac from 1871 to 1875. [44] The Green Bag republished all five of Nast's almanacs in the 2011 edition of its Almanac & Reader.[45]

The "Brains"
Boss Tweed depicted by Thomas Nast in a wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly, October 21, 1871

A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over" – "Let Us Prey."
The Tweed Ring depicted by Nast in a wood engraving published in Harper's Weekly, September 23, 1871

The Tammany Tiger Loose—"What are you going to do about it?", published in Harper's Weekly in November 1871, just before election day. "Boss" Tweed is depicted in the audience as the Emperor.

The 1876 cartoon that helped identify Boss Tweed in Spain

Nast's drawings were instrumental in the downfall of Boss Tweed, the powerful Tammany Hall leader.[46] As commissioner of public works for New York City, Tweed led a ring that by 1870 had gained total control of the city's government, and controlled "a working majority in the State Legislature".[47] Tweed and his associates—Peter Barr Sweeny (park commissioner), Richard B. Connolly (controller of public expenditures), and Mayor A. Oakey Hall—defrauded the city of many millions of dollars by grossly inflating expenses paid to contractors connected to the Ring.[48] Nast, whose cartoons attacking Tammany corruption had appeared occasionally since 1867, intensified his focus on the four principal players in 1870 and especially in 1871.[49]

Tweed so feared Nast's campaign that he sent an emissary to offer the artist a bribe of $100,000, which was represented as a gift from a group of wealthy benefactors to enable Nast to study art in Europe.[50] Feigning interest, Nast negotiated for more before finally refusing an offer of $500,000 with the words, "Well, I don't think I'll do it. I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars".[51] Nast pressed his attack in the pages of Harper's, and the Ring was removed from power in the election of November 7, 1871.[52] Tweed was arrested in 1873 and convicted of fraud. When Tweed attempted to escape justice in December 1875 by fleeing to Cuba and from there to Spain, officials in Vigo were able to identify the fugitive by using one of Nast's cartoons.[53]

Compromise With the South - Dedicated to the Chicago Convention (1864) by Thomas Nast

1864 Lincoln Campaign Poster "The Rebel Terms of Peace"

An 1869 Nast cartoon supporting the Fifteenth Amendment[54][55] optimistically envisions a multicultural comity that interprets the national motto E pluribus unum as a heartening holiday family gathering; "In the words of J. Henry Harper, 'Nast was one of the great statesmen of his time. I have never known a man with a surer political insight. He seemed to see approaching events before most men dreamed of them as possible.'"[56]

Interior Secretary Schurz cleaning house, Harper's Weekly, January 26, 1878

Senatorial Round House, from Harper's Weekly, July 10, 1886

Nast was the first journalist who did not own his newspaper to play a major role in shaping public opinion. His cartoons were influential in deciding five Presidential elections: Abraham Lincoln (1864); Ulysses S. Grant (1868 and 1872); Rutherford B. Hayes (1876); — all Republicans — and Democrat Grover Cleveland (1884). His biting cartoons ridiculed the losers: George B. McClellan (1864); Horatio Seymour (1868); Horace Greeley (1872); Samuel J. Tilden (1876); and James G. Blaine (1884). Nast effectively sat out the 1880 election because he distrusted Republican James A. Garfield (who won) and admired Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock, a Civil War hero and Nast's personal friend.

In addition to his talent, creativity and the repetitive impact of his cartoons, Nast benefited from his lack of meaningful competition before Puck arrived in 1877, and from the financial strength, editorial consistency and reach of Harper's Weekly. America's leading illustrated newspaper's circulation was about 120,000 during the Civil War, 200,000 during subsequent Presidential elections, and almost 300,000 during the height of the Tweed campaign. With passalong readership, Nast's audience reached 500,000 to more than a million viewers.[57]

The single most important and influential cartoon that Nast ever drew appeared in Harper's Weekly on August 24, 1864 (post-dated September 3) as the Democratic National Committee was assembling in Chicago to nominate McClellan (whom Lincoln had fired as his top Union general two years earlier) for President. "Compromise with the South — Dedicated to the Chicago Convention" captured the very crux of the existential emotional and political stake at issue in the forthcoming election.

Nast's scathing caricature featured an arrogant, exultant Jefferson Davis shaking hands with a crippled Union soldier who — with his head bowed and his only leg shackled to a ball and chain — humbly accepted it. Columbia, representing the Union and modeled by Nast's wife Sallie, wept at the gravestone marked "In Memory of Our Union Heroes Who Fell in a Useless War." As Davis's boot stomped on a Union grave and broke the sword of Northern Power, the cat-o'-nine-tails in his left hand was ready to flog his vanquished enemies. A Black family in chains despaired behind Davis. The Union flag, upside down in distress, recited its successes, including emancipation, on its stripes; the Confederate flag detailed a list of atrocities.

On October 16 — almost eight weeks after Nast's cartoon appeared — the Richmond Enquirer published some more extreme demands which were not in the Democratic platform. Lincoln's reelection managers took Nast's cartoon, added "The Rebel Terms of Peace," and made more than a million copies as campaign posters. In combination with General William T. Sherman's capture of Atlanta on September 1 and General Phil Sheridan's victory in the Shenandoah Valley on October 19, "A Traitor's Peace" probably was the single most effective visual campaign advertisement in any American Presidential election before or since.[58]

Nast played an important role during the presidential election in 1868, and Ulysses S. Grant attributed his victory to "the sword of Sheridan and the pencil of Thomas Nast."[59] In the 1872 presidential campaign, Nast's ridicule of Horace Greeley's candidacy was especially merciless.[60] After Grant's victory in 1872, Mark Twain wrote the artist a letter saying: "Nast, you more than any other man have won a prodigious victory for Grant—I mean, rather, for Civilization and Progress."[61] Nast became a close friend of President Grant and the two families shared regular dinners until Grant's death in 1885.

Nast and his wife moved to Morristown, New Jersey in 1872[62] and there they raised a family that eventually numbered five children. In 1873, Nast toured the United States as a lecturer and a sketch-artist.[63] His activity on the lecture circuit made him wealthy.[64] Nast was for many years a staunch Republican.[65] Nast opposed inflation of the currency, notably with his famous rag-baby cartoons, and he played an important part in securing Rutherford B. Hayes' ultimate victory in the presidential election in 1876.[66] Hayes later remarked that Nast was "the most powerful, single-handed aid [he] had",[67] but Nast quickly became disillusioned with President Hayes, whose lenient policy towards the South in removing federal troops he opposed.[68]

The death of the Weekly's publisher, Fletcher Harper, in 1877 resulted in a changed relationship between Nast and his editor George William Curtis. His cartoons appeared less frequently, and he was not given free rein to criticize Hayes or his policies.[69] Beginning in the late 1860s, Nast and Curtis had frequently differed on political matters and particularly on the role of cartoons in political discourse.[70] Curtis believed that the powerful weapon of caricature should be reserved for "the Ku-Klux Democracy" of the opposition party, and did not approve of Nast's cartoons assailing Republicans such as Carl Schurz and Charles Sumner who opposed policies of the Grant administration.[71] Nast said of Curtis: "When he attacks a man with his pen it seems as if he were apologizing for the act. I try to hit the enemy between the eyes and knock him down."[35] Fletcher Harper consistently supported Nast in his disputes with Curtis.[70] After his death, his nephews, Joseph W. Harper Jr. and John Henry Harper, assumed control of the magazine and were more sympathetic to Curtis's arguments for rejecting cartoons that contradicted his editorial positions.[72]

Between 1877 and 1884, Nast's work appeared only sporadically in Harper's, which began publishing the milder political cartoons of William Allen Rogers. Although his sphere of influence was diminishing, from this period date dozens of his pro-Chinese immigration drawings, often implicating the Irish as instigators. Nast blamed U.S. Senator James G. Blaine (R-Maine) for his support of the Chinese Exclusion Act and depicted Blaine with the same zeal used against Tweed. Nast was one of the few editorial artists who took up for the cause of the Chinese in America.[73]

Portrait of Thomas Nast from Harper's Weekly, 1867

During the presidential election of 1880, Nast felt that he could not support the Republican candidate, James A. Garfield, because of Garfield's involvement in the Crédit Mobilier scandal; and did not wish to attack the Democratic candidate, Winfield Scott Hancock, his personal friend and a Union general whose integrity commanded respect. As a result, "Nast's commentary on the 1880 campaign lacked passion", according to Halloran.[74] He submitted no cartoons to Harper's between the end of March 1883 and March 1, 1884, partly because of illness.[75]

In 1884, Curtis and Nast agreed that they could not support the Republican candidate James G. Blaine, a proponent of high tariffs and the spoils system whom they perceived as personally corrupt.[76] Instead, they became Mugwumps by supporting the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, whose platform of civil service reform appealed to them. Nast's cartoons helped Cleveland become the first Democrat to be elected President since 1856. In the words of the artist's grandson, Thomas Nast St Hill, "it was generally conceded that Nast's support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In this his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, 'made a president'."[77]

Nast's tenure at Harper's Weekly ended with his Christmas illustration of December 1886. It was said by the journalist Henry Watterson that "in quitting Harper's Weekly, Nast lost his forum: in losing him, Harper's Weekly lost its political importance."[78] Fiona Deans Halloran says "the former is true to a certain extent, the latter unlikely."[79]

Nast lost most of his fortune in 1884 after investing in a banking and brokerage firm operated by the swindler Ferdinand Ward. In need of income, Nast returned to the lecture circuit in 1884 and 1887.[80] Although these tours were successful, they were less remunerative than the lecture series of 1873.[81]

In 1890, Nast published Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings for the Human Race.[9] He contributed cartoons in various publications, notably the Illustrated American, but was unable to regain his earlier popularity. His mode of cartooning had come to be seen as outdated, and a more relaxed style exemplified by the work of Joseph Keppler was in vogue.[82] Health problems, which included pain in his hands which had troubled him since the 1870s, affected his ability to work.

Thomas Nast, 1902

In 1892, he took control of a failing magazine, the New York Gazette, and renamed it Nast's Weekly. Now returned to the Republican fold, Nast used the Weekly as a vehicle for his cartoons supporting Benjamin Harrison for president. The magazine had little impact and ceased publication seven months after it began, shortly after Harrison's defeat.[83]

The failure of Nast's Weekly left Nast with few financial resources. He received a few commissions for oil paintings and drew book illustrations. In 1902, he applied for a job in the State Department, hoping to secure a consular position in western Europe.[84] Although no such position was available, President Theodore Roosevelt was an admirer of the artist and offered him an appointment as the United States' Consul General to Guayaquil, Ecuador in South America.[84] Nast accepted the position and traveled to Ecuador on July 1, 1902.[84] During a subsequent yellow fever outbreak, Nast remained on the job, helping numerous diplomatic missions and businesses escape the contagion. He contracted the disease and died on December 7 of that year.[9] His body was returned to the United States, where he was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

The Thomas Nast Award[89] has been presented each year since 1968 by the Overseas Press Club[90] to an editorial cartoonist for the "best cartoons on international affairs." Past winners include Signe Wilkinson, Kevin (KAL) Kallaugher, Mike Peters, Clay Bennett, Mike Luckovich, Tom Toles, Herbert Block, Tony Auth, Jeff MacNelly, Dick Locher, Jim Morin, Warren King, Tom Darcy, Don Wright and Patrick Chappatte.[89][90]

In December 2018, The OPC Board of Governors decided to remove Nast's name from the award noting that Nast "exhibited an ugly bias against immigrants, the Irish and Catholics". OPC President Pancho Bernasconi stated "Once we became aware of how some groups and ethnicities were portrayed in a manner that is not consistent with how journalists work and view their role today, we voted to remove his name from the award."[91]

The Thomas Nast Prize for editorial cartooning has been awarded by the Thomas Nast Foundation (located in Nast's birthplace of Landau, Germany) since 1978 when it was first given to Jeff MacNelly.[92] The prize is awarded periodically to one German cartoonist and one North American cartoonist. Winners receive 1,300 Euros, a trip to Landau, and the Thomas Nast medal. The American advisory committee includes Nast's descendant Thomas Nast III of Fort Worth, Texas.[92] Other winners of the Thomas Nast Prize include Jim Borgman, Paul Szep, Pat Oliphant, David Levine, Jim Morin, and Tony Auth.[93]

The word "nasty" is erroneously thought to derive from Nast's name, due to the cynical tone of many of his cartoons.[94] In reality, the word's origins are unclear, but it is ancient, with written evidence that dates to the 1400s. Chief etymological theories prominently include derivation from Old Norse, Old French and/or some relation to a Dutch term.[95]

• Nast, T., & St. Hill, T. N. (1974). Thomas Nast: Cartoons and Illustrations. (New York: Dover Publications) ISBN 0-486-23067-8 online
• Paine Albert Bigelow (1904). Th. Nast: His Period And His Pictures. New York: The MacMillan Company. Retrieved 2009-07-10. ISBN 0-87861-079-0 online