Thomas Nast Research Paper
Thomas Nast:
The Mind Behind the Modern Media
Today, an American’s political views develop from a number of sources. Magazines, movies, television, newspapers, and the Internet all shape public policy and the outcome of an election. However, most of those sources are fairly modern; newspapers and, magazines were the sole source for the American people up till about seventy years ago. Newspapers needed a way to present political information that was interesting and understandable to all; cartoons were the best way. Thomas Nast can easily be noted as the father of early political cartoons, because of his many contributions to the public policy of his time and his influence on the political media today.
Thomas Nast was born September …show more content…
27, 1840, in army barracks in Landau, Germany (Boime). His father, also named Thomas, 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 a very 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 (http://cartoons.osu.edu/nast/bio.htm).
The timing of young Nast’s coming of age could not have been better. The 1850s were a booming time in the history of the nation, and of New York City. America’s national wealth increased by an estimated ninety percent between 1850 and 1857, and it was then that New York emerged not only as a great commercial and manufacturing city, but also as the nation’s center for book, magazine, and newspaper publication (Paddock). By 1860 the city was responsible for thirty percent of America’s printing and publishing. It had one hundred and four newspapers in 1857, unloading some seventy eight million copies a year on the public. Most of these papers were weeklies, but the major dailies of the time—the Tribune, the Sun, the Herald, the Times, and the Evening Post—had a combined daily circulation of almost a quarter of a million (Paddock). Editors Horace Greeley of the Tribune and William Cullen Bryant of the Post were among New York’s leading citizens in 1850; and the major newspapers’ offices on Park Row were the most distinctive and prominent business buildings in the city. New York’s monthly magazines were an even more imposing presence on the American cultural scene. There were fifty-four of them, with a combined circulation of 500,000, in 1849 (Paddock).
Fueling this wave of new journals was a recognizably modern audience—farmers in the countryside, a rapidly growing working and middle class in the towns and cities—keen to be educated. New York City’s size, diversity, and unique access both to the Old World across the Atlantic and the New World of the American interior, made it the natural breeding ground for an American middle class culture (Paddock).
Nast studied art with Theodore Kaufmann, a German painter who specialized in historical scenes. Nast worked at the Thomas Jefferson Bryant Gallery of Christian art where he copied the historical paintings in the collection as a part of his artistic training. From 1856 to 1862 Thomas Nast worked as a reportorial artist for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, and joined the staff of New York Illustrated News (Boime). Nast sailed to England to cover a prizefight for the New York Illustrated News; then traveled to Italy to report for the New York Illustrated News and the London Illustrated News on Giuseppe Garabaldi’s military campaign in Sicily during the Italian Revolution. Nast’s identification with Garibaldi’s crusade was personal and passionate, in effect a preliminary to those far more compelling causes—saving the Union, ending slavery, creating a postwar nation based on equality and liberty, facing the corruption of the Tweed Ring—into which he, his art, and his country would soon be pitched headlong (Boime). Nast returned to New York from covering Garibaldi in February 1861. When the Civil War broke out in April, he attracted much notice with a painting of the New York National Guard’s Seventh Regiment marching down Broadway to depart for the front (Boime).
In the summer of 1862 he became a regular contributor to Harper’s Weekly, would remain so for twenty-five years producing about 2,200 cartoons for that magazine.
His first work for Harper’s was his first Santa Claus drawing, Santa Claus in Camp, published January 3, 1863. A year later, Thomas Nast published Compromise with the South, in which Nast powerfully combats the defeatism that pervaded the Union during the summer of 1864, when Lincoln himself expected to be defeated for reelection (Encyclopedia Britannica). A tattered American flag hangs upside down in a signal of distress because northern cities are devastated. Columbia, symbolizing the nation, weeps as a disabled Union veteran’s handshake with a Confederate officer dissolves into a humble surrender (Halloran). The triumphant Confederate’s foot treads on a Union soldier’s grave and breaks the northern sword and northern power. In the South, its flag brilliant in victory despite the crimes listed in its folds. An African American Union veteran and his family are reshackled in slavery (Halloran). The title of the work refers to the recent Democratic presidential nominating convention, which had declared a platform pronouncing the war a failure, criticized emancipation, and advocating a cease-fire and negotiations with the Confederacy (Halloran). This cartoon was widely reproduced by the Republican Party for use in President Lincoln’s campaign, which Lincoln did go on to win (Encyclopedia Britannica). In the election of 1868, Nast began his cartoon campaign against William M. Tweed, boss of New York City’s Tammany Hall, and his associates with A Respectable Screen Covers a Multitude of Thieves in the October 10th issue of Harper’s Weekly (Encyclopedia Britannica). Pressure was put on Harper Brothers, the company that produced the magazine, and when it refused to fire Nast, the company lost the contract to provide New York schools with books. Nast himself was offered a bribe of $500,000 to end his
campaign (Encyclopedia Britannica). This was hundred times the salary of $5,000 that the magazine paid him but Nast still refused and eventually Tweed was arrested and imprisoned for corruption (Encyclopedia Britannica). Nast 's campaign against Tweed was later described as "the finest and most effective political cartooning ever done in the United States” (Encyclopedia Britannica). In addition, while working at Harper’s, Nast adopted the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party in A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion, which was published January 15 1870 (Encyclopedia Britannica). Four years later, he introduced the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party in The Third Term Panic published on November 7th (Encyclopedia Britannica). During the same time, Nast premiered the Grand Caricaturama theatrical presentation, thirty-three eight-by-twelve foot murals depicting American history, in New York and Boston. Thomas Nast also created five color cartoons of American politicians for Vanity Fair; making him the first American artist invited to contribute to the prestigious London magazine (Encyclopedia Britannica). In 1879, the cartoonist received a Silver Army Canteen as the gift of 3,500 members of the Army and Navy in gratitude for “the patriotic use he has made of his rare abilities as the artist of the people” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
In 1886, Thomas Nast left Harper’s Weekly after choosing not to sign his renewal contract due to conflicts with the magazine’s management (Halloran). Nast went on to purchase the New York Gazette, an unprofitable weekly newspaper in 1892 and renamed it Nast’s Weekly. Six months later he suffered major financial problems due to the financial failure of Nast’s Weekly (Halloran). After the failure, he received several commissions for paintings based on historical subjects, and returned to his original artistic ambition of painting. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Thomas Consul General to the commercial Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil. He died there of yellow fever on December 7, and was buried in Ecuador. Then reburied four years later in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York (Halloran). Today, most American’s who possess a rudimentary knowledge of politics are aware of a Nast cartoon, but few are actually conscious of the mastermind behind the symbols. Few are aware of the impact his work had the electorate of his time. According to census results of 1850, 1,053,420 American citizens were illiterate (Pflueger). This rate increased by more than 4 million citizens to 5,658,144 when calculated in 1870 (Pflueger). With such a sizeable segment of the population incapable of reading, newspaper and magazine articles were not sufficient for providing information to the masses. Nast used his cartoons not only to entertain and provide information, but also to shape public opinion. The cartoonist waged war on everything from slavery to corrupt politicians using no written words, merely innovative images. He also greatly shaped the conclusions of multiple elections. Nast’s cartoons were similar to the incessant campaign commercials of today. Thomas Nast may not be a household name, but the American government was molded greatly by his cartoons (Pflueger). Thomas Nast provided Americans something articles never could, pictures. These pictures added emotion and depth to matters the public at one time disregarded. He made politics and government relevant and thought provoking to the average person skimming through a newspaper. His cartoons played a panicle role throughout the argument of slavery, as well as the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The two major modern political parties still use Nast’s cartoons as their official figures. Thomas Nast was an artist from simple beginnings who used his talents and intelligence to create groundbreaking images that are ingrained into the minds of all Americans today. Even an American who does not recognize the Republican Elephant or the Democratic Donkey knows Santa Claus.
Works Cited
Boime, Albert. "Thomas Nast and French Art." JSTOR. JSTOR. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Fox, Louis H. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1928. University of Michigan Library. Web.
Halloran, Fiona D. Homas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons. University of North Carolina, 2012. Print.
"Nast, Thomas." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.
Paddock, Barney, Brett Paddock, and Lisa Paddock. "Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Age of Romanticism and Realism, 1816–1895." Bloom 's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File News Services. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Pflueger, Lynda. Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2000. Print.
The Mind Behind the Modern Media
Today, an American’s political views develop from a number of sources. Magazines, movies, television, newspapers, and the Internet all shape public policy and the outcome of an election. However, most of those sources are fairly modern; newspapers and, magazines were the sole source for the American people up till about seventy years ago. Newspapers needed a way to present political information that was interesting and understandable to all; cartoons were the best way. Thomas Nast can easily be noted as the father of early political cartoons, because of his many contributions to the public policy of his time and his influence on the political media today.
Thomas Nast was born September …show more content…
27, 1840, in army barracks in Landau, Germany (Boime). His father, also named Thomas, 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 a very 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 (http://cartoons.osu.edu/nast/bio.htm).
The timing of young Nast’s coming of age could not have been better. The 1850s were a booming time in the history of the nation, and of New York City. America’s national wealth increased by an estimated ninety percent between 1850 and 1857, and it was then that New York emerged not only as a great commercial and manufacturing city, but also as the nation’s center for book, magazine, and newspaper publication (Paddock). By 1860 the city was responsible for thirty percent of America’s printing and publishing. It had one hundred and four newspapers in 1857, unloading some seventy eight million copies a year on the public. Most of these papers were weeklies, but the major dailies of the time—the Tribune, the Sun, the Herald, the Times, and the Evening Post—had a combined daily circulation of almost a quarter of a million (Paddock). Editors Horace Greeley of the Tribune and William Cullen Bryant of the Post were among New York’s leading citizens in 1850; and the major newspapers’ offices on Park Row were the most distinctive and prominent business buildings in the city. New York’s monthly magazines were an even more imposing presence on the American cultural scene. There were fifty-four of them, with a combined circulation of 500,000, in 1849 (Paddock).
Fueling this wave of new journals was a recognizably modern audience—farmers in the countryside, a rapidly growing working and middle class in the towns and cities—keen to be educated. New York City’s size, diversity, and unique access both to the Old World across the Atlantic and the New World of the American interior, made it the natural breeding ground for an American middle class culture (Paddock).
Nast studied art with Theodore Kaufmann, a German painter who specialized in historical scenes. Nast worked at the Thomas Jefferson Bryant Gallery of Christian art where he copied the historical paintings in the collection as a part of his artistic training. From 1856 to 1862 Thomas Nast worked as a reportorial artist for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, and joined the staff of New York Illustrated News (Boime). Nast sailed to England to cover a prizefight for the New York Illustrated News; then traveled to Italy to report for the New York Illustrated News and the London Illustrated News on Giuseppe Garabaldi’s military campaign in Sicily during the Italian Revolution. Nast’s identification with Garibaldi’s crusade was personal and passionate, in effect a preliminary to those far more compelling causes—saving the Union, ending slavery, creating a postwar nation based on equality and liberty, facing the corruption of the Tweed Ring—into which he, his art, and his country would soon be pitched headlong (Boime). Nast returned to New York from covering Garibaldi in February 1861. When the Civil War broke out in April, he attracted much notice with a painting of the New York National Guard’s Seventh Regiment marching down Broadway to depart for the front (Boime).
In the summer of 1862 he became a regular contributor to Harper’s Weekly, would remain so for twenty-five years producing about 2,200 cartoons for that magazine.
His first work for Harper’s was his first Santa Claus drawing, Santa Claus in Camp, published January 3, 1863. A year later, Thomas Nast published Compromise with the South, in which Nast powerfully combats the defeatism that pervaded the Union during the summer of 1864, when Lincoln himself expected to be defeated for reelection (Encyclopedia Britannica). A tattered American flag hangs upside down in a signal of distress because northern cities are devastated. Columbia, symbolizing the nation, weeps as a disabled Union veteran’s handshake with a Confederate officer dissolves into a humble surrender (Halloran). The triumphant Confederate’s foot treads on a Union soldier’s grave and breaks the northern sword and northern power. In the South, its flag brilliant in victory despite the crimes listed in its folds. An African American Union veteran and his family are reshackled in slavery (Halloran). The title of the work refers to the recent Democratic presidential nominating convention, which had declared a platform pronouncing the war a failure, criticized emancipation, and advocating a cease-fire and negotiations with the Confederacy (Halloran). This cartoon was widely reproduced by the Republican Party for use in President Lincoln’s campaign, which Lincoln did go on to win (Encyclopedia Britannica). In the election of 1868, Nast began his cartoon campaign against William M. Tweed, boss of New York City’s Tammany Hall, and his associates with A Respectable Screen Covers a Multitude of Thieves in the October 10th issue of Harper’s Weekly (Encyclopedia Britannica). Pressure was put on Harper Brothers, the company that produced the magazine, and when it refused to fire Nast, the company lost the contract to provide New York schools with books. Nast himself was offered a bribe of $500,000 to end his
campaign (Encyclopedia Britannica). This was hundred times the salary of $5,000 that the magazine paid him but Nast still refused and eventually Tweed was arrested and imprisoned for corruption (Encyclopedia Britannica). Nast 's campaign against Tweed was later described as "the finest and most effective political cartooning ever done in the United States” (Encyclopedia Britannica). In addition, while working at Harper’s, Nast adopted the donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party in A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion, which was published January 15 1870 (Encyclopedia Britannica). Four years later, he introduced the elephant as a symbol for the Republican Party in The Third Term Panic published on November 7th (Encyclopedia Britannica). During the same time, Nast premiered the Grand Caricaturama theatrical presentation, thirty-three eight-by-twelve foot murals depicting American history, in New York and Boston. Thomas Nast also created five color cartoons of American politicians for Vanity Fair; making him the first American artist invited to contribute to the prestigious London magazine (Encyclopedia Britannica). In 1879, the cartoonist received a Silver Army Canteen as the gift of 3,500 members of the Army and Navy in gratitude for “the patriotic use he has made of his rare abilities as the artist of the people” (Encyclopedia Britannica).
In 1886, Thomas Nast left Harper’s Weekly after choosing not to sign his renewal contract due to conflicts with the magazine’s management (Halloran). Nast went on to purchase the New York Gazette, an unprofitable weekly newspaper in 1892 and renamed it Nast’s Weekly. Six months later he suffered major financial problems due to the financial failure of Nast’s Weekly (Halloran). After the failure, he received several commissions for paintings based on historical subjects, and returned to his original artistic ambition of painting. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Thomas Consul General to the commercial Ecuadorian port of Guayaquil. He died there of yellow fever on December 7, and was buried in Ecuador. Then reburied four years later in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York (Halloran). Today, most American’s who possess a rudimentary knowledge of politics are aware of a Nast cartoon, but few are actually conscious of the mastermind behind the symbols. Few are aware of the impact his work had the electorate of his time. According to census results of 1850, 1,053,420 American citizens were illiterate (Pflueger). This rate increased by more than 4 million citizens to 5,658,144 when calculated in 1870 (Pflueger). With such a sizeable segment of the population incapable of reading, newspaper and magazine articles were not sufficient for providing information to the masses. Nast used his cartoons not only to entertain and provide information, but also to shape public opinion. The cartoonist waged war on everything from slavery to corrupt politicians using no written words, merely innovative images. He also greatly shaped the conclusions of multiple elections. Nast’s cartoons were similar to the incessant campaign commercials of today. Thomas Nast may not be a household name, but the American government was molded greatly by his cartoons (Pflueger). Thomas Nast provided Americans something articles never could, pictures. These pictures added emotion and depth to matters the public at one time disregarded. He made politics and government relevant and thought provoking to the average person skimming through a newspaper. His cartoons played a panicle role throughout the argument of slavery, as well as the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The two major modern political parties still use Nast’s cartoons as their official figures. Thomas Nast was an artist from simple beginnings who used his talents and intelligence to create groundbreaking images that are ingrained into the minds of all Americans today. Even an American who does not recognize the Republican Elephant or the Democratic Donkey knows Santa Claus.
Works Cited
Boime, Albert. "Thomas Nast and French Art." JSTOR. JSTOR. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Fox, Louis H. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1928. University of Michigan Library. Web.
Halloran, Fiona D. Homas Nast: The Father of Modern Political Cartoons. University of North Carolina, 2012. Print.
"Nast, Thomas." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 14 Jan. 2013.
Paddock, Barney, Brett Paddock, and Lisa Paddock. "Encyclopedia of American Literature: The Age of Romanticism and Realism, 1816–1895." Bloom 's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File News Services. Web. 25 Nov. 2012.
Pflueger, Lynda. Thomas Nast: Political Cartoonist. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow, 2000. Print.