1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:01,960
Speaker 1: This Day in History Class as a production of I

2
00:00:02,040 --> 00:00:12,520
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,

3
00:00:12,560 --> 00:00:16,560
Speaker 1: a show that demystifies history one day at a time.

4
00:00:17,440 --> 00:00:21,520
Speaker 1: I'm Gabe Bluesier, and today we're talking about how one

5
00:00:21,520 --> 00:00:25,520
Speaker 1: of the most prominent parties in American politics wound up

6
00:00:25,560 --> 00:00:34,199
Speaker 1: saddled with a donkey as its symbol. The day was

7
00:00:34,360 --> 00:00:41,839
Speaker 1: January eighteen seventy. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast first used the

8
00:00:41,920 --> 00:00:44,839
Speaker 1: donkey as a symbol for the Democratic Party in a

9
00:00:44,920 --> 00:00:50,400
Speaker 1: cartoon titled A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion. The

10
00:00:50,479 --> 00:00:55,120
Speaker 1: cartoon was published in Harper's Weekly in American political magazine

11
00:00:55,160 --> 00:00:58,760
Speaker 1: based in New York City. Nast had moved to the

12
00:00:58,760 --> 00:01:02,040
Speaker 1: city from Germany when he was just six years old.

13
00:01:02,360 --> 00:01:04,880
Speaker 1: He loved to draw from an early age, and later

14
00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:08,479
Speaker 1: took a job at Harper's in eighteen sixty two. At

15
00:01:08,480 --> 00:01:14,440
Speaker 1: the time, cartoonists wielded considerable power in American politics, Many

16
00:01:14,560 --> 00:01:18,000
Speaker 1: citizens didn't have the time or ability to keep up

17
00:01:18,040 --> 00:01:21,920
Speaker 1: with every political dispute or policy change that came along.

18
00:01:22,600 --> 00:01:25,800
Speaker 1: Cartoons were an easy way to get a general sense

19
00:01:25,840 --> 00:01:29,200
Speaker 1: of the issues at a glance. By the time Nast

20
00:01:29,440 --> 00:01:33,240
Speaker 1: drew a donkey to symbolize the Democratic Party. He had

21
00:01:33,280 --> 00:01:37,240
Speaker 1: already become one of the most influential cartoonists in the country,

22
00:01:37,520 --> 00:01:42,520
Speaker 1: shaping the political opinions of millions of readers. Contrary to

23
00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:48,760
Speaker 1: popular belief, Nast didn't invent the association between Democrats and donkeys,

24
00:01:49,040 --> 00:01:52,120
Speaker 1: but he did expand it to cover the entire party

25
00:01:52,480 --> 00:01:57,280
Speaker 1: rather than just an individual party member. The first Democrat

26
00:01:57,400 --> 00:02:01,200
Speaker 1: to be linked with a donkey was President Andrew Jackson,

27
00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:06,560
Speaker 1: a headstrong, combative populist whose campaign slogan was let the

28
00:02:06,640 --> 00:02:10,280
Speaker 1: People Rule. When he first ran for office in eighteen

29
00:02:10,360 --> 00:02:14,720
Speaker 1: twenty eight, his Republican opponents labeled him a jackass, which

30
00:02:14,720 --> 00:02:19,520
Speaker 1: had pretty much the same connotation then as it does now. However,

31
00:02:19,880 --> 00:02:23,440
Speaker 1: in an example of what I'm calling the Yankee doodle effect,

32
00:02:23,919 --> 00:02:29,320
Speaker 1: Jackson actually embraced the nickname, spinning it to represent steadfastness

33
00:02:29,360 --> 00:02:35,080
Speaker 1: and persistence instead of wrongheadedness. He started using an illustration

34
00:02:35,200 --> 00:02:38,600
Speaker 1: of a donkey on his campaign posters to help reinforce

35
00:02:38,680 --> 00:02:42,840
Speaker 1: the idea, and the tactic apparently worked. Jackson went on

36
00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:47,160
Speaker 1: to win the election and became America's first Democratic president.

37
00:02:47,960 --> 00:02:51,560
Speaker 1: Supporters and detractors alike continued to use the donkey to

38
00:02:51,639 --> 00:02:56,760
Speaker 1: symbolize Jackson throughout both of his presidential terms. However, when

39
00:02:56,760 --> 00:03:00,400
Speaker 1: he left office in eighteen thirty seven, the donkey symbol

40
00:03:00,520 --> 00:03:04,799
Speaker 1: went with him. The association fell by the wayside until

41
00:03:04,840 --> 00:03:09,000
Speaker 1: more than thirty years later, when Thomas Nast decided to

42
00:03:09,080 --> 00:03:13,560
Speaker 1: reintroduce it. Before we get into why the cartoonists decided

43
00:03:13,600 --> 00:03:16,480
Speaker 1: to bring back the donkey, it's worth noting that the

44
00:03:16,520 --> 00:03:20,880
Speaker 1: Republican and Democratic parties were very different in the nineteenth

45
00:03:20,919 --> 00:03:24,920
Speaker 1: century than they are today. In fact, in many ways,

46
00:03:25,080 --> 00:03:30,840
Speaker 1: their political philosophies were reversed, with Republicans favoring social liberalism

47
00:03:31,080 --> 00:03:36,200
Speaker 1: and Democrats supporting conservatism and a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

48
00:03:37,040 --> 00:03:40,360
Speaker 1: Thomas Nast was a Republican and had made a name

49
00:03:40,400 --> 00:03:45,120
Speaker 1: for himself by confronting topical issues like the Civil War, reconstruction,

50
00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:50,960
Speaker 1: and immigration from a decidedly liberal perspective. By eighteen seventy,

51
00:03:51,400 --> 00:03:54,480
Speaker 1: Nast had turned his attention to a group of Northern

52
00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:59,320
Speaker 1: Democrats known as copper Heads. The copper Heads had opposed

53
00:03:59,320 --> 00:04:01,840
Speaker 1: the Civil War are from the beginning and pushed for

54
00:04:01,880 --> 00:04:05,960
Speaker 1: an immediate peace agreement with the Confederates, a fact which

55
00:04:06,080 --> 00:04:11,320
Speaker 1: Nast viewed as a racist and anti union stance. Nast

56
00:04:11,440 --> 00:04:15,920
Speaker 1: resented the growing influence of Democrat dominated newspapers in both

57
00:04:15,960 --> 00:04:19,279
Speaker 1: the South and the North. So in his cartoon for

58
00:04:19,400 --> 00:04:23,719
Speaker 1: January fift eighteen seventy, Thomas Nast took aim at the

59
00:04:23,880 --> 00:04:27,599
Speaker 1: so called copper Head Papers, and he revived the image

60
00:04:27,640 --> 00:04:31,400
Speaker 1: of the Democratic donkey to do it. The cartoon he

61
00:04:31,520 --> 00:04:35,160
Speaker 1: drew depicts a donkey kicking a dead lion in front

62
00:04:35,160 --> 00:04:38,279
Speaker 1: of a tree. An eagle is perched on a nearby

63
00:04:38,400 --> 00:04:41,840
Speaker 1: rock observing the scene, and in the far background is

64
00:04:41,880 --> 00:04:46,760
Speaker 1: the US capital. The donkey is labeled copper Head Papers

65
00:04:47,240 --> 00:04:52,080
Speaker 1: and the lion is branded Edwin M. Stanton, the name

66
00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:57,720
Speaker 1: of President Lincoln's recently deceased Secretary of War. The text

67
00:04:57,800 --> 00:05:02,520
Speaker 1: below the image reads a live jackass kicking a dead lion,

68
00:05:03,000 --> 00:05:07,839
Speaker 1: and such a lion and such a jackass. The meaning

69
00:05:07,880 --> 00:05:11,760
Speaker 1: of the image is not hard to decipher. Nast believed

70
00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:15,560
Speaker 1: that the lingering anti war beliefs expressed in the Democratic

71
00:05:15,600 --> 00:05:20,279
Speaker 1: press were dishonoring the legacy of Lincoln's administration, and to

72
00:05:20,360 --> 00:05:24,000
Speaker 1: really drive that point home, he chose a powerful regal

73
00:05:24,040 --> 00:05:28,320
Speaker 1: animal to represent Stanton and a slow, obstinate one to

74
00:05:28,440 --> 00:05:33,720
Speaker 1: represent Democrats. Nast continued to use the donkey to symbolize

75
00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:38,240
Speaker 1: Democratic groups throughout his tenure at Harper's Weekly. Its next

76
00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:41,839
Speaker 1: appearance was in an eighteen seventy four cartoon, and that

77
00:05:42,040 --> 00:05:46,440
Speaker 1: time Nast introduced a Republican animal to go along with it.

78
00:05:47,120 --> 00:05:51,360
Speaker 1: Once again, the artist's own political allegiance was hard to miss.

79
00:05:51,880 --> 00:05:56,040
Speaker 1: As a loyal Republican himself, Nast chose to represent the

80
00:05:56,120 --> 00:06:00,560
Speaker 1: party with a strong, noble elephant, a stark owner point

81
00:06:00,600 --> 00:06:05,159
Speaker 1: to the braying jackass of the Democrats. It probably comes

82
00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:08,680
Speaker 1: as no surprise that while the Republican Party has since

83
00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:12,880
Speaker 1: adopted the elephant as its official symbol, the same cannot

84
00:06:12,880 --> 00:06:16,719
Speaker 1: be said of the Democrats and the donkey. Most people

85
00:06:16,960 --> 00:06:21,440
Speaker 1: no longer remember the political conflicts that Thomas Nast first

86
00:06:21,600 --> 00:06:26,600
Speaker 1: used these animal symbols to satirize. However, the symbols themselves

87
00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:30,440
Speaker 1: are still very much in use, proof positive that the

88
00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:35,200
Speaker 1: German born cartoonist still holds some sway in American politics,

89
00:06:35,680 --> 00:06:41,880
Speaker 1: even after all this time. I'm gay, Bluesier, and hopefully

90
00:06:42,160 --> 00:06:45,080
Speaker 1: you now know a little more about history today than

91
00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,080
Speaker 1: he did yesterday. If you want to keep up with

92
00:06:48,120 --> 00:06:51,120
Speaker 1: the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and

93
00:06:51,200 --> 00:06:55,240
Speaker 1: Instagram at t d I HC Show, and if you

94
00:06:55,279 --> 00:06:58,360
Speaker 1: have any comments or suggestions, you can always send them

95
00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:02,719
Speaker 1: my way at this Day at i heart media dot com.

96
00:07:02,720 --> 00:07:05,640
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to Chandler Mays for producing the show,

97
00:07:06,000 --> 00:07:08,680
Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening. I'll see you back

98
00:07:08,680 --> 00:07:21,640
Speaker 1: here again tomorrow for another day in History class. For

99
00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:24,440
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

100
00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:27,080
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.