Thomas Nast

German-born American cartoonist

• Born: September 27, 1840
• Birthplace: Landau, Bavaria (now in Germany)
• Died: December 7, 1902
• Place of death: Guayaquil, Ecuador

One of the greatest American editorial cartoonists, Nast created lasting works of art that expressed his personal and political convictions while reflecting the hopes and dreams of a generation, and his work influenced political events of his time.

Early Life

Thomas Nast was born in army barracks in Landau, Germany, where his father, also called Thomas Nast, was a musician in the Ninth Regiment Bavarian Band. The elder Nast and his wife, Apollonia Apres, had three children before Thomas was born. Two boys died at an early age, so that Nast’s only playmate was an older sister. In 1846, the Nast family decided to move to the United States, because of the father’s political affiliations and the threat of revolution in Germany. While the elder Nast served in the French and American navies, his family moved to New York. He joined them four years later.

Young Thomas Nast had by this time developed considerable artistic talent. His crayon drawings thrilled fellow students and teachers, but Nast did not enjoy school. Finally, his parents allowed him to take art classes instead, first with Theodore Kaufmann and later, Alfred Fredericks. Nast’s formal education soon ended, when he showed some of his work to Frank Leslie, publisher of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Leslie was impressed with the boldness, if not talent, of this short, round-faced, pudgy, fifteen-year-old German with dark hair and olive skin. After Nast’s successful completion of a difficult assignment, Leslie hired him at four dollars a week.

Nast worked diligently for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper over the next four years, receiving much technical training from Sol Eytinge, a coworker and good friend. Nast’s drawings during this early period frequently reflected his humorous personality in their subject matter and his study of the English illustrators John Leech, Sir John Gilbert, and Sir John Tenniel, in methodology. Perhaps most significant for the future, however, was Nast’s first battle with corruption. Frank Leslie discovered that while dairy owners sold “swill milk” from diseased cows, New York city officials were looking the other way. With Nast’s vivid depictions of the squalid conditions in these dairies, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper brought the issue to the forefront of the news and created a public outcry, which quickly defeated the promoters of the contaminated milk. In this first campaign against corruption, Nast learned that his art could have tremendous political power—a lesson he would not forget.

When Nast left Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1859, to work for the New York Illustrated News, he covered events such as the funeral of John Brown and the John Heenan-Tom Sayers fight in England. Then, hearing of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s invasion of Italy, Nast left England to join the great liberator. While witnessing and recording only a few skirmishes, Nast found upon his return home in February, 1861, that his reputation had grown considerably. Later that year, on the day before his twenty-first birthday, a dignified looking Nast with a recently grown mustache (which became his trademark) married the refined and lovely Sarah Edwards. She would become not only the mother of his five children but also the author of many of the captions for his artwork. Their Niagara Falls honeymoon was a pleasant escape from the realities of a country torn by the Civil War.

Life’s Work

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Nast determined to do what he could for the sacred Union. A more devoted patriot could not be found, especially one with his battlefield experience. Consequently, Harper’s Weekly , a pictorial newspaper begun in 1857, hired Nast to illustrate the events of the war. This association with Harper’s Weekly would provide Nast the perfect forum for the expression of his ideas and the development of his art.

Nast soon began to create imaginative works that aroused the patriotism and commitment of his northern audience, pictures that made the Confederate soldier the embodiment of evil and the Union soldier the defender of justice. Nast’s fervent support of the Union was recognized by President Abraham Lincoln, who called Nast his best recruiting sergeant.

After the Civil War, Nast used his art to support the Republican Party, which to him represented freedom and equality for the slaves and punishment of the treasonous South. Thus, when President Andrew Johnson adopted a lenient Reconstruction policy for the South, Nast retaliated with his first use of caricature, the comic distortion of identifiable men. In 1868, Nast used this art form in the campaign to elect Ulysses S. Grant, the hero of the war, to the presidency. With his satiric caricatures of the Democratic presidential candidate from New York, Governor Horatio Seymour, Nast not only helped Grant but also established a national reputation for himself.

The following year marked the beginning of Nast’s most widely acclaimed political battle. In his crusade against the corrupt Tweed Ring of New York City, Nast’s work matured in technique, composition, and power. Nast’s enemies were the Tammany Hall Democrats who controlled the New York state legislature, the immigrants, the courts, the police, and, to some extent, organized crime. Nast made the four Tweed Ring leaders—city boss William Marcy Tweed, Peter Barr Sweeny, Richard B. Connolly, and A. Oakey Hall—famous with his caricatures. A cartoon entitled “Shadows of Forthcoming Events” (June 4, 1870) revealed the areas of corruption—schools, elections, street cleaners, the fire department, the board of health, saloons—and the men who were responsible for these conditions.

For two years, Nast bombarded the enemy with artistic accusations. His most viciously direct cartoon indicting ring members was “Who Stole the People’s Money?” (April 19, 1871), in which corrupt officials stood in a circle, pointing to one another and proclaiming, “Twas Him.” Ring members became so frightened over this cartoon that Tweed tried to stop Nast’s attacks by threats and then bribery. Nast, true to his principles, vowed not only to continue his fight but also to put the Ring leaders behind bars. With increased public awareness and an honest tabulation of the ballots, the Tweed Ring was defeated in the 1871 election. Although Nast did not win a single-handed victory over the Tweed Ring, one of his caricatures of Tweed did help officials in Spain identify and capture the American fugitive, who died in jail in 1878.

During the early 1870’s, Nast continued to support the Republican Party and its candidates, especially Grant, his hero. Nast even created the symbol for the Republican Party, the Republican elephant, and popularized the Democratic donkey in his cartoons. For his assistance in the 1876 campaign of Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican Party offered Nast ten thousand dollars, but he refused to accept money for expressing his convictions.

Nast became disillusioned with the Republican Party, however, when President Hayes restored home rule to the South in the Compromise of 1877. By 1884, Nast’s political dilemma had reached its climax. He could not back James G. Blaine, Republican presidential candidate, because Blaine sponsored Chinese exclusion, a policy contrary to Nast’s belief in equality. Nast therefore abandoned the Republicans for the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, whose fiscal policy and personal and political philosophies were more acceptable. However, even though Cleveland won the election, Nast’s political influence would never be the same. In 1886, the forty-six-year-old Nast ended his fruitful career with Harper’s Weekly.

Though Nast continued freelance work and even tried to establish his own paper with the motto Principles, not Men, he soon realized that only one area of his work remained popular—his Christmas sketches. For more than twenty-five years, the Christmas issue of Harper’s Weekly had contained Nast’s drawings of Santa Claus, the jolly, fat, fur-clad, white-bearded legend whom Americans still recall at the holiday season. Nast’s inspiration for the character came from his childhood memories of Pelze-Nicol—the local name for the German Saint Nicholas who awarded good children with toys and bad ones with switches. Appropriately, Nast’s last publication was a Christmas drawing for Leslie’s Weekly in 1901.

Significance

Thomas Nast more completely represents life in late nineteenth century United States than most prominent men of his day, for he not only lived it, but he also captured its essence in his artistic creations. His career began at a time when intense nationalism was of primary importance to his country; his Uncle Sam became the symbol of patriotic feeling. After the Civil War, an era of political Reconstruction caused heated debates among American politicians. Nast became a pictorial contributor to these debates as a Radical Republican. Wherever he saw a threat to American democracy, he pounced on it—whether it took the form of the Ku Klux Klan in the South or the Tweed Ring in New York.

Nast’s caricatures and cartoon symbols were given life by the intensity of his principles. The popularity of his Tammany tiger, empty dinner pail, and rag baby of inflation reveals more about society in this period than any political speech or statistical study. For twenty-five years, Nast was a molder of public opinion, intuitively sensing the public mood and responding with drawings that stirred the public mind to thought or action. However, by the 1890’s, things had changed. The public had grown tired of moral and political crusades. Nast’s popularity decreased rapidly, his finances dwindled, and, in 1902, he was forced to accept a gift from his beloved country—a consulship in Ecuador, where he died from yellow fever.

Nast’s death indicated the end of an era, but he left a powerful legacy of images: the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, Uncle Sam, and the jovial figure who spreads happiness to all humankind, Santa Claus. Moreover, he left the story of a dedicated American whose pursuit of a perfect society with liberty and justice for all could never end.

Bibliography

Harper’s Weekly, 1859-1886. The original publications of Nast’s drawings are an essential source of information in tracing his development and analyzing his contribution.

Hess, Stephen, and Sandy Northrop. Drawn and Quartered: The History of American Political Cartoons. Montgomery, Ala.: Elliott & Clark, 1996. This illustrated history features Nast’s cartoons mocking Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall.

Keller, Morton. The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Shows how Nast’s work reflected the post-Civil War belief that society can be reformed. Weak regarding Nast’s artistic techniques.

Lordan, Edward J. Politics, Ink: How America’s Cartoonists Skewer Politicians from King George III to George Dubya. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Chapter 3 of this cartoon history features information on Nast and other political cartoonists whose work was published between 1860 and 1900.

Nast, Thomas. Thomas Nast’s Christmas Drawings. Introduction by Thomas Nast St. Hill. New York: Dover, 1978. A reprint of the work published by Harper and Brothers in 1890, which compiled Nast’s Christmas drawings of almost thirty years. Three illustrations and the introduction by Nast’s grandson have been added.

Paine, Albert Bigelow. Th. Nast: His Period and His Pictures. New York: Macmillan, 1904. Nast selected Paine to write this comprehensive biography. Provides sympathetic insight into Nast’s personal life while presenting the history of an era. Used by all subsequent biographers. Several facsimile reprints were published during the 1970’s.

Smith, Kristen M., and Jennifer L. Gross, eds. The Lines Are Drawn: Political Cartoons of the Civil War. Athens, Ga.: Hill Street Press, 1999. Nast’s work is included in this collection of 138 comics, cartoons, and caricatures about the Civil War that were originally published by the popular press and printing houses.

Vinson, J. Chal. Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1967. A scholarly work that condenses the Paine biography, concentrating on those aspects of Nast’s career that made him a powerful influence on the politics of his day.