American Caricature and Thomas Nast

 

The 19th century also saw a flood a caricature in America. Andrew Jackson was a popular figure to satirize because of his forthright personality and tendency to not hide from controversy. African Americans were a popular topic with the approaching civil war in 1861. Other topics that were popular in this century were Mormons and women. The 19th Amendment will be passed in 1920, allowing equal voting rights for women, and the century before, women's rights were a hot topic that satirists often approached.

Thomas Nast is probably the most prominent caricaturist in this time, he is even possibly responsible for inventing the elephant and the donkey as representative for the Republican and Democratic parties. 1862 Nast began producing representational, political cartoons for Harper’s Weekly. It was in this publication that he created caricatures of William Magear “Boss” Tweed and the rest of the grafters of Tammany Hall, the corrupt Democratic organization in New York City. These cartoons were highly influential because most of New York's population was still illiterate.

 Image 1: Thomas Nast caricature of Andrew Jackson
Image 2:  Thomas Nast, "The Tammany Ring-dom"
Image 3: Cover of Harper's Weekly, Thomas Nast, "The Only Thing They Respect of Fear"